Audience

Instructions for Our Immersive/Experimental Theatre Production in an Abandoned Middle School in Bushwick

If you are receiving this missive, you have purchased a ticket for The Ducks Have Flown, an immersive/experimental theatre experience inspired and maddeningly loosely based on both the novel The Catcher in the Rye and the 1944 film Gaslight. Congratulations on your good taste, your sense of adventure, and your stout and noble heart. Please note the following in preparing for your upcoming visit to our tiny and wondrous universe:

1. It goes without saying that you must both read the book and watch the film, despite the fact that the performance will bear little resemblance to either. Many of our scenelets (“scenes” without formal, prohibitive structure or beholdenness to theatrical or social conventions) contain “Easter eggs” that can only be discovered and recognized by an astute observer well-steeped in the imagery, motifs, tropes and symbols of our “inspiration-texts.”

2. Smoking is prohibited throughout the performance, as is texting, eating, laughing, crying, loving, and foraging. A feed bag will be provided for you and will be your only sustenance for the duration of the performance.

3. No flash photography, note-taking, cryptography, card-counting, or body-switching please.

4. Topiary is a living and vital part of the sensory experience of our performancizing (“performing” that is less about presentationality and more about engagement with the senses and the moment of discovery). If you are allergic to any growing things—even and especially non-indigenous tendril-species and sensuous fruits—please speak to your doctor about taking an immune-suppressant in advance of the performance.

5. Please contact us at least 24 hours prior to the start of the performance if you have an aversion to tight spaces, low oxygenation, or being set on fire. We cannot promise to honor any requests, but knowing your preferences will help us to know exactly where your vulnerabilities lie and how we might best exploit them to ensure that the performance has the greatest impact on your body and soul.

6. It is recommended that you self-administer an enema at least three hours prior to the start of the performance, but no more than six hours prior to the end. We have found that audience-experientiorators who follow this instruction have an eminently more enjoyable and impactful experience.

7. A package will arrive for you in the mail. Bury it without opening it. Never speak of it to anyone. Ever.

8. We may use the personal information you provided on our registration form to contact people from your past and integrate them into the performance space. If you do see anyone you may know or have known (an ex-lover, a deceased grandparent or pet, the pharmacist from your old CVS when you lived in Queens for a summer), please do not speak to them unless addressed directly, lest you dismantle the fragile and tenuous boundary between audience and performer, living and dead.

If for any reason you feel you cannot meet the expectations above, please place your ticket in the mouth of a pure white dove and release it into the sky at dusk. Otherwise, we look forward to seeing (hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling) you this weekend.