OTHER ORBITS

The Broad Street Review /// By Jillian Ashley Blair Ivey /// July 18, 2023

In 2016, I joined many Philadelphia communications and social-media professionals who volunteered to staff the Democratic National Committee Convention. I learned just how much happens off-camera and out of the limelight at a convention like this. While the evening events were filled with celebrities and VIPS and broadcast to the masses, most of what happened during the day was small meetings where special issues were discussed and platforms were debated. And I mention all of this to introduce Applied Mechanics and the latest installment of its serialized Other Orbits performance piece, running through Saturday, July 22, at Standby Stages in Kensington.

Some organisms walk into a convention

It’s hard to explain Other Orbits. It starts off with an introduction of all of the delegates to a convention that is taking place on either another planet or on our own, but after, there are no more humans to occupy it. The delegates range from a sentient microphone (Anthony Martinez-Briggs) to a blackberry bramble (Brett Ashley Robinson) to a geode (Justin Jain) to a whale (Severin Blake), and more. They have come together to agree on a platform. Why? For what? It’s unclear.

There are rules established—the gestures and words for when a delegate agrees, disagrees, or is unsure. The instructions go by quickly, but it’s helpful if the audience internalizes them; there’s not a quiz later, per se, but it’s helpful to know what they mean to follow some of the action later.

There’s also a secondary area at the convention—an exhibition plaza, not dissimilar to an expo at a major convention—where there’s karaoke, dancing, and a selection of artifacts from the world of the play that the audience (and the in-world delegates) can explore. If the audience chooses, they can get a tour of it from a sentient streptococcus bacterium (MK Tuomanen). They can learn a dance from a mutant alien named Malroosh (Izzy Sazak), who is, as the program explains, part walrus and part mushroom. Or, they can choose to stay back in the council chambers and watch the convention platform being debated. This is also where Jain’s geode begins to experience an existential spiral before ceding the role of convention moderator to Mjälper (eppchez yo-sí yes): part elk, part pig, and all nervous energy.

Choose-your-own adventure

I bounced between the two rooms as the conventioneers splintered into different groups and factions, frequently trying to follow the action of two or more scenes happening simultaneously around me.

There are some beautiful moments in director Rebecca Wright’s production. Some are downright brilliant—Tuomanen’s tour of the Exchange Plaza and Jain’s karaoke performance of “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” with new lyrics tailored to the show, are especially memorable. The Applied Mechanics team includes some of the most accomplished theater artists in Philadelphia. But some of the chaos of Other Orbits also leads to confusion. One of the delegates dies, but I didn’t know why because I was following a different segment. A seemingly pivotal part of the platform is adopted, but because I missed the discussion leading up to the vote, I had no idea how high the stakes truly were.

Three visits?

I love immersive works of theater that allow you to follow your own path, but there’s just too much happening in Other Orbits. Maybe that’s why Applied Mechanics is selling a ticket three-pack, so the audience can go back and follow a different thread. Maybe after three performances, the story will be clearer. Or maybe what will be clearest of all is that it doesn’t have to be.

Other Orbits might be worth seeing for its excellent design (Deb O on set, Maria Shaplin on lighting and graphics, Elizabeth Atkinson on sound, and Nikki Delhomme on costumes) and for the cast’s performances. But it’s also hard to follow, and ultimately, I honestly couldn’t tell you if I enjoyed it. But maybe that’s the point: the confusing, chaotic, and perhaps unsatisfying experience of Other Orbits also makes it a whole lot like attending an actual convention.

The Philadelphia Inquirer /// By Jane M. Von Bergen /// July, 2023

Metro Philly /// By A.D. Amorosi /// July 12th, 2023

When Philadelphia director Rebecca Wright and designer Maria Shaplin founded their immersive theater-based queer collective Applied Mechanics by turning a West Philly apartment into a rustic fishing village, they boldly went to where no performer had gone before.

