Block Association Project: the play that starts online
As part of our #BeyondTheStage programming of Michael Yates Crowley and Wolf359's "Block Association Project," we sat down with the team to discuss how they created an immersive experience that starts the moment patrons buy a ticket.
Step 1: the software defines and creates the email address for each character in the show.
What is Wolf 359?
Wolf 359 is a New York City-based company of narrative technologists that worked collaboratively to create tonight’s show under the auspices of The Playwrights Realm. Besides Michael Yates Crowley and Michael Rau, its founding members, the Wolf 359 team includes Chas Carey, Sara Walsh, and Asa Wember. Since the company’s founding in 2007, Wolf 359 work has been shown in Berlin, Dublin, Edinburgh, Chicago, and many other cities and city-states.
Step 2: this script tells the software when to send each message – getting the order right is crucial to the story!
How did Block Association Project come to life?
Even before the story was written, the team knew that they wanted the audience to be involved in the narrative from the moment they reserved their seats. Texts, e-mails, social media posts – patrons should go through an experience as close as possible to that of joining a real-life block
association (which the playwright actually did).
The challenge: how to send hundreds of messages, in the right order, and handle whatever responses came in from audience members, without having a full-time staff on board? The team turned to a piece of custom-written software created by Michael Rau, repurposed from code he’d written for an earlier Wolf 359 project (Temping, which was performed at Lincoln Center).
Once patrons made a reservation, they got a form to fill out with their contact information, which was in turn fed to the software. Once deployed, the technology started sending out messages, making sure the story was told in a cohesive manner.
While this is only part of the piece (and the team wanted people to be able to enjoy the show regardless of their previous interactions), it opens a very exciting path for live performance– one that’s not tied to a stage.
Putting together a piece of interactive theater is not easy, and requires more than a playwright and a director - in this case, it required the company they founded together, Wolf 359.
Step 3: the server stays active throughout, making sure to keep the show online and all communications flowing.
Block Association Project: a letter from the creators
When does a play begin?
Does it begin when the lights go up? When the curtain opens? When you enter the theater?
What if it began before that, when you left the house? Or when you got up that morning? Or when you bought the ticket?
These are the questions we began with, when we started Block Association Project. Our goal, in this and in our past work, is to expand the theatrical moment. We use technology to tell stories in new ways, and we use live theater to do what technology can’t: put us in a room of strangers, breathing the same air, listening to the same voices, for a few brief moments, together.
The story we’re telling in this project is one about community: what makes a community, and what breaks it. We chose the block association because it’s one of the few communities that, at times, cuts across lines of age, class, race, and gender. In other words, it’s a place of hope for forging stronger connections among us. And, at the same time, a symbol of the way strengthening some connections can mean cutting off others.
This project is still in its early stages. We invite you to join our block association, meet your new neighbors, and participate in this community we’re building.
Michael Yates Crowley’s works for theater include The Rape of the Sabine Women, by Grace B Matthias (Playwrights Realm at The Duke on 42nd Street); Gunplay: A Love Story (developed at NYTW and Ars Nova); Song of a Convalescent Ayn Rand Giving Thanks to the Godhead (American Repertory Theater, Joe’s Pub); temping (premiered at the 53rd New York Film Festival, A.R.T.); Evanston: A Rare Comedy (2013 O’Neill NPC selection); and The Ted Haggard Monologues (published by S. Fischer Verlag; filmed by HBO). He is a member of Ars Nova’s Play Group, a former NYFA Playwriting fellow and member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and a graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights Program at Juilliard. Together with the director Michael Rau, he founded the narrative technology company Wolf 359.
Michael Rau is a director specializing in new plays, opera, and digital media projects. He has worked internationally in Germany, Brazil, the UK, Ireland, and the Czech Republic. He has created work at Lincoln Center, The Public Theater, and Ars Nova. Regionally, his work has been performed at A.R.T. in Cambridge MA and he has developed new plays at the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and the Kennedy Center. He has served an assistant director for Anne Bogart, Les Waters, and Ivo Van Hove. He is a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect and a professor of directing at Stanford University.
