Does Theater Need a Stage? A Look at Site-Specific Theater
Niki Hatzidis
A play is just a story and the actors are just the ones telling it. Does it matter if the story is being told in a theater that holds five hundred people, with proscenium seating, expensive lighting, and design? Does a play, simply, just someone to be watching and listening? More and more the indie theater world is pushing the notion and the boundaries of where a story can be told. I have seen shows in a swimming pool, in a men’s bathroom, even under a railway station. The stories being told were dependent on the atmosphere of the setting. They, as much of the text, as the actor speaking that text, needed their set the most. If a play outstretched past the stage itself, does it make the storytelling that much richer? Isn’t this what we strive for as creators? A closer experience to the story for our audiences.
Site-specific theater is not a new concept, but it’s ‘newer’ for some audiences in America. Yes, we have Punchdrunk and other companies performing in this style but it’s the younger audiences that are more open-minded about the format. In the UK, immersive and site-specific theater is as ubiquitous as more traditional theatrical performances. Much like the fringe circuit, these performances exemplify the concept that a performance only needs an engaging story. The fancy bells and whistles, the expensive scenery and costumes aren’t necessarily needed to make a great play or performance. It always must be about the commitment to the story.
I have seen more and more of this commitment in the indie theater scene coming to New York; this idea that a play should be explored, and the audience has a more close up vantage point. It’s more intimate and more about the overall experience than just taking your seat and observing, and to be honest, it’s some of the more memorable performances I have seen. I went to see An Apology for the Course of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on this His Final Evening by Mickle Maher, directed by Robert Malbrough taking place in various venues in New York; including a crypt and an industrial loft.
The title doesn’t leave you wondering much about what the play is about. Doctor Faustus returns from the future, it is his final night on earth and he wants to apologize.
All who are present are the audience and Mephistopheles, silent and sitting on a cooler. Malbrough first became enthralled with Maher’s work when he lived in Houston after seeing a production of his play, The Hunchback Variations produced by The Catastrophic Theatre. “It completely floored me., Malbrough told me, “I’d never seen anything like it. So I immediately went online and bought as many of his plays as I could and devoured them.” So much so that he even got in touch with Mickle Maher and began an email dialogue with him after his music Small Ball premiered. “We talked about that show, and a little about his process in writing his more esoteric plays,” Malbrough said, ”but never about this one.” Malbrough said about An Apology, “this is actually one of his most straight-forward plays. He wrote it in the mid-late ’90s for his company in Chicago.”
I saw the play on Halloween when it was being performed in the industrial loft venue. Whether it was the eeriness of the date it was, the unusual windy weather, or the fact that we had to climb up four flights on a dark and grim staircase, there was something definitely foreboding in the air. It ended up being the perfect build-up to seeing the play. “You could definitely read some of the text as being the result of those end-of-the millennium fears we had bubbling around,” Malbrough said, “but with Mickle’s work I think trying to root around like that does it a disservice. I’m much more interested in dealing with the feelings that arise from his words on their own terms and not trying to neatly pin them down, so we never discussed where the play came from.”
The audience has climbed up four flights, we stand in the stairwell at a closed metal door, wind howling just behind the wall near us. There are only a few of us, in these types of performances, the space and storytelling only allow for very small and intimate auditors. We chat amongst ourselves, strangers ready to step into the unknown, some of us are in our Halloween costumes. We are then instructed that one of us, coincidently me, have to knock on the door twice in order for the evening to begin. I knock twice on the heavy door and after a silent moment, Dr. Faustus (played by Geoffrey Hellauer Geiger) opens the door and beckons us in.
The loft is long and deep. There are about twelve chairs of different design, set up opposite each other towards the entrance of the room, and we are instructed to make ourselves at home. There are a couple of lamps for lighting, and towards the far end of the room, there are flickering candles, leading to a mysterious figure, Mephistopheles (Played by Rachel Weekley) backlit by an ominous red light. We settle in, and then the doctor begins his direct address.
“Part of it is that the material I gravitate toward tends to lend itself better to alternative performance spaces than theatres” Malbrough told me when I asked him why he decided to stage the play in this way. He shared my sentiment of traditional theater performances. “I’m incredibly tired of “American” theatre,” Malbrough said, “for decades we’ve been walking into the same kind of room and watching people sit around on furniture for 90 minutes. And we’re told that this is what theatre is “supposed to be.” And I have no interest in contributing to that kind of stagnancy.” And when it came the An Apology, Malbrough said, “I never considered doing it any other way. I think plopping it down in a theatre with the action framed neatly inside a proscenium would be a disservice to the material.”
The play is essentially a monologue. Faustus is apologizing to us, breaking only to rave furiously at Mephistopheles, who, like us, has no response. Like Malbrough, I can’t see this done effectively in a room full of upwards of two hundred people. We would lose every nuance, every twitch of a facial muscle. The twelve of us there watching made it feel like we were sharing a secret. Malbrough explained further, “the conversation with the audience is part of what makes this iteration of Faustus’ character seem real. He’s completely removed from the tradition of the powerful old sorcerer with his grand gestures and Shakespearean pontifications.” The performance did seem very raw and stripped down. The scarcity of the space allowed us to simply just focus and listen to the words. “He’s just some normal guy who had these crazy experiences,” Malbrough told me, “and like any normal person, he’s hit an impasse in a relationship and he just wants to vent at someone else. There’s something profoundly human about that kind of need, and I think exploring this character’s humanity is a big part of what this play is trying to achieve.”
At its core, the story plays around with the concept of relationship, and with site-specific theater, that must extend to the relationship between performer and observer. “If the play’s ultimate intention is to explore sorrow and the subjective meaning of relationships, there’s no better time to look at than the last hour of his life,” Malbrough said, “we see who people really are when they’re up against a wall like that.” And the players agreed. Geiger who played Faustus said, “I think what resonated with me most was how human both the characters are. I think the characters love each other. The stakes are so high and their existence so interconnected.” Weekley who played Mephistopheles said of the two characters, “they both need each other in a way and are both deeply resistant to that knowledge; a fundamental understanding of each other, neither expected or can particularly handle.”
As for the audience, Malbrough said, “I want to make them feel something strong and have them walk away feeling a little bit different than when they walked in.” Malbrough says that what he loves most about Mickle’s work is that you “don’t necessarily know what it meant but I do know what it felt like.” Weekley said it best about what makes these characters and the story resonate with the audience when they said the following: “This play very much explores this theme, playing in the sense of absurdity that humans are able to grasp these grand sweeping concepts about our universe and our existence, but even when given access to the all the knowledge possible, we still at our core, just want to have food, and be with our friends. We want to be loved, we want to feel worthwhile to somebody. And that is in an of itself absurd and tragic and beautiful.”
Faustus carries on, unloading all his woes and frustrations on us. He even offers us to share a beer and some potato chips with him. We laugh with him and sense deeply his profound vulnerably and honesty he is sharing with us. It is this up close, direct conversation, unencumbered by a stage threshold, that makes it seem more alive and transfixing. At one point, Faustus readies himself to leave the room, presumably to end his own life. He offers one more sincere apology and then steps out the door. We as the audience can stop him if we wish, but we don’t. We abide by the rules of theater that we are observers. We are left in stillness and silence with Mephistopheles for a long moment before needing to be told that the story is over. It is profoundly different than traditional performance. We have experienced the story differently, more personally, and that is the entire point.
Niki Hatzidis is an actor and award-nominated playwright based in NYC.