Step inside a 19th-century New York marketplace on the last night of Hanukkah for the new play “The Golem: Storms of the South.” A Frankenstein-like creature, the golem comes to battle the tormenting ghosts that have wreaked havoc on this Jewish community. But will the golem help the villagers or create more chaos?
The interactive play was created by Louis Kyper and the Immersive Theater Ensemble, and it will be performed on Thursday, Dec. 22, at the Distillery of Modern Art. Louis Kyper joined “City Lights” to share more about his ensemble’s new production.
Interview highlights follow below.
On the unique form of acting demanded in immersive works:
“I realized that there was a new form of acting that was slowly developing – immersive theater acting,” said Kyper. “It combines so many different elements of acting techniques that exist in separate arenas, like improvisation is a huge part of immersive theater acting. Also, method acting is such that if you are in a space, a room; for example, if you’re an Elf in Santa’s workshop, and you are there, and audience members are walking around, you have got to be that elf a hundred percent of the time. No dropping character, and always, always, always on. That’s the number one rule of immersive, is (that) you never break character.”
“That, mixed with improvisation, mixed with theater acting, knowing where your other actors are, knowing where you are in the story of the immersive experience and knowing what part you have to play in it; all of those things combined, I thought, ‘God, we’ve got a thing here, which is a new form, immersive theater acting.’ So I’ve started the Immersive Theater Ensemble here, and I’ve been running workshops for quite a few months, and I have cast this show, ‘The Golem: Storms of the South’ from the Immersive Theater Ensemble, and we’ve already done one show for the Atlanta Comedy Awards, which was held at Ponce City Market. I’m really, really excited because everybody that comes can see how it’s a different form, and how the current existing forms of acting all combine into this format.”
The connection between Hanukkah and the mythic golem:
“The source material that we’re using, called ‘The Return of the Golem: A Hanukkah Story,’ has a golem. So the story is that there’s people in the marketplace and… they go home, and then a terror attacks the marketplace and destroys the Torah,” Kyper recounted. “Then, two children see that, and they go and fetch the Rabbi. And the Rabbi is a Kabbalistic Rabbi, and summons up a golem to get rid of the terrorizing element that’s descended upon their village… But then, as the golem gets rid of them, he… starts to go berserk and creates more havoc.”
“So then the Rabbi has to remove the spell from the golem’s head, and then the golem disappears, and they can carry on with Hanukkah. See, I wanted to tie in that element with our story of Russian immigrant Jews who have come over at the end of the 19th century, fleeing pogroms from Russia – they’re called the ‘Storms of the South,’ which were basically ten years of persecution of the Jews in the Pale of Settlement, which is now the Ukraine. And they fled from that… seeking a place in which they could practice their religion freely, in a country that celebrated religious freedom – that’s what the people in our show are celebrating.”
How the immersive theater piece draws an audience into its world:
“The audience are no longer just bystanders of theatrical experience. They’re participants, and sometimes they even co-conspire in the story,” said Kyper. “The audience experiences immersive theater through all of their senses; not through their proximity to the action, through engaging with actors and actors engaging with them.”
He continued, “It’s not formulaic. It’s something that you can’t sit down and chew popcorn to and tune out. It’s visceral. It gets in and around you. You’re not a casual spectator. It’s challenging, and that is what I love about immersive theater. Often… people think of it as like a gimmick… but immersive theater can do so much more than that. It can thrust you into a world that you have no choice but to engage with. And in our show, they’re thrust into a 19th-century marketplace where they are going to be coerced into the market stores, to explore the market stores, and most importantly, hear the stories, the real-life stories of Russian immigrant Jews.”
“The Golem: Storms of the South” will be performed Dec. 22 at the Distillery of Modern Art. Tickets and more information are available at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-golem-storms-of-the-south-tickets-467168622927
