On Site-Specific Theater

BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025

Let us define our terms.

Dr. Suzy Woltmann defines immersive theatre as “a performance art movement that aims to transform audience members from passive recipients to active participants.” Furthermore, she highlighted features of immersive performance which may include:

• Blurring the line between audience and performer
• Leaving the stage behind
• Including sensory experiences
• Shifting between the personal and the collective

An immersive experience can often be described as site-specific theatre, though those terms are not necessarily mutually inclusive. The folks at the Australian Performing Arts Conservatory states that site-specific theatre “breaks free from the confines of a traditional theatre where actors perform on stage. The performances take place in unexpected locations, from bustling city streets and historical sites to warehouses and parks.” Site-specific performance can:

• Create a more immersive experience
• Add a layer of authenticity and depth to the performance
• Allow creative teams to innovate and experiment with storytelling techniques

Site-specific performance is not, of course, a recent thing. By any basic definition, we may assume theater originated any place people were, and only later did everyone decide it needed to happen primarily in what we call a “theater.”

Sleep No More (2011)

But it is because of this codification of theatrical traditions that producing a play in a non-traditional space became something of a novelty. In early years of this century, for example, Charenton Theatre Co. produced a string of site-specific performances across the city of Cleveland, staging Albee’s Zoo Story on a park bench, Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology on a tour of cemeteries, and James McLure’s Lone Star in a number of local drinking establishments.

Site-specific and immersive cross over when they engage the audience in some unique, sensory way. Perhaps the most famous recent example of this was Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, which was set in a vast warehouse made to resemble a stately and crumbling hotel through which a masked audience was welcome to freely wander, handling sets and props and even on occasion, the actors – this last was not specifically encouraged, but it happened. A lot.

Inspired by this, a team of us created the Love In Pieces project in 2014, in which we produced Sarah Morton’s play of that name inside an actual house. Due to space limitations, an evening’s audience was between sixteen and twenty people, and they were split into four groups, each group of four or five experiencing one of the four, ten-minute scenes, before being escorted to the next one.

In 2023, the Give Me Your Keys company presented my play Step Nine as part of the BorderLight Fringe. Director James Rankin had asked for a play for two men to be performed in an actual bar, and I provided him one. Thirty or more crammed into the Snug at Parnell’s in Playhouse Square as two actors spoke at normal, human volume, forcing the crowd to lean in, as if eavesdropping on a private conversation.

I had not planned to apply for BorderLight myself this year, until I read the application and found this note about submitting a site-specific adaptation.

Site-specific Adaptation
Are you willing to adapt your performance to a site-specific location? For example, an alley, a hotel room, a park, a car, a loading dock, or a public street. Artists are also encouraged to suggest a site-specific adaptation/production. (emphasis mine)

Nicholas Chokan, Jason Leupold
Step Nine (2023)
BorderLight Theatre Festival

A hotel room? I have spent the past year writing a script that takes place in a hotel room! I took it as a challenge – a challenge to them. If they could really find a hotel room in which to produce my new play, then by God, I would present my play there.

And so, I am happy to announce that my new play, The Right Room, will be performed as part of the BorderLight Theater Festival 2025 this summer, and produced in a room at the Crowne Plaza Cleveland in Playhouse Square. One single hotel room will represent four different hotel rooms, in four different cities, in four different eras, to tell one very epic narrative. Epic – but intimate.

Source: 

“What Is Immersive Theatre?” by Suzy Woltmann, Backstage, May 8, 2023
“The Role of Site-Specific Theatre in Contemporary Performance Art,” Australian Performing Arts Conservatory, September 19, 2024

"Step Nine" at the BorderLight Fringe Festival (2023)

Nicholas Chokan & James Alexander Rankin
"Step Nine"
(Give me your keys, 2023)

Last year, James Rankin asked me to write a short play for his new theater project, “Give me your keys.” Specifically, he wanted a piece that could be performed in a bar by two men in their thirties, and by a bar he meant an actual bar. A site-specific piece.

