INTERVIEW: This ‘Haus of Haunts’ is inspired by Emily Dickinson
Photo: UNBOUND: A Haus of Haunts interprets the haunting poems of Emily Dickinson. Photo courtesy of Alex Pepper, Peppermatic Pictures / Provided by Everyman Agency with permission.
The work of poet Emily Dickinson has influenced a new off-Broadway dance experience that’s all about immersion. UNBOUND: A Haus of Haunts continues through Oct. 28 at the Jefferson Market Library in New York City. The dance show, which plays for free on Friday nights, pulls from Dickinson’s poetry to create a series of scenes that play out on three floors of theatrical space in the library.
As audience members travel throughout the library they will encounter unique scenes and some that interwoven with others. Press notes promise an exploration of a demon’s catacombs, an encounter with a witch’s coven and a party at a vampire banquet, meaning UNBOUND is well suited for the Halloween season.
Kristen Brooks Sandler serves as both director and choreographer of UNBOUND, which is co-presented by Thistle and the New York Public Library. Her biography states that she believes movement is the universal language that bridges the gap between the audience and the artist, and she explores this concept as founder and artistic director of Thistle. Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with the director about the new immersive experience. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
Where did the idea for UNBOUND come from?
Given that we were doing the show in partnership with the incredible Jefferson Market branch of the New York Public Library, we wanted to create an experience that celebrated and combined the energies of everyone involved. There’s so much common ground between the kind of storytelling that Thistle does and the artistic engagement that Jefferson Market has fostered in the Village. When we met with Frank, our collaborator at NYPL, he confided in us that he had always wanted to do a haunted house event at the library. We loved the idea of characters from the shelves coming to life, and UNBOUND was born.
For this year’s staging, we landed on exploring some of the darker works of Emily Dickinson in a series of interwoven stories on the different floors of the space. When researching for the show, we learned that Dickinson actually hand-bound some of her work by poking holes along the edges and sewing them together. For us, it became a touchstone: physically sewing storylines together.
What Emily Dickinson stories are you pulling from?
Emily Dickinson has an incredible body of work to draw from! She wrote 1,800 poems, many of them challenging the definitions of poetry at her time by crafting a new type of persona for the first person and created a distinctively elliptical language.
While a large portion of her better known work is lighter (about nature and simple joys), we focused on the darker, more temporal parts of the cannon. We originally started with one poem per floor – “Hope is a thing with feathers” for the basement, “The Heart Asks Pleasure First” for the Vampires, “My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close” for the Witches. As we built the piece alongside Dickinson’s work, the collection expanded. We ended up assigning a poem to every scene and every character.
We found her work really aligns with our mission of challenging the codified perception of history and lore, and the below poem became our anthem:
Tell all the truth but tell it slant — Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind —
You can see some of the poems that inspired us in our digital program.
How do audience members experience the piece? What does a performance look like?
The show is open world, meaning once you walk in the library, you can go anywhere, at any time. There are multiple floors to explore and lots of haunts to meet. We encourage audience members to follow their curiosities and wander where they wish, when they wish.
There is a full show on every floor, as well as characters who travel in between floors and have their own storyline. Every member of the cast is a main character, and if our audience chooses to focus and follow one dancer, they will experience something totally different than if they were to follow another.
Interacting with UNBOUND is very similar to reading poetry; taking time to explore, digest, and revisit only enriches your experience. We use movement as our primary language because we believe it allows for more freedom of experience for the audience. For UNBOUND, there’s more story than you can fit into one visit, so we encourage audiences to see all three shows in an evening (totaling a two-hour experience) or come back another day.
Does having an immersive experience present many challenges? Risks? Opportunities?
Making immersive work is an intimate act of trust between the creation and the audience.
Immersive experiences are challenging for the same reason they are exciting — each audience member controls their experience of the art. When I make a film, I choose where the audience looks through the lens. When I make a stage production, I use lighting to usher the eye to what I want it to look at. When we make and perform immersive work, the audience can engage in whatever manner and timing suits them. So as a creator, I have two main goals. The first is building work that supports consistency and sustainability for the dancers. The second is having that same work allow for audience connection, to create space for people to engage from their individual perspectives. There are no “wrong answers” or “wrong interpretations” of what you see — whatever you get out of is undeniably correct.
How does the show fit nicely with the Halloween season?
We at Thistle are experts in conjuring grace from the grotesque. UNBOUND is no exception. This show is Halloween incarnate! Our haus of haunts is spooky, not scary. It’s enticing and invites our audiences to walk towards the dark corners. You can explore the catacombs of a daemon, have an encounter with a witch’s coven, or party at the vampire banquet as the story unfolds.
Thistle challenges our “codified perception of history and lore.” Could you further explain?
At Thistle, we like to say, we tell stories you know, but have never heard before.
Now, more than ever before, our audiences and communities are calling out for stories that reflect the nuance and complexities in the world around us. The canon is being re-evaluated for biases, and as we re-examine our facts, we should re-explore our fiction. Thistle engages traditionally overlooked lenses in our storytelling, embracing the idea that history is told by unreliable narrators, and seeking to correct that imbalance. Our work elevates characters over caricatures and explores the myriad of circumstances that lead to a moment of choice. Everyone is the hero of their own story, after all.
When creating, we try to treat the widely known version of the story as the “PR version,” considering what the audience often feels are basic plot points as vantage points instead. For example, in our immersive work Sinderella, we explore the dynamic of the step-household. The stepmother, whom the tale has deemed so evil that it affects our bias about stepmothers in reality, is realistically a twice-widowed, single mother in an earlier century attempting to run a household and grapple with three young girls. Most people in that situation would have moments of what may seem “evil” when taken out of context, but that doesn’t mean that they are bad people.
It is Thistle’s desire that asking our audiences to question the strong perspectives they have on lore will lead them to open their minds to multiple vantage points in everyday life.
— John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
UNBOUND: A Haus of Haunts, co-presented by Thistle and the New York Public Library, continues through Oct. 28 at the Jefferson Market Library in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
