NOW PLAYING: The Nose

Since opening up in lower Manhattan venue The Lower Case has become a hub for experimental work which blends its founders interests in games and theatre. Now Lower Case co-founder Dustin Freeman has teamed up with writer Madison Wetzell to transform the venue into the perfect platform for an absurdist mystery based on one of Nikolai Gogol short stories.

We checked in with writer Wetzell and director Freeman about the new show whose tickets run from $40 up to $95 and will play at the space through Jan 28th.

Follow the production on Instagram at TheNoseTheShow.

—

This is No Proscenium’s NOW PLAYING, a look at ongoing immersive experiences & events. To learn more about how your event could be considered for the feature check out How To Get Covered By NoPro.

—

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

The Nose Team: The Nose is an immersive comedy based on the delightfully bizarre short story by Nikolai Gogol, in which a barber finds a nose in a loaf of bread. The story plays with anxieties of status and masculinity as it charts the disappearance, and even less explicable reappearance, of one man’s nose.

Our reimagining sets the story in 1980s New York and casts the audience as investigators taking on this unsolvable case. We give each audience member a flashlight and invite them to freely wander a multi-room space, hear conflicting accounts of the incident in question, discover clues, and perhaps encounter a Nose. Each audience-investigator will have a unique, self-directed experience, interrogating the events in a non-linear way.

NP: What was the inspiration for your upcoming experience?

TN: Our initial inspiration was the venue, The Lower Case, an immersive arts space cofounded by Dustin in 2022. He wanted to do a show that transformed the space and took advantage of its interconnected rooms. We began experimenting with the idea of an audience using flashlights to direct the action. This was partially inspired by Dustin’s past work, The Aluminum Cat, an online show (in 2019, pre-pandemic!) where the audience communicated with actors using only their mice.

Get NoPro Newswire’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

SubscribeSubscribe

We searched for a narrative that would fit this premise and Madison thought of The Nose. The story seemed perfect for immersive theater’s convention of each audience member choosing their own path. It involves overlapping and contradictory perspectives in a world in which all hypotheses are plausible and all details equally relevant. We were excited about the notion of an absurd, unsolvable mystery, in which the audience feels compelled to put scraps of information together even as nothing makes sense.

We adapted Gogol’s story to 1983, the last decade before access to all information on the internet became normal. It was important to us to offer the audience the tactile sensations of being analog investigators. At the same time, the themes of absurd informational ambiguity feel familiar and relevant in 2024, as we are all expected to consume eight tonally disconnected pieces of contradictory information before leaving bed in the morning.

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

TN: As immersive theater as a genre has tended toward the serious and somber, we’re excited to present an immersive comedy that revels in its silliness. The surreal experience of wandering through an immersive world lends itself just as well to the absurd as to the solemn.

We don’t want to give too much away, but there are lots of visual surprises in store for the audience as they move through the space. Part of the fun is that the performers encourage audience members to create and leave clues for each other. Participatory scenes transform the audience and the space in ways that are a joy to walk in on or overhear in the next room. Our goal is to lure the audience into actively contributing to the absurdity of this world.

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

TN: Immersive audiences seem to be getting more savvy and more eager to participate. The audience discovers secrets in the space much more quickly than we expected, so we’ve had to hide them better. Part of our space design is inspired by visual guiding in Cyan’s games Myst & Riven, and it’s been delightful to watch audiences be pulled in one direction initially, and then change their mind based on something they notice enroute.

Audiences are also very eager to take up tasks and to “help” the actors. We’ve had actors set up interactive scenes, move on to another room, and found that audiences will continue working on their tasks from the previous scene without prompting.

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

TN: To get in the mood, we would recommend putting on your best private investigator suit and stalking around to the Pink Panther theme, or listening to 80s music.

You don’t have to read The Nose to enjoy this show, though we do recommend it as a piece of literature.

Some other recommendations: Catch-22, the Pink Panther movies, low-budget documentary reenactments, The Onion’s Franz Kafka International Airport sketch, this excellent gif, The Wikipedia article for “apophenia,” the game Her Story by Sam Barlow, any online microcelebrity drama revealed in screenshots of DMs.

Discover the latest immersive events, festivals, workshops, and more at our new site EVERYTHING IMMERSIVE, home of NoPro’s show listings.

NoPro is a labor of love made possible by our generous Patreon backers. Join them today and get access to our Newsletter and Discord!

In addition to the No Proscenium website and our podcast, and you can find NoPro on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and in the Facebook community also named Everything Immersive.