REVIEW: Mysterious Moline play unlike anything you’ve seen
The stars literally have aligned for a new QC theatrical experience – a kind you likely have never seen before. It should not be missed.
The unique immersive mystery, “The Stacks,” will hold its world premiere Feb. 22-March 2 at the Sound Conservatory in downtown Moline (504 17th St.).
Created by QC actor/director Ben Gougeon and written by Gougeon and Alexander Richardson, with art direction by Dominic Ramirez, the 75-minute show takes place over three floors of the newly relocated music academy at the former 1903 Carnegie Library, and the audience will move through the space in an attempt to solve the fictional unsolved murder of 21-year-old Samantha Hawkins.
“The Stacks” invites audiences to the creepy, tense night of Sept. 25, 1957, when the body of Sam Hawkins is found in a small Catholic school library (St. Bernard College).
The play takes place simultaneously on multiple floors and in multiple rooms, and as the story unfurls, audience members can decide where to go and what to see, look for details embedded with the set and props, and “choose their own adventure,” ensuring that everyone’s journey is unique, and each visit is different.
Each character has a specific track and tells a different perspective of the story. Guests can choose to follow one actor or move around to different scenes in an attempt to discover what really happened to Hawkins. You even get a mock college library card at the evening’s start and are cautioned not to interact with the mesmerizing actors.
“The Stacks” characters are:
Kira Rangel, the present-day investigator
Anya Giordano, the victim Sam Hawkins
Jean Tegtmeyer, the friend
Alice Sylvie, the frenemy
Titus Jilderda, the boyfriend
Bradley Robert Jensen, a college professor
Eric Teeter, another professor
Jeremy Mahr, the janitor
The story of “The Stacks” is seen through the eyes of a present-day investigator, who has come to the old library to try to solve the 67-year-old cold case. As they explore the library stacks, the ghosts and events of the fateful evening come to life around them and stories of students pushing against the status quo, forbidden love, jealousy and zealotry swirl into a frenzy that results in Hawkins’ demise at the climax of the play.
Immersive theater differentiates itself from traditional theater by removing the stage and “immersing” audiences within the performance itself. This can be accomplished by using a site-specific location – such as the stacks of the former Moline Carnegie library — allowing audiences (who will not be seated but can move freely) to interact with their surroundings, and giving the audience agency in how they choose to follow the show, transforming them into “active observers.”
In addition to the events that play out, the show’s art director, Dominic Ramirez, and his team have transformed the formerly empty rooms and stacks of the library into a stunning, explorable art installation in and of itself, with nine different spaces within the library that contain clues and references that add to the depth of the characters and the audience’s experience.
A sprawling, stuffed landscape
I was lucky enough to witness a preview performance of this groundbreaking new play Monday night, and it was among the most awkward, uncomfortable, and electrifying nights of theater I’ve ever had.
I literally didn’t know what to expect, other than I knew we wouldn’t be seated and we could follow the characters around, pretty much eavesdropping on the various sets of action – like invisible characters ourselves.
That was both tremendously freeing as an audience member, but also tremendously confusing and frustrating. Be forewarned – this is not a handicapped-accessible venue, and in addition to the two levels of library stacks, the basement level is reachable on one side down a very narrow set of stairs, to a cold collection of rooms I’m pretty sure no one who used the library before had seen.
The challenge “The Stacks” presents is how to take all the action in, which is literally impossible during one performance (fans of the genre or this stellar production team should try to see it more than once).
There are scenes unfolding simultaneously at several locations across the three floors at Sound Conservatory – which took over the long-vacant library this past November.
The brilliant creative team — Ben Gougeon (creator/writer/director), Alex Richardson (writer), and Dominic Ramirez (art director) – has conjured a moody, atmospheric, intense tale, complemented by first-rate acting, often in low voices and dimly lit settings.
The difficulty for audiences comprehending everything includes only being able to see snippets of conversations and not knowing the back stories of any of these 1957 characters, compounded also by a frequent clanging sound (on purpose) in the 121-year-old building. That also makes it very hard to care about any one of them.
Honestly, there’s plenty of conflict and emotional performances packed into “The Stacks,” but I failed to grasp why anyone would have a motive to kill poor Samantha, whose obituary is read by the investigator at the play’s end.
