Cinematic Theatre: Exodus Ensemble

Photo: Gregory J. Fields.

anta Fe’s most immersive theatre experience begins with a text message that includes a suggestion to wear sensible shoes and clothes appropriate to the weather. From the start, it’s clear that this won’t be a standard theatre outing. I follow the driving directions in the text down the driveway of a Santa Fe East Side property to enter the world of the Exodus Ensemble. A lively guide, already in character, meets me outside the house, already setting the stage for the ensemble’s adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Ivanov. I and a dozen other attendees mingle on the portal until we’re invited inside—into this troupe’s performance space, in which they craft singular theatrical experiences several times a week. Over the next three-and-a-half hours, Exodus leads us on a collective journey.

SWe traipse throughout the property as the plot unfolds. Scenes skip from bedroom to living room, from garage to bathroom, as we follow the story of two siblings grieving their dead parents, and their friend Ivanov’s tumultuous relationship with his ailing wife. At times we audience members are flies on the wall. At others we’re participants, even co-conspirators. We hear confessions and witness intimate

moments. The energy vacillates—one instant it’s frenetic to the point of boiling over, the next it’s jubilant. We dance, we laugh, we sing along. And then everything is so still that a single breath breaks the silence. As audience members, we’re close enough to catch every shade of emotion play across the actors’ faces in the enthralling way we’re used to from film and television, but that’s difficult to capture at the physical distances usually required in a theatre. Once, as she makes an impossible plea, an actor grabs my hand, thus making me emotionally complicit in a way I’ve never experienced in traditional theatre. Slowly, the snowball of tension builds, carrying us along to a dramatic finale that still lingers in my memory. Environmental and immersive theatrical experiences in the United States tend to stay in one room or setting, and/or don’t involve the actors interacting with the audience; thus, the Exodus Ensemble’s creations are standouts. Which is entirely the point, according to director April Cleveland. “Theatre is deadly boring and emaciated,” she says. “How could we elevate theatre to compete with HBO and Netflix? How could we make something live that’s good enough to binge?”

Cleveland founded this delightfully unorthodox ensemble in the summer of 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic had darkened theatres across the country, and her journey to resuscitate her own creativity outside the institutional theatre system led her to imagine days of rehearsing in the mountains, actors’ bodies laid across desert rocks.

With her sights set on Santa Fe, due to her partner’s new teaching gig at their alma mater, St. John’s College, Cleveland sent an e-mail invitation to talented actors she knew from DePaul University, in Chicago. It began: “Your talented, wild presence is requested . . . to create, invent, inaugurate, and articulate a highly ambitious, extremely playful, groundbreaking and desert-shaking new performance ensemble . . . ”

The recipients were professionally adrift. With no callbacks to answer, opening nights to rehearse for, or guest roles to perform, many packed

Opposite: Kent Williams, Upright, mixed media on paper, 24” × 19”. Above, Daniel Sprick, Reclining Nude, oil on panel, 36” × 48”.

Photo: Matt Wade.

their bags to answer Cleveland’s call. Cleveland herself was a large part of the draw. The actors describe her stellar aesthetic sensibilities and her ability to see beyond the text of a script. “April could pull the most human out of me,” says New York City actor Kya Brickhouse. “She taught me to mold characters and stand in my power to convey the story.” The actors arrived in September 2020 and set to work. “We didn’t know how long it would last,” Cleveland says. “We didn’t know if people would ever see it, but we were going to make something.”

Ivanov, their first production, debuted in 2020 to an audience of one. They began regular performances in La Cienega in March 2021, when the widespread availability of vaccines for COVID-19 allowed them to begin hosting small groups, and in March 2022 moved the production to a larger location on Santa Fe’s historic East Side.

Their staging of Ivanov swings between planned moments and improvisations among the actors and with the audience. “We leap, and trust the net will

Photo: Matt Wade.

appear,” explains Gracie Meier, from Chicago. “We trust our scene partners. There’s no script, but there’s a roadmap, and there are plot dominos that have to fall.”

Because each audience reacts to the material differently, each of the more than 50 performances so far has been distinctive. “Every new audience is a new experience,” says Chicagoan Ryan Kirby.

The actively participatory format has particular resonance at this moment in history. “Coming out of the pandemic, we’re all craving humanity,” Brickhouse says. “Art has been one of the only things to uplift spirits. An immersive experience like this makes the audience relive nooks of themselves they’ve suppressed.”

The actors’ living together makes the project financially viable. “It’s the only way to keep overhead low,” Cleveland says. “We’re not paying for things that don’t ultimately result in good theatre.”

Thanks to their similar college experiences and the intimacy of cohabitation, the actors also share a high level of trust. “There’s so much potential for things to go wrong,” Meier says. “It all influences the work, and the work influences us.”

The ensemble has already unveiled a sketch-comedy experience on Sky Railway, the entertainment-oriented reboot of the historic railway line between Santa Fe and Lamy backed by George R. R. Martin.

April Cleveland has big dreams for the Exodus Ensemble. “They’ve taken an extraordinary risk and said ‘no’ to things to be here,” she says of the in-demand actors who have remained part of her ensemble even as show business has begun to come back to life. “I want to honor that by creating a theatre company that has a base in Santa Fe but that penetrates the nation and world. . . . I want to reimagine the American theatre on our own terms.”

For info: exodusensemble.com

—Ashley Biggers

Photo: Gracie Meier.