It was the first performance I had ever attended where I didn’t feel welcome. As usual nowadays, I produced my I.D. and proof of vaccination. As usual, I was asked Covid questions. Cough? Fever? Etcetera?
Then it all changed.
The event was called The Tipping Point, a collaboration at 25 Carrick Avenue, a repurposed church. It was initiated by Beth Corning of Corningworks and inspired by Doctors Without Borders/Médicins Sans Frontières, which created an immersive outdoor touring exhibition, Forced From Home. https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/forced-home.
I’ve attended immersive experiences before, most notably Sleep No More, inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth, where the audience created its own story by racing up and down four floors of the pseudo McKittrick Hotel in New York City and Barcelona’s Teatro de los Sentidos (Theatre of the Senses) “El Eco de la Sombra” presented by Pittsburgh’s International Festival of Firsts where audience members were led, one by one, through an often dark labyrinth of tableaux that, yes, titillated the senses.
Local theater groups have picked up successfully on the trend, including Quantum Theater and Bricolage. But no one took the arduous path that Corning and her artistic comrades assembled.
This was immersion like no other. “Evacuees” like myself were asked their names once, then given a card with a number, actually taking away their identity and, ultimately, their power.
A series of “volunteers” guided us along the way, which began in a large room lined with a dozen television screens around the perimeter. The first, Hazel, was the only one to give her name. Even though I was writing on a notepad (and she recognized me as a writer), she still gave me an “abandoned” baby (doll) to transport to our unnamed destination. It would make the journey that much more difficult.
We quickly learned to wait. None of the volunteers would be helpful. Instead they were curt, demanding authority figures. Since we had to evacuate our homes quickly without many possessions, we were asked to choose five supplies pictured on cards. (Doctors Without Borders apparently used a similar idea in its exhibition.) One, who I knew personally, slyly duped me out of my cell phone with the promise of money at the next stop.
It didn’t happen.
I felt foolish, demeaned. Who to trust? Apparently no one, except perhaps another evacuee. But we had little opportunity to talk. Emotions began to run rampant as we performed a menial task and made snap life/death decisions about trading our newly acquired possessions. I gave up shoes for baby formula. We sat in large life boats listening to the sounds of ocean waves, although, with a larger budget, there could have been some sort of undulating motion.
No matter. Confusion took hold. Anxiety. Powerlessness, of course. Then a resigned mode of survival. Another evacuee got irritated with a volunteer. He was put in his place, kept waiting until last.
We finally got back to the large room where we had started. There we listened to authentic refugees who had stories to tell, although unfortunately some words were muffled. Nonetheless I was invested by that time and the intent was readily apparent. The screens came alive with images similar to the ones that invaded our living rooms. The volunteers started to gather and new emotions began to emerge. Sadness. Passion. Hope.
It came in surging tidal waves of movement, symbolic of the 68.5 million refugees who have traveled in every direction around the world. It came in heartfelt solos, even by Corning herself, reflecting the images and words scrolling across the screens. It also became a call to action. “Why?” became the dominant question as news banners traveled across the screens listing BLM victims, the mass shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue and more examples of the world’s current craziness.
The dance became a salve to help heal the wounds that had been opened in the journey, one that made the television images so much more impactful. Ultimately The Tipping Point took on an almost radiant beauty, a tribute to the indomitable human spirit.
Corning always had a vast dramatic vision, executed in minute details, making for a rich, thoughtful experience at all her performances. She had never worked on this scale with such a large cast, yet it resulted in a brilliant and affecting work, one that gave we evacuees a deeper, tactile understanding of the immigrants’ plight.
Some members of the audience gathered outside, quietly discussing what they had just seen. Yes, it was difficult. Yes, it was frustrating. Yet you owe it to yourself to experience The Tipping Point.
The Tipping Point is running through Jan. 30. For more info: https://corningworks.ticketspice.com/tipping
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