Since 2009, Applied Mechanics has remade the Napoleonic Wars into mini-opera, created revolutionary feminist punk bands out of grad students and homeless street musicians. And now, with longtime fellow Mechanics Thomas Choinacky, MK Tuomanen and other Philadelphia devisers, their new ‘Other Orbits’ staged interactive installation finds a fantastic alien universe set in the ruins of a failed human colony – “a planet where mutants evolved into cooperative society” right in North Philly.

‘Other Orbits’ runs until July 22 at Standby Stages, 2033 E. Silver Street, where MK Tuomanen spoke to Metro after Applied Mechanics’ first preview.

How has Applied Mechanics evolved since 2009?

Applied Mechanics has changed a lot since our inception, but what definitely remains is our basic playfulness, curiosity and a desire to tell multiple stories braided together to create a collaborative tapestry. We love to talk about communities, movements, or collectives rather than individual hero stories. We also became more explicit about our politics as a queer, anti-capitalist, pro Black, pro Indigenous, intersectionally feminist group. Our art is delightful, strange and magical because it calls to the world we want to create — one that values imagination and connection over power and control.

What can you say about welcoming new members to Applied Mechanics in time for ‘Other Orbits’?

We were very lucky to invite new collaborators into this project including Justin Jain, Anthony Martinez-Briggs, Rich Bradford, eppchez si-yo yes, and sound designer Elizabeth Atkinson. We knew we wanted this project to involve a lot of voices. ‘Other Orbits’, is a great example of life imitating art. The cacophony of the alien creatures on the imaginary PlaNet trying to negotiate their needs through diplomacy echoes the messy, emotional, bizarre process of collective art making.

Every person in this cast writes their own character, and you will hear in the writing the wry deadpan of Justin, the cosmic emcee stylings of Anthony, the love-call of Rich and the speculative poetics of eppchez mingled in the script with the voices of the Mechanicians. We are a big, messy family all singing in harmony and we love it.
How did ‘Other Orbits’ wind up as series?

The piece was gearing up for development in March 2020. ‘Other Orbits’ had a big, in-person rehearsal that month with all our collaborators and shortly afterwards, lockdown started. We were heartbroken because we were all really excited about the material — the working title at the time was ‘Middle Management.’ We were contemplating what it is to care for both children and our elders in a time of ecological crisis — the position we as elder millennials find ourselves in.

While we knew we had to postpone till it was safe to perform in person, we didn’t want to give up on working on the piece. So, we decided to make lots of projects leading up to this show, all involving the same world and characters: a radio show, a board game, an album, a piece of visual art in the mail, a film — what ended up being our spoof reality tv show Real PlaNet Life — that we got to show in 2022’s Fringe.

That was really exciting and so much fun; all of that work making our remote offerings has now gone into making these fully-fleshed out characters who are playing with audiences in Kensington this month. And if you love them, you can always go back and experience all the music, games, movies, etc. that we made about them in pandemic.

What does a “Pee-wee’s Playhouse meets the UN Summit science fiction extravaganza” look and sound like when envisioned by a multiracial collective of queer and genderqueer theater artists?

It’s a wild adventure. The audience comes into a gorgeous alien environment, and then enters an official chamber set up for some kind of meeting. The alien creatures enter in huge, larger than life costumes, glowing with lights internal to their creature bodies, some spiny, some round, some covered in lumpy pink blubber. They then proceed to begin their meeting, complete with subcommittee reports, points of order, etc, and the audience is part of that meeting.

There is also an adjoining party space where the creatures, when they can’t resolve something in the meeting, put it all out there on the dance floor. Audience members, if they want to participate, can help resolve conflicts between creatures, or dance it out with them, or even get “genetically altered” and become a mutant like them.

As a group of queer artists in Philadelphia, all of us have had to navigate conflict to keep our performing ensembles intact, our bands intact, our activist groups intact, our queer families intact, our collective houses intact. We make family through our art and through the bonds of queer community. So, this meeting of the aliens is really partly poking fun at ourselves, and talking about all the effort and diplomacy that goes into holding space for everyone’s needs, making large alternative families and allowing for individuals to come and go within those structures.

