Indirectly, that is how a dancer and game designer from New Hampshire came to create an immersive theater show that simulated a Depression-era nightclub. In Adams’ Nutcracker-inspired 2016 production Club Drosselmeyer 1939, Tchaikovsky’s classic suite was brought into swing time and the audience was invited to dance alongside leads Clara, Drosselmeyer, and villain Rhett the Rat King. Audiences who opted to work with Herr Drosselmeyer to protect his military technology enjoyed a wild celebration to close out the evening. Audiences who favored Rhett—or worse, a leisurely night focused on floor shows and cocktails over the crisis unfolding—witnessed the murder of the show’s heroes followed by the house lights switching on while the band played The Producers’ “Springtime for Hitler.”

When Rhett’s gangsters prevailed in one performance due to the audience’s choices, the crowd was enraged. “Everybody was mad at me,” Adams recalls. “They were like ‘You wrote it!’ And I was like ‘Yeah, but you chose it.’ It was this really strange dichotomy where when you choose the bad things, the bad things happen, and I’m not going to step in as the writer god on high and save you from your bad decisions.” The message was not lost on the American Repertory Theater audience just one month after depressed turnout in key states led to a surprise Donald Trump presidency.

Jazz singer Elise Roth, who portrays Ginger in Club Drosselmeyer, Vintage Girl Studios photo

In many ways, Club Drosselmeyer is an experience to help people grapple with difficult concepts in a productive way. Adams started packaging ideas differently and interactively in Shanghai, where she began her game design career developing language-learning games to help spread Mandarin to the west. After returning to the US, she joined up with the revered location-based game company SCVNGR, where she worked with museums — many of them resistant to change — to help them introduce gaming and technology to make their programs more educational and fun. She is now the owner of of Green Door Labs, a gaming company that has created games and immersive experiences for clients like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

This year, Adams has decided to give the audience more chances at redemption. Focusing on parallels between the refugee crises of World War II and today, Club Drosselmeyer 1940 invites participants to dress to the nines, have cocktails with friends, and forge documents and twist arms to smuggle in the fleeing European masses. Whereas in last year’s production you were racing to complete projects to make show-altering decisions, this year the audience will work together, with every contribution potentially tipping the scales toward a better world.

Sultana Ismet and her Whirling Dervishes, one of the many floor shows in Club Drosselmeyer. Vintage Girl Studios photo

Adams sees the sights and sounds of the “Greatest Generation” as the perfect antidote to the despair that she sees in people, and has weaponized the “rebelliousness of joy” that comes with swing, just like her Herr Drosselmeyer weaponizes toy nutcrackers, to lift the spirits of people in dark times. “This is music you can’t listen to without moving, without being uplifted,” she says. “I think we need that right now.”

Kellian Adams–creator of Club Drosselmeyer
Boston, Massachusetts
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Top image: Dancers performing in Club Drosselmeyer. All photos by Vintage Girl Studios

The post Taking an Avant-Garde Swing at the Nutcracker appeared first on Take Magazine.

If you’re looking for classical art, this isn’t it, and that’s exactly the point. ToUch Performance Art is making the classics accessible by yanking them from the theater and throwing them down on the dance floor of a pulsing night club. It’s sexy, it’s interactive, and it’s all based on classical art. Imagine sipping a beer and shaking your booty while a *hot* aerialist twists and slides to electronic music from silks above your head, and a trifecta of go-go dancers makes symbolic love to a conductor on the other side of the room. Makes that worn, velvet-upholstered, slightly musty auditorium seating at the symphony seem a little less appealing, doesn’t it?

The two ultra talented girl-bosses behind this organized madness are Marissa Rae Roberts and Elizabeth McGuire. They’ve been dead set on revolutionizing the way you experience theater since they met while working towards their BFAs at the Boston Conservatory of Art at Berklee. Although coming from two very different worlds of performing art—Marissa from musical theater and Liz from dance and choreography—the two shared an insatiable urge for the immersive, for meshing their art forms together to create a truly dynamic, visceral outcome. “We needed to create something where we could honor the classics and also break the rules,” says Roberts, “and put it into a context that a contemporary audience would really enjoy, and be inspired to listen to an opera or watch a ballet after our show.” Six years later, ToUch is reinventing your fine art experience to be electric, interactive, booze-infused, and, frankly, way more fun.

Photo courtesy of ToUch Performance Art

ToUch’s claim to fame is their six-years-running show, AcousticaElectronica, a strobe-light-glitter-encrusted intersection of old art, contemporary vices, and timeless tropes in classical theater. The AcousticaElectronica storyline draws inspiration from a number of pieces and symbols in classical art, theater, and music, while integrating modern dance and electronic music in a club setting with a full bar. Arnold Schöenberg‘s Pierrot Lunaire, Oscar Wilde‘s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Georges Bizet‘s Carmen are just a few inspirations for Acoustica that the average classical theater and opera buff might notice. Unfamiliar with the revered work AcousticaElectronica draws upon? No problem. The delightful sensory overload of music, lights, and performers whirring around you begs you to succumb and indulge anyway. “One of our goals was to bring classical art to a group of people that wouldn’t normally experience or see it,” says Roberts. “From the beginning, we’ve had people who are fist pumping at an opera singer who have no idea what opera she’s singing, but they’re enjoying it.”

Much like a favorite bar or club, this show is deserving of more than just one go. “It’s like Cubism,” McGuire says. “In a sculpture that’s Cubist, there’s 360 degrees of something. And that’s how AcousticaElectronica is. You come once, you’re gonna see many faces of that sculpture, but you’re not gonna get it all. That’s part of the reason people love to come back and should come back.”

Photo courtesy of ToUch Performance Art

It’s not all glitter and roses for the ToUch folks, however: they’ve come up against some challenges gaining popularity. “It’s hard to own a theater company in the United States,” explains Roberts. “We don’t have the financial support from the government that a lot of other countries have, so our decision to be a for-profit arts company was a risk. I think we had to work really hard to crack the code of what would make us financially sustainable, but also allow us to create the work we want to create. Through collaboration, we solved that puzzle. What we came up with is art and immersive theater that takes place in a commercial setting, in a nightclub where people can drink. It’s not a theater setting.”

In a deliberate pursuit to reject the “starving artist” stereotype, Roberts and McGuire founded a sister company of ToUch Performance Art to supplement and support their livelihoods as creators, called ToUch Events. So far, this immersive event design company has created custom event experiences for The Trevor Project, Boston Lyric Opera, and the Breast Cancer Research Fund, among others. “We’ve been engaging in philanthropic events more and more,” says McGuire. “We did a fall fundraiser event with The Trevor Project, which is an LGBT outreach organization, and that really inspired us. So I think we’re trying to turn our focus to those philanthropic events that we believe in, and that we feel are really important.”

BLO Gala 2015: La Traviata | photo courtesy of ToUch Performance Art

ToUch Performance Art is like seeing the symphony, opera, and ballet combined, where you can bust a serious move with a glow stick hanging from your neck and a craft cocktail sloshing onto the floor from your hand. It’s classical art that stays true to its origin while going out of its way to appeal to the modern consumer. Touch them and they’ll ToUch you back.

AcousticaElectronica has returned to its favorite local haunt, Oberon of the American Repertory Theater. Upcoming show is one June 2nd. Reserve your tickets here.

ToUch Performance Art – theater company
Boston, Massachusetts
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Top photo courtesy of ToUch Performance Art

The post Fist Pumping at an Opera Singer appeared first on Take Magazine.