Much of the credit for the intriguing nature of “The Stacks” is due to Ramirez, a St. Ambrose theater and graphic design alum, who created the fascinatingly authentic look of the show. He has seen an influential show in New York City more than a dozen times, which inspired both him and Gougeon to bring immersive theater here.
Gougeon’s first experience with immersive theater was seeing Punchdrunk’s “Sleep No More” in 2014 at the McKittrick Hotel in New York. The experience (which opened in 2011 and has run continuously, scheduled to close this March 31) is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy “…through a darkly cinematic lens. The story unfolds through an awe-inspiring blend of acrobatic choreography, film noir soundtrack, and countless rooms of densely detailed atmosphere,” according to that show synopsis.
The rooms in “The Stacks” are similarly densely detailed, as the stacks are strewn with books and are not neatly in rows, and there are tons of props galore that reveal haunting scenes. One on the upper level is a private confessional (filled with small electric candles) where audience members are guided one by one to hear a confession from one of the characters – I heard the infidelity of the boyfriend, and from the object of his fateful affection.
Each character except the investigator reveals a confession during the course of the play, and those were perhaps the most exciting, unusual scenes for me. Stewards (who don’t speak) guide audience members in and out of this room.
The rooms in the janitor’s basement level are amazingly stuffed with clues and period details – including shelves with old typewriters; a dark room with many hanging photos and negatives, and a women’s-themed room, with Tide ads, hanging dresses, paper clothes mock-ups, a lamp on the floor with a copy of “The Second Sex,” and I unfortunately didn’t get to see a scene in either of those settings.
Fortunately for audiences, the actors are looping scenes (doing them more than once) for people who may miss them the first time around.
Another eerie, memorable aspect to the show was in two sung Latin chants by the cast (fitting for the Catholic college) — first a “Kyrie Eleison” (“Lord have mercy”) and later the Confession and Forgiveness (at the start of the Catholic Mass), which floated over a spoken Hail Mary prayer.
The multi-talented Bradley Robert Jensen doubles here as costume designer; Roger Pavey Jr. is assistant director/stage manager; Jacqueline Isaacson is intimacy coordinator, and Ron May and Sound Conservatory owner Andrzej Kozlowski served as music consultants.
A Sound investment
Like me, Kozlowski said after the preview that he’d never seen immersive theater before. Part of the basement he likened to “something out of a ‘Saw’ movie; it was creepy.”
“I’ve experienced something I never experienced and I’ve had the incredible opportunity to be here during rehearsals,” Kozlowski said Monday night. “It’s crazy — experiencing it is one thing, but knowing the amount of precision that has to go into the timing, it’s been, wow. Picture an orchestra playing the same piece in different parts of the building, and they have to somehow stay together. It’s hard enough getting an orchestra to play together as a group.”
“It’s really cool to see — before we tear out the stacks, to see it used as a library,” he said, noting all the stacks were empty before the production brought in the voluminous number of props. “It’s just wild. I think it’s a really cool way to say bye to this library, to have this happen here, the first of its kind.”
After the March 2nd closing of “The Stacks,” Sound Conservatory plans to take out all the stacks to create a new 210-seat performance hall, with a 24-foot-highl ceiling.
There will be a mezzanine level with about 80 seats, with stairs on each side, and 130 seats on the main floor. Kozlowski will work with Rexroat Sound on the sound design for the space, which he hopes to have ready by an April 13 concert.
Sound Conservatory is hosting one concert each month, through June 2024 so far.
They had about 130 people for last month’s Mozart birthday celebration concert (where the pianos are currently displayed), and ticket sales for upcoming concerts are going well, Kozlowski said.
For an all-Chopin birthday program March 6 (the Romantic composer was born March 1, 1810), Alex Gilson (who teaches at Sound Conservatory) will play all four impromptus.
Kozlowski will perform the “Heroic” Polonaise, in A-flat major, Clara Nielsen will play a Nocturne in G major, and the Variations for Flute and Piano in E major will be from flutist Paul Mizzi and Kozlowski. The concert will feature a piano tuned to the specifications during Chopin’s time.
Performances of “The Stacks” will be at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturdays, Feb. 22-24, and Feb. 29, March 1-2. Tickets are $25, or $10 for students and seniors, available HERE. There is a $50 ticket price meant for the production to recoup all its costs.
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