The writing of ‘Other Orbits’ is as eclectic as those groups, with each ensemble member writing their own character and finding their way through these questions. And it’s pretty hilarious, though very earnest and heartfelt… We took over an entire film studio and transformed it into the world of ‘Other Orbits’. It truly felt like à terraforming project — so much goes into making an immersive set! And the show takes place in two immaculately designed spaces — a council chamber and a party room. So, the audience can choose to sit in one or move through both colorful alien environments.

STEM Femmes

Broad Street Review /// By Mina Reinckens /// Dec 10th, 2019

Rebecca Wright, director and cofounder of Applied Mechanics and director of STEM FEMMES, is particularly keen to combine STEM and art. “Using the medium of theater to communicate complex ideas from other fields was one of the things we’re really excited about,” she said.

Participants are invited to engage with interlocking scenes about Jeanne Baret, Ada Lovelace, Marie Von Britten Brown, Rosalind Franklin, Helen Yee Chow Ling, Judith Resnik, Nalini Nadkarni, and Emmanuelle Charpentier. As to why this content is important to showcase right now, Wright notes that it’s not suddenly time to shine a spotlight on the women history has forgotten. “Why not before is more the question,” she says. “History is full of uncelebrated heroes and those heroes are usually not men. We’ve spent a lot of time excavating unsung heroes and celebrating them.”

This Is On Record

Broad Street Review /// By Cara Blouin /// June 23, 2018

In its devised work This Is on Record, Applied Mechanics creates a gorgeously curated living museum of grassroots American expression and the media that make that expression possible. Characters speak across the decades from 1968, 1988, and 2014, tying our present suffering to those who have come before. It is a vital work and a triumph of craft.

So much of the magic of this piece is invisible; it’s a precisely engineered freedom that winks at its subject. The topic of media and who controls it is about attention, and the attention of patrons is necessarily divided. Each time we choose to listen to her and not him, look at this rather than that, we participate in the play’s reflection on who is heard and how. Unseen forces contrive to push us towards conflict or charisma or beauty.

This masterpiece of moving parts comes together under the skilled hand of director Rebecca Wright. Each meticulously crafted piece fits together with unerring precision. Not one moment, not one inch is uncared for. Stories overlap at just the right interval to create a sense of cohesive movement and, at any point in the show, each element feeds back to the larger whole. This movement between the big and small makes room for deep emotional reflection.

FEED

Fringearts.com /// By Jason Rosenberg /// September 16, 2016

It might not always be considered as such, but food is a profoundly historical, political topic. The way we eat deeply informs the way we interact with our community and planet, the way we pass down traditions and recorded history, and of course, our own quality of life. Presented with the challenge of making a piece of theater that revolves around food, there are few companies in Philadelphia as well equipped as Applied Mechanics to tackle the job. Since their premiere in 2009, they’ve done much to solidify their reputation as an innovative, masterful creator of immersive theater that is as much an intricately crafted story as a lesson in civic engagement.

Their newest work, FEED, premieres in the 2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and is a brilliant example of their ability to finely weave multiple narratives together to create an entire world for their audiences to explore. Set in the Independence Foundation Gallery for Visual Art at the Painted Bride, it takes its audience on a journey through the past, present, and future of a society that seems pretty similar to our own, from the point of view of 3 people living at different points on the same timeline, uniting in the gallery’s second level, where the audience and characters come together several times throughout the show to eat together.

Phindie.com /// By Olivia Jia /// September 11, 2016

the sensorial experience of a crisp wafer, or the cool tartness of a pickled radish weaves the audience member into the very fabric of the performance. Here, narrative, fiction, performance, and reality collide through the breaking of bread.

FEED, directed by Rebecca Wright, follows the stories of three characters defined by their relationships to food. Leif (Thomas Choinacky) hails from approximately 1400-1700 CE—he is perhaps a spice trader, and is wonderfully humorous and earnest in his pursuit of delicious tastes and smells, punctuated by constant gestures and onomatopoeia. The brilliant, but neurotic Krs (MK Tuomanen)—circa 2010-2020 CE—is consumed by her research to produce an infinitely sustainable food source. Bestby (Brett Ashley Robinson) presents us with a vision of the future in a thousand years or two—she is to be exiled from her community for refusing to adapt to the resurgence of farming and fresh foods due to her belief that the earth is poisoned. Her plot is bleak, yet indicates a brighter future for all mankind.

