Ben Beckley and Asa Wember

Photos courtesy of Ben Beckley and Asa Wember

interviewed by Reed Leventis

Reed Leventis: KlaxAlterian Sequester forces audience members to have a unique and, at times, uncomfortable awareness of their humanity, the oddities of the human body, and their perception of the world around them. What are you hoping that audiences will take away from this experience? 

Ben Beckley: We all move through the world making constant, mostly unconscious choices about how to interpret what we’re experiencing. We become so accustomed to applying these privileged perspectives - or prisms - to our ideas and sensations that most of us don’t even realize we’re doing it.

(I’m influenced here by Professor Alexander Nehamas’ terrific account of “perspectivism” in his book Nietzsche: Life as Literature.) 

I hope KlaxAlterian Sequester reminds folks of the interpretive work that goes into being alive, and makes those interpretations feel a bit less inevitable.

Asa Wember: Part of my process as a sound designer is to put cues and music etc. that are under consideration onto my phone, and then walk around and listen to them. There is something about being in motion that makes me process things differently than when I am sitting still, intently focused on what is in front of me. I am interested in placing an audience in the same circumstances, and delivering a narrative experience to people who are on their feet, moving around, and looking at their surroundings.  

RL: What adjustments did you have to make to your standard designing, writing, and acting practices to make a piece that was accessible over the internet with just a small screen and headphones?

BB: Asa and I met in 2009 through a devised theater company called The Assembly, and over the past decade we’ve helped develop six Assembly shows, each one created through a different collaborative model. So we’re used to adjusting our approach, depending on the needs of a particular project.

Formal experimentation is also a crucial part of Fresh Ground Pepper’s PlayGroup, where we developed KlaxAlterian Sequester. Our first couple of shares in 2019 paired phone-based audio and visual content - similar to what Sequester features - with a walking tour of Manhattan, while our third one combined pre-recorded and live performances with elements of consensus-based game play. We were consciously casting a wide net for inspiration -- exploring not just traditional theater, but immersive theater, A/R games and films, computer games, Escape Rooms, and meditation apps.

So when the pandemic hit, and we were forced into quarantine, we were already used to adapting our work to the needs of a particular space or audience, and we also realized -- I think it was Asa’s idea -- that we could apply a lot of what we’d developed to a solo quarantine experience.

AW: This project offered the opportunity to take the decades of experience we had making traditional theatre and apply all of our sensibilities and techniques to new, dynamic, flexible forms of storytelling. Headphones are an incredibly intimate stage for sound design. 

From the start of this project, we continually developed the show and the narrative engine at the same time, working on the Crunch and Fluff of the project in parallel. (“Crunch” and “fluff” are game design terms for an underlying structure and the narrative gloss that rides atop it, respectively). I am equally as interested in developing the techniques and format we are using as I am in this particular instantiation — the work here will provide a toolbox for future out-of-the-box experiences.

In addition, there are elements of non-linearity and randomness, both of which contribute to creating unique experiences: certain scenes may be presented in a different order depending on an environmental condition, and there are several points where there are multiple, randomly presented versions of the soundscape. My work on previous interactive shows highlighted the importance of “equivalence” in forked show progression, providing unique throughlines but ensuring that they are controllable and predictable and do not destabilize the remainder of the show.

RL: How were you mindful of audience engagement? Did you test this out on yourself? On others? How were you thinking about audience interaction? 

BB: We initially tested the show ourselves, then brought it to our fellow PlayGroup participants in Fresh Ground Pepper. The following week we sent it to a group of beta testers, and finally we released it to a general audience.

AW: This was a tricky thing to do notes on — normally as a theatremaker, I can sit in the back of the house and watch the audience watch the show, and see for myself what is working and what isn’t. During the build, I was constantly running it over and over for myself, working out kinks and smoothing timings. Then, as Ben says, we shared it with FGP, a group of people who were somewhat familiar with the work already for notes. During the beta, and still included in the final show, is a Google Form at the end with some questions — roughly 20% of our audience so far has filled out the form.