The play I wrote is called Step Nine, an intensely private conversation between two old friends and artistic collaborators who share shameful and complicated secrets. I could have called it You’re So Vain, because of the several people who came to see it performed this weekend, former and present collaborators who thought this play might be about them.

The piece was performed four times this past weekend as part of the BorderLight Fringe Festival, a new and exciting eclectic festival of works produced by artists from near and far. It was a dizzying weekend, and I was delighted to see several other shows but not nearly as many as I would have liked to. And the shows I did attend, most were filled to capacity. There were so many folks downtown for this festival!

Step Nine was set in the Snug at Parnell’s Pub in Playhouse Square, which also happens to be where I celebrated my fiftieth birthday. The Snug is indeed snug, an alcove off the main room, and though the show was free you could say we “sold out” as for each thirty minute performance the place was packed.

James directed the piece, and until Thursday evening I hadn’t even seen a rehearsal. Nick Chokan played one character, the other by three other actors who cycled through the performances, including James himself, Jason Leupold and Luke Brett. They spoke at a conversational level, motivating the audience to lean in.

Folks who arrived late and couldn’t fit into the room craned their necks through the doors, some on Friday night opting to wander away to the bar and instead contribute to the cacophony which had made it hard for them to hear.

“I thought, while watching it, and for long afterwards, whether I could forgive. Whether I can. Whether I should.” - Samantha C.

Standing outside the Snug on Friday night, someone confided it felt inappropriate to bring drinks into a room for a “step nine.” That’s one of the twelve steps outlined by Alcoholics Anonymous where you apologize to those you have wronged. I understand it’s one of the most difficult steps.

Reaction to the piece was very positive. Even when I couldn’t hear the actors (after the first show I stood outside the room) I could hear the laughter. I could see what was happening. And when the performance concluded the applause was loud and generous. But folks also said it was disturbing. I think I need to accept the fact that I write disturbing plays.

 

UPDATE: BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025. Help support our production by dropping a donation on our GoFundMe campaign! 

Minnesota Fringe Festival: Twenty Years On

Next week, I will have my first script bow at the BorderLight Fringe Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. I spent the first decade of the 21st Century paying attention to the fringe movement that was taking fire across the country, never imagining we would eventually have our own right here at home.

And yet, next week my play Step Nine will go up four times in the Snug at Parnell’s Pub in Playhouse Square. Better yet, it’s free. Check it out.

Red Eye Theatre, August 2003

Twenty years ago this week, however, I was in the Twin Cities for the tenth annual Minnesota Fringe Festival. This was the first time I had personally produced a show at any festival, and my learning curve was steep. 

The show was I Hate This (a play without the baby) and the things I learned there would serve me extremely well over the next decade. At that time, I started my first blog (I Hate This Blog) to record the experience.

Some lessons were hard: primarily, to plan for success and also to set your expectations very low. The home team, wherever you are producing, will have the advantage of family, friends, colleagues and a pre-existing audience. I learned to be happy with the attention I could attract, the audience I could engage.

Our (opening night) house was very, very small. It was a difficult show for me - I have never performed it without at least a few audience members who know who I am. No one laughed much, The tiny house contributed to this, I am sure, but I just couldn't tell if it was flying.

Afterwards I just sat in the dressing room a few minutes, trying to pull it together. I mean, tonight's show was one of the hardest things I have ever done, ever. The lighting guy (for the venue) came in and told me how great the show was.

I told him how I felt about the audience not laughing ever and he said, "Oh, that's just a Minnesota thing, you don't laugh at someone else's problems.” — August 2, 2003

I also learned to see as many shows as I could. There are a number of reasons for this, not least of which to glom onto the zeitgeist, to know what’s going on, not just in the festival, but in the larger world. Getting out into the festival also gives you the opportunity to meet not only the artists but the support staff, for the venue, and the festival itself.

(My brother) had some friends over for dinner, and I found myself in the position of trying to describe the differences between the style of performance in my show and (Rik Reppe's) "Staggering Toward America." I play characters, but then so does Rik ... but he's not really acting, only, well, what are we doing when we impersonate someone else and tell something from their point of view, I mean, isn't that what acting is?