AUDIENCE (R)EVOLUTION /// Theater Communications Group

Activating Audience: Theater of Radical Inclusion /// By Applied Mechanics

People talk a lot about how to reach new audiences.  They talk about what makes an engaged audience, and how to make audiences feel like they’re a part of the work.  But we take it as a given that audience members are participants in the art event, and maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe audiences don’t know how important their participation is.  After all, more often than not they’re told to “sit back, relax, and enjoy the show”—not a very big ask as far as engagement goes.  And, since there’s no way that going to the theater could ever be as reclining or relaxing as lying on your couch at home and watching TV, perhaps this is the wrong ask.  And perhaps audience members who show up to theater don’t want to be told to sit back and passively receive something, but rather to step up and actively encounter something.  Applied Mechanics has been developing new forms of audience engagement over the last six years and we’ve come to see a different kind of audience: people who grew up on video games and internet want art they can walk through and not just watch.  In Applied Mechanics’ work, many stories unfold simultaneously…

Audience (R)evolution: Dispatches from the Field is available for purchase through the TCG Publications: http://www.tcg.org/Store/ProductDetail/3675

We Are Bandits

Phindie.com ///By Julius Ferraro /// July 21st, 2014

At its heart, WE ARE BANDITS is an ambitious exploration of the naïveté, experience, and ramifications of radicalism, idealism, and punk.

The historical figures whose work is shared, and on whose passion and intellects this play is founded, are all female—reinforcing the dramatic impact women have had on two centuries of radical thought in art, politics and philosophy. The present-day characters who drive the story are mostly women, plus a couple of homosexual men, thus turning the norm on its head.

…WE ARE BANDITS is an inspired, intellectually stimulating theater piece. It point out gaps in our understanding of the world around us and inspires us to learn more, while also providing a surprising experience of new possibilities in the medium. What’s more, keeping with its concept of radical idea-sharing, the crowd-funded WE ARE BANDITS is absolutely free to the public, so if there’s something you don’t get, feel free to see it a second time.

Philadelphia Citypaper /// By Maggie Grabmeier /// July 25th, 2014

Inspired by the Pussy Riot arrests of 2012, director Rebecca Wright and production designer Maria Shaplin seek to create a fully functional (and believably dysfunctional) story of a society where, just like in real life, everything happens all at once.

Shaplin describes this style of performance as a kind of LARP (live action role play) in which the audience is sometimes asked to take part. “It’s as though our director and designers are the dungeon masters,” Shaplin says.  “The actors are experienced players who have created characters with complex histories and trajectories, and the audience is like the kid that is new to this campaign, and has to learn the rules of the world by observing and discovering how it works.”

Newsworks /// By Howard Shapiro /// July 22nd, 2014

 “We Are Bandits” is the innovative creation, free to the public and with original music, of the theater group called Applied Mechanics — smart, young local artists who seek ways to involve audiences in unconventional theater devised by the entire creative team.

I delighted in the edginess of “We Are Bandits” – the way the stories of the people who live and come to this park are told simultaneously; you catch these tales in snatches while walking around the large playing area during the entire performance.

Applied Mechanics never lets “We Are Bandits” stick more than a couple of toes into didactic polemics. It jumps unabashedly, instead, into a bubbling theatricality that allows a single story to be told – and understood – in many ways.

The Inquirer /// By Toby Zinman /// July 20th, 2014

We Are Bandits is impressive and provocative theater.

Vainglorious

The Inquirer /// By Toby Zinman /// Tuesday, April 9, 2013

If you’re interested in experimental theatre, don’t miss this one.

Rebecca Wright directs this high-precision “movement opera” where many things happen at once (as they do in history). You suddenly see Napoleon exiled to the room’s high balcony, and if you blink you’ll miss the palindrome on the banner (“Able was I ere I saw Elba”). The guillotine is created by a balletic entrechat, and the cast thrillingly transforms into a silent orchestra frantically conducted by Beethoven.