RL: You mention that the audience can put the device in their pockets - but what is happening in the video on the screen is quite exciting. Why do you want them to prioritize sound over the visual?

AW: Basically, we want to make it as safe as possible for people, to give them permission to stow their phone if it makes it easier to do the activities, walking while carrying especially. The constancy of the audio track is necessary for immersion, and does not encumber the audience member in the same way holding their phone would. This particular instruction originated when the show took place outdoors, and we were asking the audience to cross 43rd street, for example.

BB: I was also enthusiastic about having stretches of the show that de-emphasized what you see onscreen. A lot of the content we take in these days -- from streaming movies to playing games to Zooms with family or friends or colleagues -- is screen-based. It’s easy to get burned out. Asa’s an astounding sound designer, and I’m thrilled that stretches of the show highlight that aspect of his work and provide an alternative to the barrage of screen-based content we’re experiencing these days.

RL: What was your experience working with the group Fresh Ground Pepper? What motivated you to create KlaxAltarian Sequester? Did development start before or after the pandemic hit?

AW: For the past year and a half, we have been developing and workshopping both the secondary world of KlaxAlterian project and the narrative engine that powers it.

We had been working in the phone/web page format for most of that time, but until the pandemic hit, we were developing an outdoor experience, taking place over the course of a walk around several blocks of NYC. Then all of a sudden, you couldn’t go outside — so the task became to transplant our work-in-progress indoors. 

Working with Fresh Ground Pepper gave us a group of brilliant, dynamic, diverse showmakers to share the work with as it developed, and give feedback & support.   

BB: Yeah, our FGP PlayGroup included a wide array of projects -- Reverend Yolanda, Justin Taylor and Shaun Peknic were developing a radical queer church service, Ankita Raturi and Charlotte Murray a contemporary multigenerational Indian epic, Darian Dauchan a sci-fi comedy in which two actors play an enormous ensemble of clones. So there was a lot to inspire us, and a lot of smart folks to offer their perspectives on our work.

RL: How did you find the process of collaborating virtually? 

AW: Ben & I have been collaborating for more than ten years in person, so shifting to a remote-only mode was not that difficult. It helped that the developing show itself was designed to be online, so each of us could access it as needed.

RL: Is there a socio-political aspect to this story? What are you hoping audiences will come away with as they evaluate their current physical and emotional state during this pandemic?

BB: One of the show’s major themes is the inevitable idiosyncrasy of any individual perspective -- and the way it’s shaped by cultural and environmental forces. That has social and political implications. I generally take for granted my white, cis, straight, male, non-disabled perspective, until that perspective is challenged or unsettled by an interview or article, a conversation or a confrontation, or a work of art. This social myopia is particularly an issue for folks like me, because our perspectives tend to be amplified in the media, to the point where we begin to think of them as “neutral.” Privilege is like air: it’s invisible and ubiquitous. 

Folks with less social privilege tend to be more aware of perspectivism and more adept at code-switching -- they have to be -- but I don’t think any of us holds a completely “universal” perspective. It’s exhausting and probably impossible to take in the world in all its complexity all the time.

So one thing I wanted to take out of this project was a reminder that I’m always standing somewhere, and I hope that idea resonates with other folks as well. 

And while it’s true that nobody’s life remains untouched by the pandemic, it has divided us as much as it’s united us. COVID-19 disproportionately kills people with less privilege.These are the folks, in general, with less access to health care, less access to a social safety net. They’re the people who have to fear from inequities in policing and education, in courts and prisons. So if Sequester can inspire a little more awareness that our individual perspectives are limited -- especially for those of us who, like me and Asa, are cis, straight, white and male -- that’s a good thing. 

Finally, impending environmental catastrophe is implied by a couple of the characters, and the disastrous limitations of the average human perspective has clearly contributed massively to the climate crisis we find ourselves in. Many of us still think, “Environmental crisis is something that won’t happen for years and years,” or, “That’s something that can wait until the next election cycle, or the one after that.” 

