You’re Invited to a Devilish Party in Immersive ‘The Devil Is a Lie’ Experience
By SHARON EBERSON
Within the pristine marble halls of the Frick Building, the stage is set for a whole lot of soul searching, in more ways than one.
That’s where Quantum Theatre is about to unleash The Devil Is a Lie – a wickedly unconventional theatrical experience in which the audience plays key roles.
Starting Friday, the event dawns in the former digs of ruthless industrialist Henry Clay Frick, built in 1902 as the tallest structure in the city. It is said that Frick, while feuding with former business partner Andrew Carnegie, had his building designed to be taller than Carnegie’s “in order to encompass it in constant shadow.”
LaTrea Rembert and Lisa Sanaye Dring (with, background, Christine Weber and Sam Turich) are keys to the party in The Devil Is a Lie, a Quantum Theatre production at the Frick Building. (Images by Jason Snyder)
That need for greed syncs with the oft-explored medieval legend of Faust, who made a contract with the Devil:
In exchange for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures, Faust would give the Devil his soul.
Enter George Fast, the billionaire tech magnate of Jennifer Chang’s The Devil Is a Lie.
George is throwing perhaps the most important party of his life at his impressive company office – the Tenant Innovation Center , standing in for Voltaire, Inc., at the top of a marble staircase in the Frick Building. He’s celebrating his success and, perhaps, having one last hurrah, in the world-premiere play, developed and produced by Quantum.
The company has provided integral stadium-style seating and a staging area to a venue that stands as a mingling of then and now.
“My first reaction,” director Kyle Haden said, “was that this is a space that was built by old money for the very rich, but it is being reinvented, even apart from Quantum, for the new world order.”
“We’ll say that being in a building named for Pittsburgh’s most evil industrialist and doing a story about an evil tech billionaire, is inspiring. And more, it’s, it’s … kismet,” said Sam Turich, who has performed in or directed nearly a dozen Quantum shows and who, as George, leads a company “that’s got its fingers in all your data.”
“And,” Turich continued, “without spoiling too much, I got this rich and famous because I sold my soul to the Devil. And today is the day the Devil’s coming to collect.”
Among those helping to usher George to his fate is Pittsburgh actor/singer/dancer LeTrea Rembert, who describes his deejay character as “largely inspired by, but very loosely based, on Snoop Dogg when he was young, right before his career takes off, in his DJ era. He’s full of life and optimistic in his own right.”
He’ll get the party going, along with George and his wife, Margarita. and host Lucy.
Christine Weber, who starred last year in the Guthrie Theater’s debut adaptation of Emma, plays her role(s) as Margarita/Helena as “different ideas of what a woman is supposed to be, or what she has to offer at different times throughout the event.”
As Lucy, you may recognize Lisa Sanaye Dring from network television shows including How to Get Away With Murder, Shameless and more. She also co-directed the Emmy-nominated interactive film event Welcome to the Blumhouse Live for Blumhouse/Amazon Prime.
At a roundtable of the four actors, within the confines of the “set,” Dring explained that her character, Lucy, “works on behalf of the firm, and I am a … collector of sorts, so I am here to, um, grab people, for lack of a better words.”
The event is ostensibly for Voltaire stockholders, “at once to celebrate yearly earnings, and also to announce a very special family announcement,” Dring said. “The audience just thinks they’re here for this fun banquet. So I’m checking people in. I’m getting the party and the festivities started, while George and Margarita are mingling and saying hi to the stockholders, which the audience members are.”
GETTING THE PARTY STARTED
It was Haden, a Pittsburgh-based director and assistant professor of acting at Carnegie Mellon University, who brought the project to Quantum Theatre. He had befriended Californian Chang through The Drama League, as part of a cohort of directors. He also was involved in Quantum’s InQubator program – a new-play reading series that follows the company tagline: An incubator for the amazing.
Both he and Chang explained, with some residual surprise but knowledge of artistic director Karla Boos‘ adventurous spirit, the rapid trajectory that brings The Devil Is a Lie to its world premiere on Friday.
“Karla was, like, ‘Let’s do a physical workshop,’ and in the process of prepping for it, Karla said, ‘I think we should just do this,’ ” Haden said, laughing. “It just sort of happened in the way that things do.”
Quantum’s 30+ years of matching works to environment throughout Pittsburgh took a dramatic turn from Chang’s original setting, Haden said.
“Jennifer being from California, she talked about being in a Malibu mansion,” Haden said. “But when it came here, being in the home of Industrialists, I was thinking about these kind of Gilded Age mansions.”
His first thought was of Clayton, the 19th-century mansion/museum left behind by Henry Clay Frick and gifted to Pittsburgh by his daughter, Helen.
