The lights dim in the theater as you settle in for another performance. Only this is no ordinary performance. This is an interactive production in which you have the opportunity to become just as much a part of the stage as the actors themselves. This is "The Fever."
"The Fever" is a new performance by 600 Highwaymen, an experimental theater company from New York. The company is bringing its creativity to the stage of ASU’s Paul V. Galvin Playhouse from Oct. 27 to 30 and Nov. 2 to 5 before it will debut the finished product at The Public Theater in New York City in January 2017.
Melissa Dickman, the program coordinator with ASU’s School of Film, Dance and Theatre, said the school was looking for a partnership with 600 Highwaymen that would benefit the students along with the company.
“We have the directors of the show, a couple actors and their designers here, and they are testing out their ideas, and then our students get to be involved in that process,” she said. “Some of our students are working on the lighting or on stage managing the show, so it’s a great way for our students to get to work with professionals, and then also for those professionals to get time and space to work on a new piece of theater.”
ASU functions as a place for this work-in-progress to play out, and Dickman said the audience plays a big role in the outcome of every performance, which changes every night.
“Every day there is a rehearsal, and they may make some changes to the script and then they’ll go into the performance and try it out and see how it works,” Dickman said. “The next day they’ll come back and go, ‘OK that moment last night was great’ or, ‘That didn’t work.' When you’re doing something based on people and people’s reactions, you have to plan for a lot of contingencies.”
Dickman said "The Fever" is hard to describe but that it explores what it means to be human and acts as a new experience for all who choose to participate.
“We don’t run the fastest, we're not the strongest, but when we work together, we create amazing things,” she said. “You don’t have to be a performer, you just come in the body that you have, and that’s exactly what they need.”
600 Highwaymen is turning away from the traditional model of theater and turning instead to its audience to influence the direction of the show. Abigail Browde, one of the two directors of 600 Highwaymen, said that they are trying to reframe the experience between the actor and the spectator.
600 HIGHWAYMEN - Employee of the Year from UTRFestival on Vimeo.
“A lot of our work includes the audience in a more abstract way, and that is as literal as the lights are on over the audience or the actors are always looking in the eyes of the people who are watching them,” Browde said. “This piece seemed like an opportunity to push that even further, so if we’re making a piece about agency and participation, it seems like actually using those things as an event in the room and as a theatrical tool would help our project.”
She said that along with collaboration from the audience, this piece focuses on how people treat one another.
“It’s about violence, our capacity for violence, and simultaneously our capacity to be good-natured, supportive and to be present for one another,” Browde said. “It’s about how we can be those things in a very short amount of time, how we can be complicit in violence just by being present in the act whether or not we are actually the actor.”
This unique type of performance has also impacted students that have helped to perfect the show before its debut. Keena Huesby, a theater sophomore, said she was intrigued from the first time she went to help 600 Highwaymen.
“I had such a traditional view of theater and I had never seen this type of work that is so abstract and live,” Huesby said.
Her role was to step in as the audience, but even so, Huesby was not always told what was about to happen.
“They work on different parts every night and they have people shifting through so you don’t know everything about it,” she said. “When you do see it, it’s a new experience for you.”
She encouraged theatergoers to have an open mind about this performance.
“They should come ready to experience something they have never experienced and probably be ready to test their comfort zone,” she said.
As far as Huesby’s experience, she said the play, much like its name, is up for interpretation.
“I think it’s what you feel as you’re becoming a part of this performance," Huesby said. “You feel the fever.”
"The Fever" will run Nov. 2 to 5 from 8 to 9:30 p.m. Tickets can be reserved through Box Office.
Reach the reporter at kasando1@asu.edu or follow @karismasandoval onTwitter.
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