INTERVIEW: At ‘Utopian Hotline,’ an audience of 12 imagines a more perfect future
Photo: Theater Mitu’s Utopian Hotline stars Isis Bruno, foreground, and Monica Sanborn, background. Photo courtesy of Alex Hawthorn / Theater Mitu / Provided by Everyman Agency with permission.
Theatrical settings have changed since the onset of the pandemic. Take Theater Mitu in Brooklyn, which is currently hosting their production of Utopian Hotline to the most intimate of crowds: 12. That’s right, only a dozen people can take in any one performance, which helps keep COVID at bay and provides a much more intimate experience for this unique show.
Utopian Hotline, directed by Rubén Polendo, was developed n partnership with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI), Arizona State University’s Interplanetary Initiative and Brooklyn Independent Middle School, according to press notes. The show takes inspiration from the “Golden Record” sent by NASA in 1977 to the outer reaches of outer space. The communication device in this time capsule would hopefully be found by others in the great beyond and help them understand everything there is to know about Earth. Utopian Hotline considers what would go on that “Golden Record” if NASA (or Richard Branson) were to send another one into space in 2021.
So, how exactly does Theater Mitu pull off this concept? The dialogue spoken in Utopian Hotline is actually inspired by messages left on a real hotline that was set up for people to leave their anecdotes and thoughts; those ideas now make up the narrative structure of this unique Brooklyn show. The messages will be transmitted to audience members via four actors. There’s also a 30-foot video installation, headphones and a pink carpet.
For audiences to better understand Utopian Hotline, Polendo exchanged emails with Hollywood Soapbox. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What can audience members expect from Utopian Hotline?
We’ve created an immersive installation at MITU580, where audiences of 12 are invited to remove shoes, put on headphones, and join us on a soft pink carpet. The experience is akin to an album listening session. When I was younger, I would get together with friends and have these album listening sessions. We would gather around a record player and listen to the full two sides of whatever the newest vinyl we’d gotten. We’d sit and look at the art on the album, the lyrics — it was like a group meditation of sorts. We’ve designed a communal audio and visual experience with that in mind.
The project is the result of a two-year research process collecting answers to the questions, how do you imagine a more perfect future? And what message would you send into the future? We created a hotline and collected voicemail responses and then interjected them together with messages from astronauts, scientists, futurists and middle school students. Their responses are transmitted and musicalized by four performers. It’s a 45-minute portrait of a future filled with aspirations, dreams, worries, loneliness, love and hope.
How did this unique show first get developed? Was it a collaborative creative process?
We’ve been working on this project for over two years — our process as a company is a deeply collaborative and inclusive process. I rely on company members to bring their unique strength to every project. We collide our research with performance, technology and installation from the very beginning of our process. It orients us to further research and themes that need to be unpacked.
For this project we were fascinated by NASA’s Voyager Project and the Golden Record that they affixed to both probes and sent out to study our solar system. We partnered with SETI and ASU’s Interplanetary Initiative and were given unparalleled access to the people who created the Golden Record and continue to work on the Voyager Project. These people are all actively conceptualizing and building a better future by looking beyond Earth out into space.
In order to bring it back home, we also knew we needed to speak with the direct inheritors of the future. So, we reached out to our partners at Brooklyn Independent Middle School, who we have been working with for the last two years teaching seventh graders artmaking techniques and involved their students in conversations that added yet another layer to the piece.
Has it been challenging anticipating the possible COVID restrictions?
The short answer is yes, but the more complicated answer is that this piece has been shaped by COVID in expected and unexpected ways. The ideas of what our future will look like have been part and parcel of every conversation over the last year. As it pertains to Covid best practices and re-start strategies, we have limited our audience to 12 people and the company members to four performers. Our total capacity is 74, so this is a major adjustment for us.
We are a vaccinated and mask-wearing community, and audiences are required to provide proof of vaccination at the door. We hope to hold a space that is welcoming, meditative and open — for many folx this will be the first time returning to the theater. We hope this experience relieves any worry or stress around that. We have been thoughtful about every step of the production and have remained flexible within the changing restrictions so that we may provide our audiences a safe and socially distanced experience. In some ways, the piece speaks to these restrictions — ultimately, the work is an examination of how we connect despite overwhelming challenges and obstacles.
Do you think that COVID, in a weird way, has caused theatermakers to become even more creative?
Yes — absolutely. Theater is boundless, nimble and has always been able to meet the moment. Things have shifted culturally, socially and economically in ways we could have never imagined. One of the challenges this presents to artists is, how do we make and share work in new ways? How do we shed artistic inheritances that open this moment to its greatest creativity? How do we mourn the incredible losses of the past year, while also celebrating the astounding resilience of the human spirit? We have always been committed to disrupting tradition and innovating the processes we use in theater making — that’s at our core as a company. In many ways, confronting these challenges is a natural extension of our work as company for the last 20 years.
In your opinion, what message should we send into the future?
Over the last two years what I’ve learned from the research, and the hotline, and the making of the work is that what is most important is a plurality of messages. It’s an overwhelming question — so I would propose that the answer has to be just as overwhelming. I would send one message made up of millions and millions of messages.
How is coming into community with one another a radical action?
Because there is strength in community. We know that. We’ve known it since the most ancient of times. This is most essential in our darkest times. But there are obstacles, obstructions, challenges. These can be nothing short of overwhelming and debilitating. The past year has been a perfect storm of these challenges — many of which have exacerbated division and engendered fear. Whether as a result of the public health landscape or the socio-political climate — that fear is, at times, quite palpable. I feel strongly that despite these fears and these hesitations, we have to find ways to come into community — radical ways. Whether it be by creating group texts and jumping on group Zoom calls, or creating hotlines and gathering 12 people with masks in a warehouse in Brooklyn to re-imagine our shared future.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Utopian Hotline, directed by Rubén Polendo, continues through Sept. 26 at Theater Mitu’s MITU580 at 580 Sackett St. in Brooklyn. Click here for more information and tickets.
