"With Your Name on My Lips" brings immersive theater to Norfolk
BA Ciccolella
The Virginian-Pilot: Pulse
One of the main CHARACTERS in the play is a house. Scenes occur in random order. The audience walks through the house to view the actors. Hampton Roads hasnβt seen anything like βWith Your Name Upon My Lips,β a theater piece that has its world premiere Saturday.
Audience members are cordially invited to a homecoming party for Jim, a soldier returning from the Great War. When they arrive at the party (the performance), they will be invited into the house at Hermitage Museum & Gardens. Inside, scenes will play out as they move around the rooms, loosely guided by cast and crew, who also are attending the party.
What, exactly, is going on? βIn the larger sense, the show is about reality and memory, and dreams, and what is real,β says Kat Martin, the director and writer of βWith Your Name.β Scenes donβt need to be in a particular order, and βsome are reality, some are dreams; itβs up to the audience to interpret.β Martin hopes that the audience walks away βwith a really long car conversation. I want them to have to piece things together.β
Martin has long been intrigued by the early 1920s, when soldiers tried to pick up their pre-war lives, many suffering from what was then called shell shock and is now recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder. The women who were left behind had tried to keep everything at home exactly the same, so that their men could pick up as if nothing had happened.
This story is based on a real letter written by a soldier the night before a big battle when he thought he wasnβt coming home, but he survived. βWhat the hell does that do to you?β Martin asks. The show explores what happens when you have changed significantly but your surroundings have not.
The Hermitage Museum & Gardens contacted the Virginia Stage Company about making an immersive, site-specific piece that featured its house.
βThe Hermitage wanted to show the house in a new way,β says Martin, resident theatre artist, assistant director and resident dramaturg for VSC. βNo one has experienced the house this way before. They want to show that they can be more than a museum.β The theme of being βmore thanβ fits very well with the concept of βWith Your Name.β
As Martin and Patrick Mullins, producer for the performance and associate producer for the VSC, talked about the play, they thought of an obvious choice for the collaboration: CORE Theater Ensemble, the Hampton Roads-based progressive theater company.
βCORE are incredible storytellers, and in all of their work there is a bit of an angle, something is a bit askew,β Martin says. βThey have really helped me a lot with that storytelling, with the physical. Iβm a words person, and this needs both.β She adds, βThey speak the language of experiential theater.β
COREβs players will be joined by a slightly unconventional actor, the house itself.
βThe house is basically a character. Itβs going to dictate how people behave,β Martin says.
It also has made for some nervous moments in rehearsals as they try to predict how the audience will behave in relation to the house, moving up and down the stairs and from room to room. The size of the house limits the number of people who can attend a performance to 30.
Similar projects have attracted attention in New York. βSleep No Moreβ is a take on a 1930s film-noir version of βMacbethβ staged in a warehouse set up to look like a hotel. Audience members must wear a mask and remain silent during the three-hour performance. βThen She Fellβ is Third Rail Projectsβ dance-theater presentation of Lewis Carrollβs works, taking place in The Kingsland Ward at St. Johnβs, which is an old institution. Only 15 people can attend a given performance and wander through the old hospital.
Martin pointed out some differences: βUnlike βSleep No More,β it is very much voyeuristic.β The cast will not be grabbing anyone out of the audience to dance with them, and the audience wonβt be expected to talk to the actors.
The distinct boundary between audience and cast originally came out of necessity, because the scenes happen on so many different planes of reality, but it also will be a good way for Hampton Roads theatergoers to be introduced to immersive theater.
A set of simple rules will be given to the audience to help everyone move around the space in conjunction with the performance in a safe manner.
βItβs exciting, because nothing like this has ever happened here before, and itβs another way that community arts pieces are coming together,β says Martin.
All performances are sold out, but there is a waiting list for those who still want to try to get tickets. Martin also hopes this performance opens the door to more collaborations similar to this one, and more opportunities for performances like this in the future.
Photos by David B. Hollingsworth for the Virginian-Pilot; Actors and creator/director Kathren Martin in rehearsals at the Hermitage.