The costumes  (designed by Katherine Fritz and Maria Shaplin) are superb, and the sound design (Maria Shaplin and Team Beethoven) eventually becomes a little folkloric song as all the legendary characters run off, history melts away into the past, and we’re left on the bare stage of the present. And all this in an hour.

Philly Weekly /// Nicole Finkbiner /// April 10, 2013

Pro: Every single member of the show’s whopping 26-actor ensemble is spectacular. With this having been my second or third time seeing several of the performers, I’m convinced they don’t get nearly as much praise as they deserve. Seriously, a bomb could have gone off and not a single one would have broke character.

Con: You may leave with a headache. There’s a lot happening around you and between trying to process all of it, making sure you’re not in a performer’s way and occasionally referring to the provided program/map/guide, it can be quite overwhelming.

Pro: For better or worse, you’re going to be enthralled. And for $15 bucks, I think it’s worth finding out yourself.

Broadway World /// Marakay Rogers /// April 11, 2013

VAINGLORIOUS (in full, VAINGLORIOUS: THE EPIC FEATS OF NOTABLE PERSONS IN EUROPE AFTER THE REVOLUTION) is Les Mis on steroids.

You’ll get the most out of the show by walking right up to the cast and listening in on the conversations, or by saying hello to characters strolling past you. It’s impossible to absorb everything happening, just as it would have been impossible to follow every single thing happening at the time, so choose your interest at any moment – is it Mme. De Stael’s salon? One of Josephine’s parties? Beethoven showing a new musical composition to a patron? Napoleon’s machinations? Do not miss the Congress of Vienna, at which smaller areas of Europe are carved up like a roast by the diplomats of the alliance against Napoleon, or Beethoven’s occasional difficulties conducting once his hearing loss begins affecting his balance. No one viewing spot will give you all of these things, so follow the map to see what’s happening at each location.

Overseers

The Inquirer /// Wendy Rosenfield /// Monday, September 5, 2011

The ensemble’s performers, stationed on platforms, stairs, in a trunk, inhabit a dystopian future in which those external forces stage a battle royal for humanity’s health and well-being. Think Margaret Atwood meets The Prisoner (though the show’s text draws on writers ranging from Emily Dickinson to Sun Tzu to Don DeLillo), and you’re headed in the right direction.

While the actors — as a doctor, priest, bureaucratic functionary, revolutionary and artist (all excellent, all co-creators of the piece, and all willing to have some fun while delivering their message) — respond to the growing threat of a disease infiltrating their “Sector,” the audience must also respond.

Sometimes you’re invited to eat cake and drink gin, you move to another station as the action shifts, or occasionally, you simply need to get out of the way fast enough to avoid being stepped on by two-foot high stilts supporting Kristen Bailey’s Pater B.

You choose your own adventure, with deft guidance by director Rebecca Wright, who brings up the volume of a discussion in one corner while softening another. Some clues slip past, but there’s enough repetition and overlap to avoid frustration and thread together a coherent narrative.

Maria Shaplin’s design contributes mightily to Overseers’ unified otherworldliness: The cast wear cultish cream-colored raw linen jumpers; MK Tuomanen’s scientist sports elongated fingers and bustles with the no-nonsense, head-down demeanor of a woodland creature, analyzing slides from atop a wooden perch. There’s a bit of style over substance here, but that style and the creative means by which it’s delivered make this a Fringe pick well worth viewing and, of course, exploring.

Portmanteau

The Austinist /// Fontera Fest Bring-Your-Own-Venue 2011 Review

Five strangers have come to town, each with his or her own purpose, each removing belongings from a backpack, a suitcase. They explore, interact, form alliances, become rivals. Their behavior, their manner of speaking, even their very words may seem familiar to the audience. This is Portmanteau, created by Applied Mechanics, at the Vortex Cafe for FronteraFest 2011. The ensemble hails from Philadelphia, and frankly, the 1,600 mile trip was worth it. This “invasion play” strikes a rare balance in unconventional, interactive-ish theater: by using a relatively small space, and sticking to a pretty straightforward narrative built on familiar found texts, this hour-ish piece allows the audience member to get into the action without being forced to get too close (hear that, Ben Brantley?)

