‘Shattered Space’ Puts the Pieces Together (Review)

Usually, I begin reviews with a bit of a tale of my journey to get to the show location, and what encounters I had before my adventures. This time, there wasn’t any trip to the venue or magical encounter before the show; there was only the trip from my dining room, past my newly minted 1st grader to my set up in the kitchen.

Like so many of us for the past couple of months, most of my trips have been no more exotic than from the bedroom, to the closet, to the bathroom. So imagine my delight upon logging into my computer, being told that I’m a Star Jockey, newly awakened from Cryo-sleep and tasked with piloting a ship around a traumatized star system helping people! That’s the basis for the delightful Shattered Space immersive experience.

Having had a brief chat with my fellow Space Jockeys (a few members of the NoPro Editorial Staff), I decided to dress for the occasion. I attacked my closet and desk toys, found something mildly space-futuristic to wear as an outfit and dove into my role as a hopeful, trusting, would be savior of the Matra System.

After a dizzyingly swift briefing explaining that we had 35 minutes to accomplish our mission before our ship would be pulled back to headquarters, we were tasked with choosing from a list of destinations within the system to establish communication and offer what aid we could. Perusing through the list of planets in our clickable user display, we arrived in the first of four locations — a station manned by androids — where our earnestness got… hilariously trolled. Thus was the start of our visits through the Matra System, as we tried to wade through who, and how much, we could trust during our journey of benevolence — and how much we could actually be of help.

We moved from planet to planet (and space station), meeting inhabitants, listening to their stories and requests, sometimes trading information, and often getting something in return for our troubles, in the form of a listed item in the sidebar of our team’s user interface.

The interface created for this show feels like a straight up throwback to some favorite text adventure and Full Motion Video games (FMV) of the late 80s and 1990s, and early HTML framed web sites. Made up of a simple side panel consisting of a list of destinations, a text chat window, and a tab for your crew’s inventory, the main focus of the user interface is to let the actor take center screen — as well as see the other members of your crew. It’s a good piece of design consideration in an age of competing group meeting video platforms; The Scattered Players have created a custom site with a relatively elegant design which lets you have video game sensibilities wedded to the needs of delivering a more intimate immersive performance. The format, a custom job from Lead Engineer & Programmer Chris Uehlinger, lets the personalities of the characters shine through.

Some of the personalities that we met during the course of our journey include renegade and stranded ship captain Art (Shiv Beckett); the lonesome Zorvin (Brett Messiora); the lively and semi-secretive Mazie (Teresa Attridge); and Kal (Matthew Payne), a mine worker with his life in the balance — and whose compelling performance influenced our actions greatly, steering how we approached the rest of the show. This point would prove to be a double edged sword.

(Minor spoilers follow.)

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Our team became so invested in one particular storyline (Kal’s) out of the apparent plethora that were available to us that when time was up, we felt like we were cheated out of really knowing the end to the story that we came to uncover. Our “ending” was a big system wide tag, a virtual “happily ever after” reveal that felt too broad for our crew’s particular pathway.

Speaking of “our” crew, while we originally assumed we were playing alone, there appeared to be several other “ships” running through the Mantra System simultaneously visiting an entirely different cast of characters, planets and encounters. While this was a neat revelation to our group, it raised many questions. Did we ever cross paths with another team? Were we ever working at odds with another ship? Were we blocked from visiting certain worlds because someone else got there first? Would having knowledge of other ships’ existence have changed how we approached the experience?

While the knowledge of the other crews might have changed our show experience, the overall driving force was time crunch. Knowing we only had 35 minutes to traverse the incredibly broad world Shattered Space presented sometimes created a frantic pace in our group’s discussion on how to react to situations and how much time we were willing to invest in an interesting encounter.

For example, we had an opportunity to help Mazie decipher a puzzle, but knowing that the end of the show was near, and wanting to explore a storyline to its end, we opted to skip it, even though it might have opened up more information to the world. In a subsequent encounter, we inadvertently let information slip to a character that several in the group were untrusting of because we were rushing to get to the conversation rolling, for fear we’d run out of time. While the outcome of that interaction turned out for the best, we might have approached negotiations with more caution had we had more time. The Scattered Players have addressed this, however by adding a longer version of their show for those looking to explore more of the system without the same time crunch.

That time push, however, keeps a sense of urgency throughout Shattered Space; but because of the limited time for choosing destinations, that urgency sometimes feels more like panic in navigating the long list of destinations. This becomes especially evident later in the show when (at least in our experience) where you chose to go next becomes more important to the story.

Shattered Space feels relevant and timely, touching on themes of isolation, trust and disenchantment with authority. It pulls together aspects of LARP with a more on-the-rails immersive theatre production, giving the audience a good deal of agency in dealing with the inhabitants of the system, while still creating a series of intimate performances; the results are at best powerful, and at very least, just pure fun.

Shattered Space gets a lot right, playing the more whimsical against melodrama. It has a homebrewed sense of production design using simple lighting, set dressing, and props to full effect to give a simultaneously abstract yet strong sense of place. At its core, a talented, truly diverse cast uses the eye of the camera to full effect, so that, for a time, my kitchen faded away and we were on the bridge of our ship trying to help the imperlied people of the Matra System.

The company has put together a solid mosaic from multiple remote locations across the Eastern seaboard. A mosaic that I think is worth making the long trek from the living room to the edge of the galaxy.

Shattered Space continues through June 28. Tickets are $15-$20.

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