Portrait of The Artist As A Dead Asshole — Ghost Road’s ‘Super Duper’ Haunts Los Angeles (REVIEW)

From a certain point of view immersive theatre is always a compromise. Any given play sits somewhere in a matrix whose multifaceted poles include theatre, dance, installation art, games, and the simple art of conversation. (Do not take that list to be exhaustive, mind.)

In the case of Katharine Noon’s Super Duper the flag is most firmly planted in the theatre camp, with installation art taken on as a modifier and to a lesser extent subject matter through the conceit of the story.

The piece is framed as the (last?) work of an unnamed artist, which reveals itself to be a life retrospective that unspool as a series of installations across three gallery spaces inside the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Actors playing the part of docents divide the audience into small groups for the first act/installation whilst a cheeky lead docent monologues a spiel.

The first installation is a series of seven short scenes, partly monologues and partly Q&A sessions driven by the actors. The monologues are, as a rule, good to excellent. The Q&A elements are, well they’re as good as Q&A can get. It’s a weak tool that a fair number of immersive creators lean on for interaction, putting the onus of the scene back on the audience to carry thematic elements without any real art to it. A couple of the actors delivering the scenes were a bit more adroit at masking the Q&A, but the overall effect was the same.

Which was a bit of a shame, as the Q&A dynamic set aside more interesting possibilities as the seven monologues painted a composite picture of the Artist, whose absence acts as a kind of polestar for each of the characters who themselves have archetypal names like “The Ally” and “The Jester.” A distressingly clear vision of The Artist as a real asshole, charismatic to be sure but seemingly to lack positive qualities beyond charisma and talent, emerges from the monologues and doesn’t really get disabused over the course of the play.

To be clear, we’re not the Artist here. Indeed we’ve been cast in the most traditional role for a theatrical audience: witness, with an occasional glimpses of detective. Much of the later is realized when we are given a chance to explore wonderfully executed installation pieces in multiple scenes, although what we learn in these is, by nature of the conceit, from the point of view of The Artist who by that point in time was the last character whose point of view I was interested in.

There’s another problem with introducing Q&A to a structure which otherwise signals that you should be in passive mode: it gets the talkers talking. Now I don’t mean in the Q&A portion, if anything you need them then when other audience members aren’t sufficiently warmed up or are put off by the bluntness of the questions. No I’m talking about the couple who wouldn’t stop acting like they were in their living room watching Netflix for the rest of the damn show.

Get Noah J Nelson’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

SubscribeSubscribe

I had to restrain myself from calling “Hold, Please” and reading them the riot act as they talked over actors during the next scene, and that pretty much wrecked the spine of the show for me at that point. I got bits and pieces of what was being said. (Why didn’t I? Because then I would have been pulling even more focus than they were. Two wrongs not exactly making a right.)

Look, it boils down to this: if you’re going to use the toolset you’ve got to know that you’re playing with the social contract. Think of it this way: if you give the class fingerprints at the start of the day you have to expect that it will be everywhere when it is time to go home.

Additional sequences build upon the characters introduced in the opening, the portrait of the absent artist and his view of these people taking up more space — figuratively and literally — as the play goes on. Yet for every door opened, another, deeper one seems to be closed as we progress towards the finale.

I don’t think Super Duper could have worked as a traditional proscenium show, as the moving back and forth between rooms as the installations shifted and the intimate monologues really worked as thematic and theatrical effects. The installations themselves are pretty nifty, with the production team really nailing the art in a way that is simultaneously sincere and satirical. Neither, however, did it really dial in on what those tools afforded it, while at the same time opening the door for some disruptive behavior from a misaligned audience duo.

Which is to say there’s something here, but with the sum total of the work privileging The Artist’s point of view we’re left with something more intellectual than visceral due to his presence being a mere shadow. Perhaps that’s the intent. Perhaps the talkative couple drew too much focus during the critical sequence that punctured that perspective. In any case that’s the impression I was left with from the structure at hand even as the ensemble held a vibrancy of their own that pushed against that cold reading.

In short: I’d like to see Ghost Road Company continue to explore the form, especially if they hear the siren call of playing with multiple perspectives and the social contract. There’s a solid foundation in the ensemble and the production work that makes me want to see what they are capable of when they take the next step.

Super Duper plays at the Los Angeles Theatre Center through July 26th. Tickets are $45.

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

NoPro is a labor of love made possible by our generous Patreon backers. Join them today!

In addition to the No Proscenium website, our podcast, and our newsletters, you can find NoPro on Facebook, LinkedIn,YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, in the Facebook community Everything Immersive, and on our Patreon Backer exclusive Discord.