INTERVIEW: Enter the immersive revolution at ‘The Death of Rasputin’
Photo: The Death of Rasputin features Adam Griffith as the character of Felix. Photo courtesy of Artemis Is Burning / Provided by Print Shop PR with permission.
Immersive theater has forever changed the artistic landscape in New York City and around the world. The now-shuttered Sleep No More, which was a unique adaptation of Macbeth, has proved to be a great influence on actors and theatermakers, and now, as one generation passes the torch to the next, audiences are seeing how that seminal show, plus others around town, are inspiring more and more productions.
In a few words, immersive theater allows audience members to be fully enveloped by the artistry of a show; it’s more of an experience than a play or musical. Typically patrons walk around a created environment and interact with performers in a variety of settings.
The newest neighbor on the immersive block is The Death of Rasputin, which is currently enjoying an extended run at Lower Manhattan Cultural Center’s Arts Center on Governors Island, at the southern tip of Manhattan. This island setting is a perfect environment for the show because audiences need to take a ferry boat to arrive at the theatrical space, traveling away from the world they know and off to a land of mystery.
The Death of Rasputin comes to New York City courtesy of Artemis Is Burning, a women-led theater company that is impacting the immersive theater space. Ashley Brett Chipman serves as creator and co-director of the show. Hope Youngblood is creative producer and co-director. Julia Sharpe is co-writer and assistant artistic director, while Kelly Bartnik is the producer. Finally, Allison Camali is production manager. Together they have created a world, based on historical events, set in Petrograd, Russia, circa 1916. Press notes indicate this is a time period when war, scandal and the occult collide, and the Romanov family’s hold on power is starting to be dismantled.
Adam Griffith is an actor who portrays the character of Felix in the show.
“It’s been great,” Griffith said in a recent phone interview. “It’s amazing to be working on this thing so hard for a number of months now. And we’re devising it, we’re really creating it from the ground up. … The response has been great. People are having a blast. It’s a lot of fun. I’ve worked with some of these people for 10 years, so it’s nice to come back and have a bunch of fun with people you trust and you have this shorthand with. I’m just excited every day to go in. Each day is new. It’s sort of how immersive works. It’s not the same thing every day. Yeah, so much fun.”
Griffith didn’t want to divulge all of the secrets of The Death of Rasputin, but he did allow Hollywood Soapbox a chance to look behind the curtain. The actor said each audience member will have a unique experience, depending on which characters they decide to follow during the evening performance, which runs approximately 75 minutes in length. Also, it’s encouraged that audiences wear black and stray from bright colors.
“We have about 10 characters, and depending on who you choose, you’ll have a completely different emotional experience,” he said. “You may have one that is more of a dance-heavy track, a lot of movement and an emotional experience that way. You might follow someone who is really funny, who is asking you a lot of questions and requires a lot of response and interaction with you. Someone might give you a task to do, like a test, and then maybe there’s a reward in your future. … This one, more than others I’ve seen, has quite a lot of options. It’s fun to be able to include all of that in one project.”
Griffith talked about how the company of The Death of Rasputin feels like a family, and that’s mostly because they’ve worked together in the past, including at Sleep No More. That’s where some of them learned the immersive trade, and now they are branching out and trying things in their own fashion.
“If anything, it seems to be the kind of theater that we gravitate toward; it’s in our wheelhouse,” Griffith said. “I think it’s definitely more challenging, but that’s something that we enjoy, keeping the variables high and changing from performance to performance. With a proscenium, that has its own challenges of making sure you hit your mark, making sure everything is correct and checking those boxes. You do it time and time again. The boxes on immersive theater are a little bit different. We latch on to a skeletal structure but are open to those variables because you can’t control everything. You can’t control where an audience member is going to be, or even where your duet might happen, or where your scene might happen or the response, all that kind of stuff. We’re building a complete 360, so you’ve got to think in that space, not just a two-dimensional proscenium image. So it is challenging, but I think that’s part of the fun and part of why we’re all so attracted to it.”
The actor said that his character of Alex is actually based on a real person, and he conducted some research to better understand what made him tick. As the title of the show indicates, there’s a mystery surrounding the death of the world-famous Rasputin, so one can expect Alex to have a few ideas on the subject.
“He’s part of the richest family in Russia at the time,” he said of his character. “He was one of the sole survivors of all the violence and mass executions and the takeover of the Romanovs and the family, the royals and all that kind of stuff.”
Griffith added: “He was a party boy. He liked to indulge in all of life’s offerings and go to the night clubs and wear dresses and sleep with who he wanted to, a hedonist through and through, so we’ve taken him and made him a version of that in our production, a little more modernized and very fun and very dynamic. In making these roles, I think we have each made them to our strengths and what we’ve wanted them to be, so it has been fun and rewarding to do that for myself. I do a little bit of music, a little bit of dancing, a little bit of singing, acting, all kinds of costumes and this and that. It’s been a blast, super fun.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbxo.com
The Death of Rasputin, featuring Adam Griffith, continues at LMCC’s Arts Center at Governors Island. Tickets include a ferry ride to/from the island. Click here for more information and tickets.
