By Daniela Coe McNamara
Staff Writer
For two nights and two nights only, visitors lucky enough to get tickets to Arya Davachi’s immersive theater experience, Rough Sleeper, explored the subconscious through performances and interactive installations at Think Tank Gallery in the Los Angeles Fashion District on March 3rd and 4th.
Because of its intense psychological exploration, aesthetically pleasing visuals within each dream room, and audience participation, Rough Sleeper proved to be a truly incredible experience. The only downside to Davachi’s Rough Sleeper was the limited number of tickets available for purchase.
Tickets for the event were sold online through Eventbrite, at $25 for each timed ticket, which would give the holder access to a 45-minute time slot as well as a free drink at the end in the Cirque du Soleil Zumanity lounge. While the gallery space was small and the event was poorly advertised, tickets sold out quickly for all of the show’s time slots both nights.
Rough Sleeper is an immersive theater experience that takes on the task of analyzing the dreams of one very troubled young man. Before entering the gallery, ticketholders were asked a series of five questions regarding their dreams and memories. The entire group was then brought upstairs where a female “doctor” gave an introduction regarding the “subject” of the study, whose dreams were showcased in each room of the gallery before being analyzed by the “doctor” and the audience at the end of the performance.
Each room within the gallery was a different dream, drawing the audience in through the use of different lighting, settings, and characters that represented the people in the “subject’s” life. The total immersion into the subject’s dreams, where the actors would even grab audience members by the hand to draw them closer, allowed for visitors to entirely lose themselves in the psychological idea of entering another person’s dreams.
This immersion into the psychological experience was intensified by the different rooms throughout the gallery, and the feel that each room gave off. Each room told a different story, whether it be about a young girl having a breakdown in the mirrored room, or the dead girlfriend haunting the subject’s dreams with visions of water and fire.
By immediately introducing the audience to the doctor during the introduction, Davachi created a setting that included the audience in the performance, instead of detaching them from it. This allowed for each visitor to find their own path in the dream rooms, instead of a following a scripted performance. This is because they felt like they were discovering things about their own psyche while delving into the dreams of another person.
After visitors were allowed to wander the three rooms of dreams for a while, the audience was seated before the “doctor” and the “subject” and then witnessed an incredibly strange dialogue between the two, regarding consumerism, satisfaction, and demoralization, the subjects of the art installation. The dialogue revealed important details regarding the subject’s dreams, and the audience was allowed to ask the subject all questions except for what the “bad thing” he did was, which then left a dissatisfied feeling because of the incomplete storyline.
Another downside of the event was the brevity of the performance, as many visitors who were impressed by the event wanted to return or to tell their friends to see it but could not, because the two-day-only performance sold out so quickly. By having the performance available for only two days and in a small gallery space, Arya Davachi was able to keep the setting intimate, but sadly limited the number of visitors able to experience this psychological exploration through art.
The in-depth immersion of the multiple dream rooms allowed the lucky audiences of the two nights to dive deep into the psychology of dreaming, aided by the inspiring acting and brevity of the experience. These elements assisted Rough Sleeper in becoming a successful theater installation.
Rough Sleeper was a timed and ticketed event for two nights only, March 3rd and 4th, at Think Tank Gallery in the Los Angeles Fashion District.
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