The Inquirer /// Howard Shapiro

The subtitle of Portmanteau is “An Invasion Play,” and the audience is as invasive as the characters in the situation that develops. In fact, Portmanteau has more the feel of watching a movie than a play, because we’re within feet of the action watching close-ups, which sometimes in a minor way include us.

The text is from snippets of many well-known writers and by the talented ensemble. Rebecca Wright kept her direction sharply focused, so that the timing of conversations and the logistics involved in delivering them reveal the storyline, no matter where you roam or what you witness. Portmanteau is meaty and curious – and as close to a piece of installation art as theater gets.

City Paper /// K. Ross Hoffman

Portmanteau unfolds fluidly through simultaneous, interconnecting scenes performed promenade-style (with performers and audience moving freely about the same space), with all five characters — all newcomers to an unnamed small town, each with a different agenda — continuously active for its hour-plus length. That it works at all is a considerable feat; that it’s consistently engaging without being overwhelming, that it creates a taut, cohesive, and compelling socio-political drama, and that it’s also very funny (Mary Tuomanen is particularly hilarious and spot-on as the documentarian “Verna Werzog”) and frequently moving all speak to some serious ingenuity. Truly delightful.

Broad Street Review /// Jim Rutter /// September 10, 2010

How does a theater company produce a play without a playwright? The two co-creators of Applied Mechanics’ fascinating, intelligent Fringe production Portmanteau select a theme and a setting, then build a plot around a collage of dialogue lifted from other writers, including Tennessee Williams, Upton Sinclair, filmmakers Luc Besson, Gus Van Sant, and Paul Thomas Anderson, and The Bible.

By themselves, the careful selection of dialogue and the fine acting create a compelling, innovative piece of theater. But Wright and Shaplin build another layer of innovation into Portmanteau with their “choose your own adventure” approach to the staging.

Ses Voyage Sauvages

City Paper /// Emily Currier /// Friday, March 26th, 2010

With its commentary on ideas about home, Ses Voyages Sauvages is fittingly, and cleverly, staged in the interior of an apartment. Around 7:45 p.m., a group of people gathered on the porch of the West Philly row house, making small talk while waiting for the doors to open.

The living room was transformed into the Arctic with cardboard boxes painted white and plastic tarps, the kitchen became a mountain range of elaborate papier-mâché, and other locales were constructed with fabric and converted furniture. While the scenery was convincingly portrayed, the found materials reminded the audience of the constant presence of home wherever you go.

The cast of six young actors agilely interacted with the set and each other in meandering plot lines revolving around their own personal quests.

It’s Hard Times at the Camera Blanca

Broad Street Review /// First published in Edge Philadelphia /// Friday, September 18, 2009

Applied Mechanics “It’s Hard Times at the Camera Blanca” presented the inescapable nature of the global economy, that other thing artists hate most about the intersection of art and economics. Here, eight circus characters (trapeze artists, clowns, a lion tamer) downed drinks at the Camera Blanca bar as they struggled with the economic uncertainty of a travelling show on the verge of financial failure. The audience moved between tables, chairs, and barstools, eavesdropping on conversations between a brother and sister as their relationship fragments over an uncertain economic future, listening to the outpourings of clowns who fear irrelevancy, and throughout, witnessing a Ringmaster ruling over all of them with a unyielding iron fist.

…unlike the two monologues Mike Daisey showcased at this year’s festival, Wright at least doesn’t dip into fantastical solutions to fix economic woes, but instead presents the valid, real concerns felt particularly by artists during an economic recession that makes the production of art a luxury and further drives the existence of artists to the margins.

Wright and her designer Maria Shaplin didn’t manufacture a sure-seller for the Fringe, but instead pushed at the boundaries of theatre as an art form. “Hard Times” dropped the proscenium, linear narrative, and fixed directorial focus, and forced the audience to follow characters about an awkward landscape, catching only part of the conversations at a time to piece together the evening by themselves.