Recently, FA’s head of the Department of Arts, Andrew Geha, announced Wake, the fall season’s immersive theater production. He described the production as “interesting,” and “an ambitious move from what we had years before.” 

As our Friends Academy theater program has continued to invest and experiment with the idea of immersive theater, we are starting to take bigger and bolder steps. According to Mr. Geha, in the last two years of immersive theater, the theater program brought “creativity and ownership” to the world that inspired many. Within the coming years, he hopes to “go bigger and more ambitious” with every upcoming immersive theater production. This year, the number of the audience permitted to watch the show will still be a small group of people, but compared to last year’s eight to twelve people, it has increased to twenty or thirty. The whole show is interactive and you will be able to directly interact with the characters. The audience would not just be sitting there watching, but they would also be, or feel like they are, a part of the show. 

For this upcoming production, the story was not completely scripted, all that is set in stone is that a group of performers have come to a wake to honor a person that mattered to them in a significant way. What follows are various events depicting what we lose and gain during major life changes. There are 12 characters in the show and a few unseen ones. The actors are adapting to the audience and creating a story that feeds off of the energy the audience brings.

Throughout the production, there appear to be different forms of talent that will be performed, shaping a performance of immersive theater.  Of course, there will be some card and coin tricks as mentioned. There will also be other things, as Mr. Geha describes: “There’s origami and tea reading, stunts, choreography, piano playing – a lot.” Each character will be presenting something different and each presentation will be an interactive experience with the audience. 

This idea of a shared world becoming a general theme within the production gives us a better understanding of what may happen. Still, not knowing much about the upcoming production, we are urged to find out more.