Gem City Style: Tethered: an Immersive Theatrical Experience
Shiara Pettis, Jasmine Nicole Williams, and Deepkala Ghale
This month, I met up with co-writer Shiara Pettis and stars Jasmine Nicole Williams and Deepkala Ghale at my downtown studio to talk about The Lever, Tethered's third immersive production, which turns the Davenport-Galbraith Mansion into the scene of a nonprofit board meeting gone very wrong – one that lets the audience decide how wrong.
The Lever runs Fridays and Saturdays through October at the Davenport-Galbraith Mansion (the Woman's Club of Erie) on West Sixth Street. It is produced in partnership with Erie's Black Wall Street. Founder and producer John C. Lyons couldn't make our interview and sent three collaborators in his place: Pettis, who has been writing this story since last November; Williams, who plays Miss Mina Sinclair, maître d' of the club at the center of the show; and Ghale, who plays Aastha Rai, one of the evening's hosts. None of the three were part of Tethered's first two shows. They are the new blood, and they root for each other.
Here is the premise: the show is "an interactive, multi-layered experience where audience choices directly influence the balance of power and the outcome of the story." The show is set "during the tense annual report meeting of a troubled nonprofit organization, where a hidden war unfolds between city elites and a burgeoning workers' resistance." You are a guest at that meeting, and over three hours the war comes out of hiding. You are not in a seat. You can follow a character up the stairs and into a parlor, abandon them for someone more interesting, or take your drink to the bar and eavesdrop. And what you and the rest of the audience decide to do will change how the night ends.
"You're not confined to a seat watching people on stage, which is really cool," Pettis told me. "But with that being said, you also can miss things." That, it turns out, is the point. Williams was emphatic that you should split from your group and avoid forming loyalties. "Don't sell yourself short," she said. "And don't get attached to one character."
I asked how one writes a script the audience is allowed to steer, and Pettis said the idea came from watching the news. "The current climate and state of affairs, the things we were seeing in politics – we just scaled it down to something as simple as a board meeting." The writers started meeting as a brain trust last November, and the story kept growing as the world kept changing, and as they kept an eye on Erie's own city council meetings.
What she and her co-writers (Lyons, Marty Nwachukwu, and Niecey Nicole) built is less of a script and more a set of rails. "The story is going to be the story," Pettis said, "but some of the verbiage will change depending on the situation." Every actor has a storyline and an objective. How much they engage with the strangers standing two feet away is up to them. But sooner or later, somebody turns and speaks directly to you, and, suddenly, you are in it.
Williams says that moment is the whole reason she's here. There is no fourth wall to hide behind.
What is it like locking eyes with a stranger mid-scene? "It fuels me," she said. "It gives me more to react to. It makes me want to engage more, and make sure I'm reaching the ears that need to be reached in my scene." The cast recently ran a mock performance for a test audience. "I was anxious," she admitted. "But it was comforting."
For Ghale, the lack of control is the appeal. She is a filmmaker who met Lyons at a screening of one of her student films – a low-budget project she'd had to act in herself after a cast member backed out at the last minute. That accidental performance is what got her the audition call. She came to the United States from Nepal three years ago, and this is her first immersive show. "When we're doing filmmaking, you have so much control over every scene, every dialogue, and you can always edit it in post-production," she said. "In immersive theater, you cannot. It makes it very exciting."
The character Aastha Rai, whose name means faith or trust, was born in a refugee camp in Nepal and came to the United States with her mother and cousin, part of a group that neither Nepal nor Bhutan would claim as citizens. "I cannot imagine being an unknown citizen in your own country," Ghale said. "She's a survivor." Aastha has spent her life walking on eggshells, obliged to everyone who has ever helped her, until colleagues at the nonprofit gave her a voice. "From a scared character, she becomes this brave woman."
Ghale paused, and then widened the lens. "In everyday life, we know we're powerful people. But there are times when our voices are suppressed, and sometimes we voluntarily have to suppress our voice." Aastha, she said, isn't only Aastha – everyone can relate to her.
Aastha's story also lives outside the mansion, in Seized, a companion audio drama attendees can listen to on headphones while walking her downtown route.
Williams' Mina is Aastha's opposite number: a young Black woman in a position of authority, "professional and poised and protective of her staff," navigating the power structure of the club. Asked how she stays in character for three hours a night when every night goes differently, she said the harder part is taking Mina off. "We respond to conflict in different ways, and I'm still wearing my Mina hat, and I'm like, okay, wait. Jasmine. You are not that girl." Mina, she said, does the things Jasmine wants to do. "And I do. But I think I do it when my patience has run out. She's already there."
