This November has been something else for the arts on campus. It’s like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, if the body snatchers in question were not menacing shape-changers but performers interested in experimental and immersive theater. Around 500 bodies were snatched from open-minded audience members who, over the course of two recent weekends, had not one, not two, but three works of experimental theater to choose from. The Theater and Performance Studies Department (TAPS) production of Martin Crimps’ Attempts on Her Life went up in Pigott Theater, the Freeks’ take on Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros took over the Elliott Programming Center (EPC), and At the Fountain Theatricals’ production of Violet was put in motion inside one of campus’ beloved Marguerite buses.
TAPS’ performance of the unconventional Attempts represented a departure from more typical theatrical fare on campus, transforming Pigott with 17 “scenarios for the stage.” As for the two student productions, each group’s choice of space offered unique challenges and opportunities. Violet moved through campus in a retrofitted Marguerite shuttle, offering each passenger the best seat in the house as actors danced and sang their way from one end of the bus to the other. Rhinoceros, which moved its audience through three different rooms in the EPC, attracted so many guests that for one of the acts, many of the spectators had to watch the action from the outside.
Describing the scene, Freeks founder and Rhinoceros director Laura Petree said, “No one left. That means we’re doing something right.” The audience’s split views represent only one of the risks the Freeks took in their immersive staging of Rhinoceros. Guests were invited to participate in a variety of ways – placing themselves differently within each loosely structured setting of the play, calling out answers to actors’ questions, and eating the same coffee and croissants as the actors at the play’s beginning.
The coffee and croissants were one touch among many that would have been impossible if not for the Stanford Arts Institute’s Spark! Grants, which helped fund Rhinoceros. This is the second time Spark! Grants have helped advance Freeks’ mission of providing free and independent theater for Stanford students. Last spring’s titus, which showed us the darker sides of Lake Lag and the grittier sides of Shakespeare, was a huge success, and speakers as well as motion-sensor lights that a Spark! Grant allowed the Freeks to purchase for titus came in handy for Rhinoceros, as well. Petree and Rhinoceros producer Jordan Shapiro say that the Freeks’ free shows hope to maintain a spirit of resourcefulness and bricolage even as they play with larger budgets and audiences.
The Spark! Grant, along with a ReDesigning Theater Grant, a project of the Arts Institute and the Stanford Design Program, was also essential to At the Fountain Theatricals’ moving production of Violet; the extra funding allowed the cast to hold dress rehearsals and three extra performances on moving Marguerite buses. Besides doubling the show’s audience, this ability allowed the production team to play more knowledgeably and intriguingly with notions of distance and immersion in performance. At the Fountain’s decision to stage Violet in a moving bus took as its inspiration the Cambridge-based American Repertory Theater’s constant attempts to reinvent the role of the audience. This bold, imaginative project is a remarkable kick-off for At the Fountain, which aims to enhance and increase the role of musical theater production and education on our campus. One can only hope that they, along with the Freeks and other innovative student groups, will keep on rolling.