On the way home from seeing Amy Salloway in "Does This Monologue Make Me Look Fat?" I was struck by all of these deep thoughts about solo performance, and not just solo perf. but spoken word perf, and not just that, but the entire stripped-of-artifice thing — as can be illustrated by the work of the Neo-Futurists.

(We) saw three of them (Neo-Futurists) do a final dress of "Drinking & Writing" at the Bryant-Lake Bowl. They do the show in a bar, the three of them drink the entire time (well, the two guys do) and talk about drinking and its effect on writing and great American writers ... or (vice) versa.

I have been struck by a number of no-frills shows at this Fringe, shows that have a great deal of honesty and heart ... Shows that really communicate something, told by people who I am actually happy to listen to. I only hope I can count myself among those people. — August 6, 2003

Nick Koesters, Denny Hansen & Me
Volunteers for "Voice-In-Head"
Minneapolis Theater Garage, 2003

Self-promotion, while an end unto itself, is also helpful in teaching you how to think about your own work. This is from the first day:

I ran into some people outside (the venue). They asked what my show was, and I said, "I Hate This" and as they looked at my card one asked, "Oh? And what do you hate?" and I said, "oh ... uh, I, ah, my wife and I had a stillborn child, and, uh, this is about that." 

"Oh," he said, kindly.

I said, "Yeah, I really gotta work on the pitch." — August 1, 2003

Then, two days later:

I approached a number of people… One said, "I've heard good things about this," and another, "what is it about?" 

And I said, "Two years ago my wife and I had a child who was stillborn and this is about the year I spent coping with it. Now, whatever you think a show like that might be like, forget it." 

Then someone asked, "Is it a good show?" and I said, "It's a great show — your friend here already heard good things about it." — August 3, 2003

Looking forward, to the BorderLight Fringe, I hope to maintain some of the perspective that I gained from festivals I have attended in other cities. The Minnesota Fringe was, even twenty years ago, quite progressive in their implementation of social media. Facebook wouldn’t even exist for another year, Twitter even later, and yet in 2003 the MN Fringe had a message board ("Vox Fringe") for anyone to leave reviews and starred ratings.

The question then, as now, is what percentage of participants on their message boards were potential audiences, or other fringe artists.

Last night the Vox Fringe board greeted us with this cry in the wilderness: "Who Do I Have To Blow To Get A Mainstream Review?" 

Ah, yes. The question of the ages. This person went on to lament the fact that all the papers have covered the same dozen shows (this is not true) and goes along with the accusation of local critics ignoring the out-of-town acts (they haven't.) 

But there is something to be said for the media concentrating on established performers and writers and up-and-coming companies which have already made waves at previous Fringes. — August 7, 2003

Finally, during the frenzy of festival activity, it is good to reflect upon what it is you are offering, and how it fits into the larger picture of the event. The following year, when I brought my show to New York, I heard someone say, “I like my fringe funny.” Not surprisingly, they were not interested in seeing a show about stillbirth.

One of the two closing night parties was last night ... I only got to chat with a few people ... one conversation was with a Fringer artist … she was torn up about a review she received in the weekly paper, and I think I said all the right things for her to put it in perspective. I mean, the show isn't for the (local weekly paper’s) readership … 

"Your show isn't hip," I said. "My show isn't hip. You know people like your show, they've told you, and that's what matters, when you come down to it." — August 10, 2003

James Rankin & Nicholas Chokan
"Step Nine"
Give Me Your Keys, 2023

Very soon, artists will descend upon downtown Cleveland for the BorderLight Fringe. The festival is still in its infancy, and I am excited and apprehensive. Will people come? What will they say? Which shows will have what we called “buzz”, and which will not? 

You might think it would be very difficult, over the course of only three days, to generate buzz, so many of us are working ahead of time to get the word out there.

And who knows? Perhaps net weekend some young artist will be taking their first step on a lifelong journey.

I wonder how long I will be producing (“I Hate This.”) — August 8, 2003

Give Me Your Keys presents "Step Nine" by David Hansen, August 3 -5, 2023 at the Snug in Parnell's Pub in Playhouse Square as part of the BorderLight Fringe Festival. Admission is free.