I’m not sure how foregrounded these political themes are in the show, but I know they were very much on my mind as we were creating it. 

AW: They say “constraint fosters creativity,” and this show had a giant all-encompassing constraint: it has to work for everybody. We want every person who does the show to have a meaningful experience, no matter where they live, or what liquids are in their kitchen, or what they see out their window. We had to mine and refine the experience of being human and being inside a house into its most generic, non-specific essences. I think the result displays a commonality that we all share, a deep language of existence in the here and now.  

BB: There’s an apparent contradiction here -- I’m emphasizing individuality, and Asa’s emphasizing universality -- but those were both guiding principles in making Sequester. Our goal was to offer a satisfying, unified theatrical experience while also making the piece adaptable enough that very different people in very different spaces could play through it. 

We had two major influences in that regard. First, our work with The Assembly, and especially director/dramaturg Jess Chayes (my wife), who has an uncanny ability to invite audience participation or insert mid-performance actor improvisation while maintaining the structure and integrity of a piece of theater. And the second is Asa’s work with Wolf 359.

AW: In addition to The Assembly, for the past decade I have worked with a company called Wolf359 (Michael Yates Crowley and Michael Rau) in a series of steadily deconstructed theatre shows, culminating in an office simulation project called Temping for one audience member at a time. Temping had no live actors in the room; the story and characters were communicated through emails, voice recordings and printouts — it was a show that you “did,” rather than “watched.” Developing Temping imparted the lesson that audience members will have radically different instincts and reactions when given a choice, and thus the importance of very precise audience prompts.

RL: Have you had feedback from audiences that has surprised you?

AW: Had a lovely paragraph from a woman in a wheelchair who enjoyed the show, describing her methods of carrying out the activities. A dear friend of mine thought it was horror-genre and could not make it through to the end because she was scared ... 

BB: During Sequester, we ask people to walk from room to room. I had one friend who stayed where she was, in her bedroom, and just imagined she was walking around her apartment. She loved it, even though she ignored all the “rules.”

Two of our Fresh Ground Pepper collaborators are partners and they played through the show simultaneously, which worked surprisingly well. 

RL: What have you learned from this experience of creating this multimedia virtual experience? Do you think it will impact the way you work when we return to the in-person theatrical world?  

AW: This project has reinforced my faith in the power of new, unique, technologically-aided forms of narrative experience. As an American theatre designer, my instinct is to take the audience by the hand and guide them through the experience, metaphorically speaking — I want every turn to be natural and inevitable and revelatory as possible. For this show, we’re literally in the audience’s ear or palm, taking them and talking them step-by-step along the journey through Inner Space. It’s fun!

RL: What recommendations do you have for others working on collaborating and creating virtually?

BB: All theater is experimental theater, and all theater is collaborative theater. So the particular challenges of collaborating on a virtual performance are just extensions of these basic principals. Whether you’re in previews for a Broadway musical or you’re creating a devised play in an abandoned garage or you’re making a new virtual theater piece for people to experience in their bedrooms, you’re working together with a group of (hopefully) trusted collaborators and adapting your work (to some degree) to the responses of the audience. 

AW: Really, so much of our collaborative process was already virtual and online, even before the virus. For many years now I have been sharing demos over Dropbox, having creative discussions over the phone, reading rehearsal reports on my phone’s inbox. It’s hard not to be able to share a space or a beer with my partners in art, but the important thing is the communication itself.   

RL: When we return to theatre in person, will you continue working on KlaxAlterian Sequester or pieces like it?

BB: Absolutely! Though I’m also eager to incorporate live, in-person elements, when we’re able to do so. 

AW: Co-sign. We will continue to work both within the KlaxAlterian universe shown here and also with the general form of “ambulatory experiential narrative.” In fact, we’re working on something now... 

Please find KlaxAlterian Sequester here.

Image from KlaxAlterian Sequester Instagram