“Great Gold Bird,” a theatrical manufacturing unfolding throughout a number of websites in Los Angeles, begins inside my dwelling. It begins with a thriller, introducing itself as a lacking individuals story. But it’s additionally a puzzle.
Henry, we’re instructed, has disappeared. Solely he didn’t simply immediately vanish. I’m now an lively investigator, because the protagonist has deliberately left behind a path of clues.
“Great Gold Bird” will be heavy, tugging at our hearts even because it turns into extra mystical — its themes ricocheting amongst grief, science fiction and spiritualism. Twice it introduced me to tears, its script feeling directly deeply private but common for anybody who has survived a major loss. And but it possesses an underlying narrative drive, a pull to find its secrets and techniques that transcends any sense of unhappiness.
The story is one in all magical realism centered round grief, particularly the hunt to reconnect with a misplaced liked one. Pictured within the body is the character of Jen, portrayed by Kristin Degroot.
(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Occasions)
For “Great Gold Bird” is a play, however not within the conventional sense. Consider it extra as a real-life online game, one which makes use of mild puzzles to push the story ahead to create a way of exploration. A “wanderplay,” as its designer calls it.
“Great Gold Bird” is about throughout three places, together with viewers members’ beginning place of residence. The place to go subsequent is revealed through the narrative — an tackle unlocked after perusing a web site devoted to a misplaced love, or a map uncovered in a locked chest after we uncover its mixture. This sense of play is vital, permitting “Great Gold Bird” to delve closely into the realities of dwelling with extended grief — its delusions, its isolating nature and its fantastical hopes — with out feeling overbearing. By turning the viewers into members we ourselves change into pushed by a need to succeed in a therapeutic conclusion.
It begins with a web based shrine, a fictional site the character of Henry (Josh Meyer) has created to protect the recollections of his late spouse, Jen (Kristin Degroot). From there we’re led to what we’re instructed is Henry’s camper, a fantastically cozy abode crammed with miniaturize installations and hidden nooks. We’re set free, searching for clues that can lead us to messages from Henry. The primary one is clearly seen, however quickly we’re canvassing each inch of the automobile looking for secret hideaways.
Inside a camper, members search for clues which may make them messages from Henry.
(Twin Alchemy Collective)
The motor house is parked in a safe lot in Arlington Heights. For the reason that exact tackle is revealed by advancing by the narrative — not one of the puzzles are significantly difficult, however there may be an in-story trace system, if wanted — I’m selecting to protect a few of “Great Gold Bird’s” secrets and techniques, however know that it’s a timed expertise on weekend evenings, and there shall be a number to greet you on the first location. The finale is extra of a self-guided stroll by nature, because the play will take us to a chosen space round Griffith Park the place numerous props have been staged.
“Great Gold Bird” immediately had its hooks in me, its writing echoing phrases I’ve mentioned myself when within the throes of grief. We meet Henry, who isstruggling, panicking even, as he’s realizing the recollections centered round his previous relationship are fading. “The possibility that I could lose my wife a second time — not just our future but also the slow erosion of our past — terrified me,” Henry writes in a letter to his niece, which set him off on a writing train to create a web site devoted to their time collectively.
I discovered this instantly relatable, and never solely as a result of I’ve spent many months on the same undertaking devoted to a previous relationship. However it zeroes in on a very devious means through which grief can pierce its hooks in us. Grief can change into a hazard after we begin to discover the previous extra comforting than actuality, which isn’t arduous to do when coping with the lack of somebody near us. I, too, felt terrified at forgetting any reminiscence of a previous relationship, so I spent practically two years documenting each second I might bear in mind within the guise of a fairy story. However to do that is to show grief into our character, and that’s exactly what Henry does in “Great Gold Bird.”
“Great Gold Bird,” really helpful for an intimate viewers of 1 or two folks, is flat-priced at $120 per present. It’s additionally a manufacturing that turns into extra surreal because it unwinds, although I felt its dealing with of grief was significantly grounded. That is sensible, because the undertaking, from Katie Inexperienced’s Twin Alchemy Collective, is born of each private reflection {and professional} analysis.
The camper is crammed with hidden nooks that allow members to piece collectively the narrative.
(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Occasions)
Inexperienced, in her day job, is a practising psychological well being therapist. “I am really interested, more so once I started becoming a therapist, in this intersection between immersive art and how that can be a vehicle for hopefully transformative experiences and confronting very real and personal things, like your relationship with grief or death,” Inexperienced says.
As soon as “Great Gold Bird” units up its heartbreak premise, it begins to spiral out, referring to metaphysical subjects which have us questioning our personal actuality. Henry discovers experimental meditation methods, and for a time, “Great Gold Bird” has us pondering whether or not Henry is delusional, or if he has certainly discovered a method to talk together with his misplaced love. Daydreaming, in any case, is highly effective, and as “Great Gold Bird” will get weirder — we’re quickly canvassing the trailer searching for hidden rooms, looking for VHS tapes and attempting to decipher maps of Los Angeles — “Great Gold Bird” turns into a story of magical realism.
On this sense, “Great Gold Bird” will recall one other long-running immersive Los Angeles present, the Scout Expedition-created “The Nest,” which is presently staged out of Hatch Escapes. Each Scout and Hatch helped in bringing “Great Gold Bird” to Los Angeles, as Inexperienced relies in Austin, Texas, the place she has been working numerous incarnations of “Great Gold Bird” for a couple of decade.
Like “The Nest,” “Great Gold Bird,” slated to run by December, was influenced by exploratory video video games comparable to “Gone Home,” through which gamers scour over private objects to find the story of two siblings, and the Bay Space’s alternate actuality sport (ARG) “The Jejune Institute,” which was captured in a 2012 documentary. Inexperienced, 35, says she even spent about 5 years attempting to show “Great Gold Bird” right into a online game.
“My two biggest inspirations for the first version of this back in 2013 was playing ‘Gone Home’ and the ‘The Jejune Institute,’ watching that documentary and hearing about that second hand and wondering what it would be like to create a live action environmental storytelling experience that also moved beyond one space and was a little more fluid with space and time,” Inexperienced says. “It’s like an ARG, but on rails.”
Inexperienced initially wished “Great Gold Bird” to go to a 3rd Los Angeles location, however the realities of visitors and journey time stored it confined to 2 areas exterior of our properties. The undertaking needn’t be accomplished in the identical day. Certainly, noticing it might take me an hour to get from Arlington Heights to the Los Feliz space on a Friday night, I opted to complete “Great Gold Bird” the day after I started it. That labored for me, as “Great Gold Bird” is constructed for contemplation, and I wished time to course of its dealing with of grief.
Although “Great Gold Bird” is centered on the demise of a liked one, Inexperienced says it was impressed largely by the severing of romantic relationships. “I make art to try to understand things that I don’t yet understand fully, and the grief that I felt from significant breakups is my closest approximation of that,” Inexperienced says. “I made this for other people to process their own relationship with grief, whether that was the death of a person, the death of a relationship or the death of some part of your identity.”
In the end, that’s why “Great Gold Bird” resonates. We, as viewers members-turned-actors, are on the hunt for a misplaced soul — a soul himself who has to rediscover who he’s.