‘Work From Home’ Nails The Remote Experience (Review)

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As an avid immersive theatre consumer, I really appreciate when the world of the piece is made clear from the start, and Work From Home truly excelled at this. The above excerpt is from their web site which is so well crafted into the world that it’s hard to tell whether it’s a web site for the experience or for the fictional company behind the virtual job interviews. Based on this alone, I knew exactly what I was walking into and what tone to expect. My assumptions were validated when I received my confirmation email from the company’s CEO prior to the experience which led with, “Hello, ALLIE! YOU ARE GOOD, YES?? WE HEARD YOU are LOOKING FOR JOB! WHY NOT??” I can’t quite say why, but I was already laughing.

Work From Home is an online experience in which the audience participant is scheduled to attend multiple interviews via Zoom for various work from home positions. Company CEO Dimitri Volokov started his successful business to discreetly connect employable candidates to his clients in order to fill positions in their respective companies. The experience uses Zoom to engage audience participants with Dimitri in the main conference room, and then different potential employers in separate breakout rooms. Audience participants are able to meet as many as eight or nine employers if time allows, but have the opportunity to leave the meeting whenever they have had their fill (or perhaps have secured the job they were looking for). Each employer and line of work offered is unique, but they all seem to have one thing in common…the potential illegality of their business. Although some are quite frank about their nefarious doings, others were more subtle and required some carefully pointed and leading questions from my end to get the truth about what I was truly interviewing for: positions which ranged from literally joining a cult to a combo of getaway driving and body disposal.

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The design of Work From Home is fairly simple — really just a well crafted improvisation session — but what made it shine was the strong craft and fulfillment of the world combined with the high level of commitment and the excellent improv skills of the performers. I’m not usually one to try and get performers to “break,” but the absurd nature of the interviews eventually led me to test some of the given circumstances at times and every single performer navigated the world and their characters with ease and finesse. Each time I found myself surprised and delighted when I finally found out what each job actually was, and it was really fun to banter back and forth with each performer, especially when discussing (lying about) my resume. Something I thoroughly enjoyed was how much agency the audience participant does actually have. What I said definitively changed the course of the interview and sometimes prompted the performers to go off script but all were able to maintain a sense of structure and balance the narrative with whatever offers I had made. This experience definitely requires the audience participant to take on the role of “interviewee” and also nudges participants to pitch themselves as qualified for at least some of the jobs, so familiarity with improv and being comfortable “performing” are ideal. This also makes me think that this experience would be best defined as a theatrical roleplaying game as opposed to a virtual performance.

The use of the breakout room feature on Zoom is very successful in Work From Home and is an innovative way to solve the problem of structuring different segments of virtual performance as well as how to create when actors are isolated in their homes. The only thing that could have been improved upon is the looping structure: it was a bit difficult to know when a participant would be finished with an interview and at times could be waiting in the main meeting with Dimitri as well as other waiting participants. Dimitri would use this time to discuss how your interview went and allow participants to ask questions about his company, but it felt much more unstructured when compared to the content of the solo interviews. Dimitri would also have trouble organizing flow and remembering who has seen which employer so far, but that felt kind of on brand for the character anyway. A hyper-specific critique is that I felt the structure of the interviews could have been a little more varied, most were similar in arc and progression, but it didn’t bother me enough to take away from the overall hilarity of the experience.

Work From Home is a fantastic example of a potential structure for interactive performance during a time of social isolation. I found the experience balanced the idea of performativity really well with the recognition of the current social circumstances. It’s certainly a trying time for all, and the creation of theatre and performance under these restrictions feels unprecedented, so it was inspiring to see a piece executed so well. Work From Home serves as a terrific example of how we can begin to create and consume theatrical work through a virtual platform and offers a bridge between the two distinct sides of early isolation based entertainment. It’s not a reading or performance for you to passively observe over Zoom, but it’s more than just video chatting with another person; this piece has found a way to connect with and engage the audience and maintain a sense of performativity while not physically being in the same space. I’m not sure what happens to theatre after this is all over, but I hope there will still be room for experiences like this when it is.

Work From Home has concluded.

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