That is not an accident. Pettis said that after auditions, the writers placed each actor where they fit best, then rewrote the characters around the people playing them, "so it wouldn't be so hard, for eight shows, three hours a night, to be like, all right, who am I today?" The writing room, she added, is all Black women except for Lyons, and Williams put it plainly: being a Black woman in the workplace is what put her in the headspace of Mina. "Mina's a baddie," she said, and nobody in the room argued.
The rewriting only stopped about a week before we talked. Pettis, whose degrees are in journalism and writing and who had never written for theater before this, is the kind of writer who hates to touch a finished thing. Lyons pushes. "I told him this was my yes year, so he took that and ran with it." She had only just seen one of her monologues performed. "We've been doing this for so long," she said, "and now it's all coming together."
Lyons sent along his own version of that feeling, "For the past two months the cast and crew of The Lever have been working tirelessly to breathe life into this story of the haves and have-nots," he said. "But for those of us on the writing team, this has been a 12-month journey that has reached heights we never could have imagined. Our cast and crew have created something special here, and now we're about to hand the reins over to our audiences and see what they create together. It's both nerve-wracking and tremendously exciting."
The mansion pushed them, too. The Lever was originally written for the Maennerchor building, where last year's show ran – and it moved to the Davenport-Galbraith late in the process. Marianne at the mansion gave them a tour and, Pettis said, "so much information" that they sat back down and rewrote it again. Everything you'll hear in the show about the house and about Erie, she told me, is true. "Nothing fictitious, other than the character names."
A few practicalities: doors open at 5:30 and the show runs from 6 to 9 p.m. There are stairs and no elevator, so wear sensible shoes. There is a bar with real drinks, tended by cast member Taylor Lorraine, playing a bartender named Taylor, so mind what you say while you order. A bracelet on the way in tells the cast how much interaction you're up for, and the rules are simple: no touching and no talking unless an actor invites it.
The cast has its own version of that bracelet.
I had asked what Lyons or the creative team said along the way that stuck with them, and Williams' answer wasn't anything anyone said. It was a ritual. Before every performance, the company circles up for what they call "fences and check-ins" – everyone says how their mind, body, and spirit are doing that day, then names their boundaries for the night, down to who may hug them and who may not. "I really look forward to these," Ghale said. "I come back from work and I'm exhausted. And then I go there and we talk and we share each other's energy and, oh my God, I feel so much better." It's a release, she said, and somebody usually ends up telling a funny story before they head into the house to spend three hours being someone else.
And there is a room, somewhere in the mansion, set aside for the audience. Because the ending is yours to choose, you'll be able to go talk it over with strangers before it happens. "That's all I can say about that," Pettis said.
Which brings me to my last question. What do they want people talking about in the car on the way home?
Pettis wants a changed mind. "A different perspective than the one they came in with. It's engaging, it's fun, but the idea is: think outside of yourself." Williams wants a return trip. "'Hey, when's the next show? We should come here again. Because we might have missed that part, or that part, or that part.'" Then she thought about it a little longer. There is a board member character, she said, she can't help liking. "That guy was pretty messed up. But I want to like him." Pettis smiled. "We wrote some of those characters exactly like that. You want to like them, but at the same time you're thinking, 'I don't think I can like you.' But you have the opportunity to be a better person."
Earlier, I had asked Pettis whose side she's secretly on, the elites or the resistance? She laughed. "That's not hard." The writers had written the resistance so well, she said, that somebody had to go back and fight for the elites. "Everybody knows whose side they're on in this room."
As for me, I'll be there on opening weekend, splitting up from my group and following whoever looks like trouble. Ghale is as new to this as I am, which she offered as an invitation: "Just all experience it together for the first time. Because it's our first time too." I'll take her up on it. See you in the mansion.
The Lever runs Oct. 2, 3, 9, 10, 16, 17, 23, and 24 // Davenport-Galbraith Mansion, 259 W. 6th St. // $39-$66 // For tickets and info visit: tickets.eriereader.com and tetheredimmersive.com
Gem City Style is a monthly column featuring an intimate profile of someone making a creative impact in Erie. If you or someone you know would make a good fit for a future Gem City Style, email jessica@eriereader.com