It was “Karla, with all her connections,” that found the space that combines marble and bronze and glass into a setting fit for a modern-day Frick, er, Faust, er, Fast.
INSPIRATION RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
For Chang, it is a space that befits the play’s inspiration.
She was best known as a theater director before the pandemic hit, and that gave the mother of two more time at home and more time to mull the state of the United States.
“In the middle of the pandemic, I had thoughts that my career was over, and that theater was, you know, done,” she said. “And, this will reveal my politics, but I was very much wondering how we voted Donald Trump into office, and what allowed us to do that. … And I respect people’s politics. I have people who are across the political spectrum in my family. But the idea that this person who seems so unsavory could become our leader – I was just so thrown off about like, what did I not understand about America? I was born here. I am just as American as anyone else. But I just kept wondering, what is happening? So I started writing.”
And in writing about her feeling regarding the 2016 election and the continuing state of political tumult, the idea of a Faustian tale, with a Gordon Gekko-type protagonist, took shape.
Chang wasn’t quite sure what she had until she began showing drafts to friends and getting positive feedback from pals such as Haden.
Now she is flying back and forth, from the West Coast to Pittsburgh, to help get the Fast party started.
As a creator of immersive theater herself, finding her way to like-minded Quantum has been, as Turich might say, kismet.A
Among the big attractions to Quantum, Chang said, is “No rules. That has allowed them to do wonderful and different and exciting things. So I’m really on board for this and, and with them doing it. That’s really cool.”
TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN INTERACTION
During the event, the audience/stockholders/investors will be asked poll questions that may take the proceedings in unexpected, or escalating directions.
“I don’t know how that portion will work,” said Haden, within two weeks of opening night. “Jen’s really interested in live-ness, and we’ve talked about a play that involves the audience continually picking up their cell phones and voting,” Haden said. “So this is going to be a different experience.”
From the start, audience-participation polls were always a part of Chang’s plan for The Devil Is a Lie. The bigger question for playwright Chang was whether the play would ever be performed in person, and how it would work with cell phones.
“There was a moment in the pandemic where I felt like, oh, we are never going to see each other ever again, and we’re always going to be on Zoom. And there is a polling function on Zoom,” Chang recalled, laughing. “I got encouraged to think as if we’re never going to be live ever again, but I still want to challenge the rules of engagement of live-ness, and what is a kind of live-ness that we like to watch, you know? And so I think that made me lean into the chaos of the piece. …”
Without giving too much away, that’s where you, the audience member, comes in, and where the actors have to be quick on their feet, to reach a certain – or is it uncertain? – outcome.
Actors may have a hand in how you approach the questions or what the answers reveal.
Asked if they try to sway the audience one way or another in this devilish pursuit of success – however one defines that word – vs. souls, the actors were a bit coy.
“I mean, there’s some shaming involved,” Weber said with a laugh. “But maybe after they’ve cast their votes. I think it’s supposed to be true to what [audience members] want.”
Quantum’s adventurous audiences know to expect the unexpected, so having a hand in the proceedings is an experience they may be craving. They also may be thrilled to be indoors, in a Downtown space that should eliminate the weather as a factor.
The company has previously delivered deeply affecting immersive works in sprawling environments, as both Chatterton (Trinity Church) and Tamara (Rodef Shalom Congregation) led groups of patrons through different spaces and scenarios at different times, before everyone landed in the same spot.
In the case of The Devil Is a Lie, the site is more contained, although what happens from moment to moment is destined to be a new adventure in Quantum’s history of theatrical storytelling.
Immersive works, as well as improvisation, are nothing new for Turich. Working with Bricolage Productions, he has acted in, directed and/or co-created immersive works including STRATA, DODO and OJO.
Sitting among his fellow actors, he was relishing this new challenge, even if it is his character’s soul that is at stake.
“The show is very funny, to the point where I would almost say it’s a full-on comedy, which is not what the Faust story normally is,” Turich said. “There are versions where he is redeemed at the end … it’s slippery, this one. I feel like the experience of seeing it is going to be, ‘Oh, I think I know what’s going on. Wow. Was I wrong? OK. Now I think I know what’s going on. OK. We’re wrong again.’ “
“It’ll be a fun anthropological study, to look at all the results and compare, oh, Tuesday night audience seems to be this way and Thursday that way,” Rembert said. “Some things are set, but it will be exciting just to see how the audience goes on the journey with us.”
Quantum Theatre’s production of “The Devil Is a Lie’ runs April 7-30, Tuesday and Sunday at 5:30 p.m. and Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m., at the Tenant Innovation Center, Frick Building, 437 Grant St., Downtown. Tickets and details: quantumtheatre.com.
Categories: Arts and Ideas, Feature, Feature Stories, Show Previews
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