A Saturday That WOW’d (A NoPro Diary)

Before we get into it, I need to cop to the fact that we’re doing a bit of work with the La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls team behind the scenes these days. Because of that I took myself OFF the review beat for this year’s WOW Festival, an event I’ve been going to since 2015.

But I still have thoughts on the weekend, the work within it, and its place in the larger immersive firmament. Given that our dedicated audience often looks to us to be as comprehensive as possible about the state of the Art, it would be a dereliction of duty to just not write up WOW. Instead of hitting the review format, I’m going to treat this as more of a memoir. So consider yourself doubly warned: I’m biased and this is a more stream of consciousness version of me. Yes, that is actually possible.

What is Without Walls Festival, aka WOW? Simply put: it is an annual performing arts festival that celebrates work that takes place outside of traditional theatrical venues. That means a lot of outdoor performances and a healthy dollop of immersive & interactive work. If a piece can fit inside that broad mandate, it’s a candidate for WOW.

I popped down to the festival this Saturday with a colleague riding shotgun (you can read his review in this major metropolitan newspaper, it’s probably more of what you’re looking for) and a full tank of gas. San Diego is just two brisk hours away from LA at 7AM on a Saturday, and if you have enough coffee and a friend who brought Donut Friend you won’t even notice you’re driving until you hit Irvine.

We got into town with almost two hours to kill before the festival started up, so early that none of the vendors were set up yet. I was disappointed because I’d hoped to find the Cali Cream stand which had been at press preview the month before. They’ll make what I call a “poor man’s affogato”: dropping a scope of ice cream into drip coffee. I didn’t get it at the preview when it was being handed out so I was hoping to find it that morning. No dice. So we hiked over the steps of the San Diego Convention Center, past the folks doing their best Rocky training montage, and into the Gaslamp district for some hotel coffee and back again. We were gonna be at the festival all day and into the night, and that meant powering up.

With about thirty minutes left when we got back I chatted with the owner of the Burgers, Bait & Beer shack at the edge of the fishing peer that borders the Rady Shell there in Jacobs Park on the marina. Then queued up for our first piece on the agenda: Las Cuatro Milpas, a petite labyrinth set up on a knoll populated by mural pieces on fabric draped over piping, QR codes that triggered videos, and actors taking on the roles of mythological figures from Mexico’s history. All in the service of telling the story of the family behind the eponymous spot that is San Diego’s oldest Mexican restaurant.

I got choked up hearing the family’s tale. Event though it was a short piece, with slight interaction, the show did what it was supposed to do. On the narrative front it was as effective as other slice of history pieces I’ve seen in festivals like Sundance and Tribeca. On the culinary front it made me wish there was time to squeeze in a visit to the restaurant that’s day. Apparently lines can get up to an hour. At least we were given a tortilla after. It was warm and almost translucent at point. Perfect.

We had been met at Milpas by a friend who was in the middle of a road trip from the Midwest up to LA for a wedding, who had caught some of the fest the day before. He took the time to drop in, which unbeknownst to me at the time would set at theme for the day. Before he left we walked over to the GLACIAL INCANTATIONS installation, which drew the eye thanks to these odd plastic “ice people” sitting on benches. There was a whole AR element to it, but it seemed like a lot of effort to little outcome. Downloading a whole app and burning through my data cap to look at a flat picture superimposed on a rock? Maybe something went wrong. Maybe the platform being used wasn’t great. The friend knows the world of AR art inside out, so it was extra ironic that this was his exeunt.

That was followed up with 360, a really striking piece of acrobatic performance art from The Netherlands. This one involved some lucky number of us sitting on little rolling stools and being put into different configurations as two incredibly skilled acrobats did close up floor work on a basketball court. From a distance I imagine it didn’t look like much, but up close it was possible to see the strain the performers were going through. Which made it a joyous and sometimes slightly harrowing watch.

We had a big hole in the schedule because Control Group Production’s bus, the venue for their show THE END which they had brought down from Denver, had broken down the night before. We had learned this on the way down, and I was bummed. I’ve always wanted to see a piece from this group and have been talking with the founder for years now. This was going to be my chance, and the fates denied me.

So we got some beers and grub — but not grubs — at the Burger, Bait, & Beer spot. My running buddy got a “small” shrimp taco that was the size of like three fast food tacos stacked side by side. I got the Pastrami Tsunami burger and a blonde ale from Coronado Brewing. Perfect waterfront food. All with time to spare to head to the Rady Shell lawn and catch Choreo & Fly.

