Immersive production of Inside the Wild Heart has been reimagined for online livestreaming (photo by Erika Morilla)
INSIDE THE WILD HEART
Thursday – Sunday through December 20, $20-$50 (based on what you can afford)
Encore run: Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, February 12 – March 28, $15-$50
www.group.br.com
I’m an immersive theater junkie. Put on a show in an abandoned hotel or warehouse, in an empty church or a cemetery, or behind the scenes at an arts venue and I will be first in line. There’s just something about wandering among storylines and characters on your own path and schedule, even when knowing you’re likely not to see everything or understand completely what’s happening and I’m there, from Sleep No More, Then She Fell, and Ghost Light to The Grand Paradise, Empire Travel Agency, and Counting Sheep.
I don’t know how I missed Group.BR’s Inside the Wild Heart, which was first presented in a Williamsburg gallery in 2016, then two years later at Aich Studios, an 1848 brownstone and former foundry in the Gramercy Park area. The New York-based Brazilian company filmed one of the 2018 shows, enlisting nine friends with cameras to place themselves throughout the three floors and a mezzanine and take continuous video without getting in the way of the audience, which is allowed to walk, stand, and sit wherever they want as they chase the action over two hours. Artistic director Andressa Furletti didn’t know what she would do with the footage until the pandemic hit and she discovered the Gather.town digital platform, which she immediately realized would supply her with just what was needed in order to virtually reimagine the show, which is based on the writings of prominent Jewish author Clarice Lispector. Thus, it turns out that I didn’t miss the show after all; via the innovative platform, I was able to amble, observe, follow, and interact not only with the recorded footage but with other live audience members as well.
Group.BR uses the Gather.town digital platform to bring the interactive Inside the Wild Heart to the internet
Inside the Wild Heart features characters, dialogue, and plots from nine novels and eight short stories by the Ukraine-born Brazilian Lispector (1920-77), who wrote such books as Near to the Wild Heart, The Passion According to G.H., The Stream of Life, and The Woman Who Killed the Fish. Each audience member is assigned a video-game-like avatar that they guide with their keyboard across an animated architectural rendering with couches, chairs, a fireplace, a bathroom, screening areas, and a bar where they can take a break and speak with others. Everyone is encouraged to keep their cameras on but their microphones muted except when they’re in the bar; whenever you’re in a room, you can not only see the other avatars who are there as well but you can see their names and photos at the top of the screen. There’s also a live chat where you can connect with one another, but the night I went, nearly all the other comments were in Portuguese.
Don’t be in a hurry to try to see everything quickly; you have time to take it slow and linger in a room for fifteen minutes or more as the semblance of a story takes shape, a nonlinear narrative told through video, still photographs, dance, music, prerecorded film, and various surprises. You might encounter a woman in a claw-foot tub, people preparing for a wedding, a lady with a whip, and a ghostlike figure climbing stairs, with talk of love, murder, motherhood, the Society of Shadows, the Tree of Secret Desires, and the existence of God. Make sure to find the rare television interview with Lispector, who shares such thoughts as “Adults are sad and solitary” and “I think that when I’m not writing I’m dead.” Other Lispector quotes pop up here and there, including “Getting lost is also a way,” “What I desire doesn’t have a name yet,” and “If you were you, how would you be and what would you do?”
The show is directed by Linda Wise and performed by Balardini, Furletti, Mirko Faienza, Patricia Faolli, Fabiana Mattedi, Gio Mielle, Gonçalo Ruivo, Yasmin Santana, Ibsen Santos, and Montserrat Vargas, with scenic design and art installations by Vargas and Furletti, costumes by Jussara Lee, lighting by Charlie Jarboe, score by Sergio Krakowski (with Mario Forte on violin), and video design by Paul Leopold. Together they have managed to ably re-create the immersive theater experience online, resulting in a fab interactive presentation that is a lot of fun while introducing you to quite an eclectic writer.
Inside the Wild Heart runs Thursday to Sunday through December 20; on December 10, Group.BR will celebrate the centennial of Lispector’s birth with “Clarice’s Day,” a free sixteen-hour party on Zoom, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube that includes “The Morning Is a Premature Flower” with Balardini (5:00 am), videos of scenes from the books Besieged City and A Breath of Life as performed in Inside the Wild Heart (10:00), such readings and/or discussions as “Clarice in English” (10:20), “Clarice and Visual Arts” (11:00), “Clarice in Life and Works” (12:30), and “Clarice and Theater” (5:00), a musical performance of Sara Carvalhos’s “Perto do Coração Selvagem” by Késia Decoté on the toy piano (2:30), short films (3:00), and a special 7:00 screening of the full play, followed by a talkback. [Ed. note: Inside the Wild Heart is back for a much-deserved encore run, February 12 – March 28.]