COMING SOON: The Last Resort

It’s 1971 and you find yourself on an ill-fated cruise through the Bermuda Triangle. Your destination: The Last Resort, “a purgatory paradise exploring themes of change, choice, mortality, and growth.”

The new show is the work of the Dreamqueen Collective, a project of the prolific Vancouver-based artist Fairlith Harvey, who has “programmed immersive sci-fi dining experiences at Times Square’s Mars 2112, along with a variety of productions for Disney Cruise Lines, Whistler Village and over 60 original shows for the Vancouver troupe, Geekenders.”

We checked in with Harvey, who serves as co-writer, co-director, and co-producer of The Last Resort which runs November 10th -24th.

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NO PROSCENIUM: Tell us a little bit about your experience! What’s it about? What makes it immersive?

Fairlith Harvey: “The Last Resort” experience leads audience members through an exploration of death, disco, and the process of self-actualization as seen through the eyes of guests of a tropical party resort in the early 1970s. The story unfolds through a blend of sandbox-style exploration, dance, whimsical humour, one-on-one encounters, three themed bars with cocktails and mocktails crafted just for “The Last Resort”, and several rooms (and hidden nooks) of lushly-detailed atmosphere.

The show places guests into the role of passengers of a cruise ship that sailed into the Bermuda Triangle in 1971 and was never heard from again. During audience training, guests are invited to choose a coloured lei denoting their level of participation, and then they’re off to the Resort, to explore, to be danced with, to be fed pineapple containing the knowledge of all humankind, and maybe to leave again… someday.

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The show is focused on reversing the actor-audience contract, and giving audience members opportunity after opportunity to feel seen, chosen, and special.

NP: What was the inspiration for your upcoming experience?

FH: I spent two years working as a funeral attendant. Working with decedents who left our world due to any cause of death you can imagine, I came to find death to be a very calm, peaceful, un-scary state. It got me thinking about what would happen if you died, ready or not, and ended up at an eternal party, unable to leave or sleep. Eternity sounds nice until you have to consider that you’d never, ever get a break, even if death was supposed to be your break and you really needed one. I have a lot of compassion for anyone who died prematurely, for whatever the reason.

NP: What do you think fans of immersive will find most interesting about this latest experience?

FH: I think people are really eager to talk about death; every time we’ve had conversations about death, whether in auditions or rehearsal, ideas and tears have been spilling out of people faster than anyone can respond. It’s so taboo in our society to discuss what’s coming, and we’ve found through this process that it’s on everybody’s mind, even if we’re not discussing it. I believe that the horror moments are really effective, especially combined with fun, humour, disco, and pathos. Dying is scary, but it doesn’t negate the joy of life and personhood. I think guests of this experience are going to be discussing much more than the different scenes and numbers they’ll discover, and there are 250 discoverable scenes totalling about 16 hours’ worth of content in this piece.

NP: Once you started designing and testing what did you discover about this experience that was unexpected?

FH: People have been so eager to help these characters. Sometimes it’s easy to be cynical and grouse about lack of connection and about people being out for themselves, especially in a city like Vancouver when people can find themselves feeling isolated, but test audiences have been so compassionate to these lost souls. It’s really given me hope, watching test audience suspend their disbelief and try to affect positive change, to listen with open-heartedness, and to gamely jump into trying new things.

NP: What can fans who are coming to this, or thinking about coming to this, do to get into the mood of the experience?

Guests should dress for their ill-fated cruise in 1971, if that would be fun for them! The venue is very warm, and our mandatory coat and bag check ensures that folks can focus on their experience and freedom to explore. I suggest coming with an easygoing attitude, like a dad on his first all-inclusive cruise without the kids.

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