There were kites everywhere on the Rady Shell lawn, and at first I thought that was all there was to the piece. Then someone came out and hopped on mic to let us know the dance segments were going to begin. The first felt like it was capturing the vibe of the kites, and set a frame that the work to follow didn’t really seem to keep up with. I’ve been to a lot of dance concerts over the years. Some of my earliest memories are of my mom teaching in a studio, so I’ve seen it all from recreations of Ballet Russe masterpieces to modern experiments to exuberant Afro-Haitian work at this point. This was definitely one of those shows where the first and last pieces were the strongest and in the middle was a mixed bag. I almost feel bad saying anything, but when you’ve got a big outdoor venue and kites overhead and drinks flowing from the carts nearby you can lose the audience’s focus. Performance as ambient art.

Which is what happened to me when another couple of friends showed up and we started chatting. It doesn’t help that one happens to be a friend who I know I can lose hours and hours to chatting on the phone or while on road trips. Often about immersive art. Nor does it matter how recently we’ve caught up. We’ve seen things together that… well let’s just leave it at this: I don’t think we’re ever going to run out of common frames of reference.

We were all set to get together for salty water, the latest entry into the festival from San Diego’s Blind Spot Collective. I was really high on their 2019 WOW production Hall Pass, and was hoping for something with that level of punch. What we got was tuned a bit more for the family set, with some really great elaborate puppets and an incredibly active young corps of performers. The kids in the audience seemed hella juiced by the big orange kraken made out of what looked like bubble wrap.

Okay. I was also hella juiced by it. I found myself wishing that I was a kid as the show played out, which kinda washed over me more than it pulled me in with all the activity going on around the Rady Shell lawn. It probably didn’t help that my friend was telling me about it’s not that way, it’s this way, which they had caught the night before. His description left me with a raging case of FOMO.

As for salty water, as a gestalt it was enjoyable, although I think I would have dug the show more as a processional. Maybe that’s because that’s what I was imagining when I read the description. Or because I find it easier to focus on outdoor theatre in public accessible places when I’m given a task. Even if it’s as simple as “walk over here and watch THIS.”

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We split from those friends and took a beat to drop into Brassroots District: Live in the Lot Summer ’73 long enough to catch the opening act and for me to say “Hi“ to Monica Miklas and Andrew Leib, director and producer respectively. Then saw two more friends, one of my best in fact, who had swung down from LA for the fest and was watching the show. We managed to catch the opening number — man, this show is so GOOD — before we had an appointment with an oddball interactive show/ritual called Cleaning The Stables.

This one will stick with me for a bit. Both because it definitely had me in my most absurd/playful mode of the day, and because it was just a touch overstuffed in terms of what was going on. I was never quite sure if I actually had agency or if I was just going through the motions of a ritual when I was told that I had a decision point. Was the tech not working? Was I not moving fast enough? Everything felt a bit on fast forward and I’m not sure if that was for effect or just an artifact of too many interesting ideas. I definitely had fun. I loved the mythological references and environmental theme I’d surely do it again, but I also want it to be shaved down just a touch so my undiagnosed adult ADHD doesn’t feel like its made a new best friend.

I slid over to where the RV for Drive was parked and reconnected with my friends last seen on the lawn. There I saw yet another friend, who I had last caught up with at The Tempest in LA last month, sitting on the lawn waiting to do standby. She got a seat, I decided to stand because I sit too much IRL and then regretted it when the production team was handing out Capri Sun lemonade pouches between scenes. Man, I really wanted one of those.

Drive is great, just a very well made play from Broadway veteran Sharon Wheatley adapted from her book about her experience driving around in an RV during the High Pandemic with her wife and two kids. It revolves mostly around her grappling with her youngest’s changing gender identity, and just what baggage from the past you actually need to carry around with you.

At the end we were all invited to make s’mores over the fire that was built during the show. Astrid Van Wieren, who played Sharon’s wife, overheard me performatively whining about the Capri Sun. She kicked into “stepmom” mode from the play and chided me, then got me one with the admonition that she didn’t want to hear me complaining anymore. I felt like I had unlocked a secret one on one, then got to talk to one of Sharon’s actual kids about how the RV for the show happened to be the actual RV from their summer on the road. Site-specific theatre at its most specific and fun. Delightful all around.

Then it was back to the Rady Shell for A Shared Space, which was produced by the San Diego Symphony. One of my Drive crew ran on ahead, the other two had seen it before and had La Lucha tickets so we chatted it up before they hit the road.

The gist of A Shared Space is that your phone is turned into a musical instrument, basically a dual function shaker/rainstick with the kinds of sounds being made determined by a one publicly accessible iPad and the exact tone/volume by your actions. Musicians from the symphony were scattered around the lawn and folks, myself included, wandered about experimenting with what things sounded like.

