Review Rundown: The One With Fair Trades, Mystery Boxes, and Drag Sanctuaries
Immersive dance theatre in a nightclub in SF, experiments in San Diego, an S-tier mystery box at home. (THREE REVIEWS)
This week’s Rundown is SMALL but MIGHTY, with looks at work from some of our favorite creators, and a capsule review of one of our most anticipated shows of the year: We Build Houses Here.
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Fair Trade — Jessica Creane & Yannick Trapman-O’Brien
Free; San Diego, CA; Run concluded
It could have been a lunch hour. We were sitting in a park on the San Diego Bay. Spandexed runners blew by. The show was only an hour long, but there was no lunch. Instead, we had an existential investigation of fairness.
Fair Trade is described as “a game and immersive experience focused on personal and communal transformation through play.” Two strangers converge on opposite sides of a curtain. Each participant brings three objects for a potential trade (with varying degrees of attachment to those offerings). Sitting within their view is a facilitator (usually performed by creators Jessica Creane or Yannick Trapman-O’Brien), who guides them through negotiations with care, humor, and vulnerability.
Wonder and awe often arrive from big spectacle, be it human made or the natural world. Fair Trade takes a different approach. Although “personal and communal transformation” sounds — and is — lofty, “small” encounters like these have intimate fulcrums. In place of spectacle is a gentle, incremental unfolding. Through a nuanced mix of proposition and choice, the facilitator accompanies participants as they examine fairness, a concept that seems as fundamental as breathing.
With The Telelibrary, an earlier work by Trapman-O’Brien (still running after more than 1,500 performances), he cultivates a specific kind of anonymous intimacy, one where solitude is a path to connection, both to others and to oneself. With Fair Trade, Creane and Trapman-O’Brien designed a new container for anonymous, cooperative dialogue. Through this shared exploration, internal truths and deep uncertainties reveal themselves. Instead of solitude as a path to connection, it’s communion as a path to introspection.
Ignited by the game’s exchanges, Fair Trade becomes a space to contend with, for, and even “against” oneself. Internal debate is concurrent with external negotiation. The production centers an idea that embodies incredible tension: one we take for granted and one that can erupt with volatility. The resulting distillation of what fairness could be and how we evaluate it feels fresh and life-affirming. Through their individual practices and now as a team, Creane and Trapman-O’Brien are fluent operators. They navigate the tenuous threads of humanity with such grace and artistry that, in the end, a part of yourself is revealed; something that may have felt unknowable, even to you, rises to the surface to be seen and given away.
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— Laura Hess, Arts Editor
Threads of Fate — PostCurious
$86 plus shipping; Delivery; Available on Kickstarter through May 17
For immersive theatre fans, Threads provides unrivaled moments of narrative and interpersonal interaction that outshine not only other at-home boxes, but many live performance experiences. The story starts with players hired by Emerens Institutes’ dean in order to find two missing professors. In starting their investigation, players quickly discover that one of the professors is searching for a Norse mythology artifact; one created to strip living beings of freewill. Yet the artifact’s existence is noted to be improbable, merely a flight of academic fancy.
I might not have been the ideal player, but I was able to appreciate Threads’ difficulty level. Threads’ creators didn’t stuff this box with roadblocks or busywork. No, these puzzles have narrative purpose and contextual depth. There are opposing forces at work, each with secrets they’ve protected for centuries. If Threads’ characters couldn’t solve these puzzles, why should it be easy for the players? Each step I took in this game led to substantial progress and that made me feel god-like, creating a euphoria that in turn fueled the narrative’s theme. Was it mere chance I received these envelopes? Was I predestined to walk a holy path? This intentionality did as much to assuage my frustrations as stoke them.
On a related note, there’s simply a stupendous level of quality and craft to each puzzle’s design. Players have everything they need — no missing details or broken components here. They simply have to work (very) hard to piece it all together. Threads’ online hint system helped each step make sense (and helped me recognize that I lacked the experience required to succeed on my own).
While best-suited to experienced, adept puzzlers, Threads of Fate’s engrossing, thought-provoking narrative, and well-designed puzzles will have players believing the fate of the world is in their hands.
— Patrick McLean, Remote Editor, from his feature length review
We Build Houses Here — Detour Dance
$30 — $70; San Francisco, CA; Ends May 20
Detour’s immersive dance theater performance We Build Houses Here reimagines San Francisco’s Oasis nightclub as a deserted island with shipwrecked castaways. Detour always aims to “center the prismatic experiences of queers & people of color,” and this show certainly succeeds in that, prompting reflection on LGBTQ issues in a way that’s clear, but not overstated. It asks, How do LGBTQ folks create a haven in a place that feels uninhabitable, unfamiliar, and isolating?
Mixing drag, dance, and theater, the cast delivered a passionate performance. The shipwreck theme was well executed: everything from the music (flowing with nautical lyrics) to the dancing (fluid and thrashing like waves), to the costumes (glittering, castaway drag) worked to build the world of the stranded island. While the club itself as a venue felt a bit clunky (besides being named Oasis), the show made the most of the space. During the free-flowing parts of the performance, scenes occurred separately and simultaneously on staircases, and in nooks and corners.
The storyline at times lacked a narrative thread, save for a short scene in the beginning. While some may find this leaves them feeling unmoored, I felt the repetition and aimlessness was the whole point — the castaways were stranded, losing their minds.
I enjoyed the diverse mix of drag, poetry, singing, shadow puppets, actors in dialogue, and dancing. My only regret: I felt I bopped between scenes too quickly, trying to see everything, and sometimes missing things. The smaller audience size allowed for a lot of individual interaction, and although those moments weren’t as impactful as they could have been, I felt at ease with the space and the performers.
The show ended quietly with a searchlight on the stage beckoning for rescue. The message didn’t feel resigned but hopeful, as though saying there’s some beauty in being lost.
— Elissa Mardiney, San Francisco Correspondent
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