I had reconnected with my traveling buddy who was posted up at a table with a beer. I decided to get one too, and instantly regretted it when they slapped a $3 service charge on a $14 can of beer. If I’d known, I would have just passed. It wasn’t even a good beer. Although at least I can say I wandered around a lawn trying to play music with a symphony with a beer in my hand now. Something I couldn’t say before.

While doing so I spotted Jessica Creane and Yannick Trapman-O’Brien, whose Fair Trade was in the festival and which I hadn’t managed to pull a ticket for. I’ve met Jessica a few times over the years and we always have good chats, Yannick and I have only ever talked over the phone. Which is a bit wild since Yannick helped us out with a fundraiser last year which is why I’ve still got a roof over my head. Naturally they both got hugs.

We sat on the lawn behind a salty trombonist and played with our phones. In the manner intended, mind. We found that certain tones were really cool when we moved our phones around each other as if we were doing some magickal hand gestures. They were both thinking of trying to rush La Lucha, and I let it be known that we were headed there next. My colleague found us for the end of the symphonic piece and then the four of us piled back up into my car to head to Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, about five minutes away.

Not, however, before I found that Cali Cream stand! I got a scoop of Bourbon Maple Pecan ice cream in a cup of decaf. It was amazing. I never knew pecans in coffee would be something I would want but now we are here. It’s all I ever want. It is a new world. I am a new person.

We got almost rockstar parking for La Lucha and rolled up as a quartet. Jessica and Yannick were able to tap into our run, and we had a half hour to spare so we popped over to the Stone Taproom next door. I was still salty about the $17 can of bleh blonde but couldn’t handle a full so I ordered a 5oz. draught of the Cimmerian Portal stout. It set me back a whopping $3. I happily gave them a tip on that and proceeded to have the best beer of the day. Stone may be known for their IPAs, a class of beer that is just way too hoppy for me, but they know their way around the malt profile better than most breweries. Their Xocovesa is my favorite beer ever. I will happily fight you for the last bottle or can in any given spot. Okay. I’ll happily split it with you. I’m fair like that. If we didn’t have a long haul in front of us and the potential of one more drink on the schedule I would have gone for more. Suffice it to say: schedule in a pit stop at Stone if you’re headed down for La Lucha’s main run.

Which is something you should do.

La Lucha is fantastic. Read the LA Times piece if you want a review. In the car on the way back the writer of said review and I traded notes and I’m kind of amazed at how radically different our interpretations of the show are simply based on where we we loaded into it. Actually I’m not really amazed. It’s just been so long since I’ve been to a show that’s done that and done it right that I’d almost forgotten what it was like.

Optika Moderna pulls on the immersive tradition of companies like Punchdrunk, with whom OM’s principle David Israel Reynoso has worked with on multiple major productions (Sleep No More, The Burnt City), puts the work into the “dark ride” tracked format, and then puts it all into their own signature context. If you’ve been to the previous WOW productions Waking La Llorona and Las Quinceañeras you probably know what I mean. If you haven’t, I won’t spoil it. It’s too fun.

La Lucha is one of those fever dream immersive shows. Impressionistic moments that use melodrama as a base for a story about love, identity, and loss all within the aesthetics of lucha libre. If you walk in expecting a bunch of wrestlers doing wrestler things, which I could tell one couple was given that they were wearing luchador masks on their shirts and brought cardboard cutout masks of their own. Given that they didn’t stick around in the cantina afterward I think they were disappointed.

We were not. We meant to leave quickly and instead closed the theatre bar down. Not the first or last time I was guilty of that. David was there and so were others from WOW and yet another friend from LA popped up unexpectedly. I picked at people’s nachos, which had this wonderful green mole and a light dusting of cotija cheese. The cantina is run by a family restaurant that La Jolla Playhouse did a deal with. I regret to inform you that I did not catch the name.

On the drive back to LA I tallied up the day. I had run into well over a dozen friends and colleagues who I think of as friends. We’d taken in all kinds of art, and I’d been moved by more than one piece. It was just an incredible day at a festival that programs one hell of a mix of work. I’m already thinking about next year and what we can do to get more folks down. Maybe put together a trip or at least a dinner. Something formally informal as we tend to do around these parts.

It just felt so good to be at a festival that was celebrating the kind of work we love… and to have no greater responsibility than to just show up for once. So naturally I end up writing 3,000 words about it even though I wasn’t assigned to do so.

At the end of the day I’m just so very grateful that WOW exists and that an institution like La Jolla Playhouse has the vision to support this kind of work and share it with the world. There’s a really bright future for this festival as it shifts into an annual stance, and I hope it is around for a very, very long time.

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