FreeFall’s ‘interactive audio book’ opens Friday

Eric Davis never met an envelope he couldn’t push.

Davis, the artistic director of St. Petersburg’s freeFall Theater company, has conceived and created a theatrical experience that blends traditional storytelling with video and audio technology, old-school narrative with augmented reality and a bumped-up level of interactivity.

Opening Friday, The Rose and the Beast marks freeFall’s return to its traditional black box space, indoors and air-conditioned, after eight months of “drive-in” shows put up on a parking lot stage.

Any resemblance between traditional freeFall productions and this adaptation of Francesca Lia Block’s best-selling book (which is subtitled Fairy Tales Retold) is purely coincidental.

“This project’s exciting just because it’s completely different than anything we’ve done,” Davis says with noticeable enthusiasm. “It’s kind of like we’ve taken this multi-media audio book of Francesca Lia Block – she gave us permission to adapt the book directly. It’s all digital performers, and it’s really all sorts of interesting stuff. There are some magical things that happen.”

The “play” moves the audience – in groups of up to four – through nine separated rooms, one group at one time in one room (it’s all controlled by an unseen stage manager, who’s there – via closed-circuit – to make sure everything runs smoothly). “People move through the play as opposed to sitting down and watching the play – because it’s so heavily technology-based, this takes the concept a step further,” offers Davis.

Working on a “set.” Photo provided.

Scenic designers Tom Hansen, Rebekah Lazaridis and Steven K. Mitchell each created three rooms, representing nine of Block’s stories.

Here’s how it works. Pre-show, audience members will be schooled in downloading the Zappar app, available for free on iOS or Android devices. FreeFall has loaners for those without phones of their own.

All sorts of “magical” things transpire in each room, Davis says. “This multi-media audio book basically has been deconstructed into all sorts of pieces, and it’s been hidden, like an Easter Egg hunt, among the rooms that are inspired by the stories.”

Each story is narrated while you’re in the room, and scanning phones to app code indicators at various places conjure video, audio, special effects and more.

Michael Raabe and Amanda Elen composed songs and interstitial music.

“If you happen to sit on this chair in a room, something around you happens … maybe the audio changes, the lighting shifts, a projection happens … something happens,” Davis explains.

“There might appear a note saying ‘choose between this and this.’ On the table, there are two choices. You touch one thing and it makes something happen. You touch the other thing and it makes something else happen.”

Visitors will be given the option to experience the rooms individually, or in groups up to four. Your party is your party, and you will be accommodated. “Some people,” believes Davis, “will go like hotcakes trying to scan everything. Some people might scan one or two things and spend a lot of the time just looking around. So that’s your own experience. You may actually hear very different things than the rest of your party when you go through the experience.”

The theater’s director of public relations Matthew McGee says comparisons to Disney’s Haunted Mansion – with a different illusion around every turn, depending on where you focus your attention – are valid up to a point.

“The narrative in the show is very theatrical and very traditional,” McGee explains. “It’s just experienced in a different way. I tell people it’s like the successful Van Gogh exhibit at the Dali – except for the fact, moreso than that, it has a strong narrative. You’re actually in the book.

“We don’t want people to think it’s like a haunted house, with people jumping out at you. It’s nothing like that.”

Davis, who’ll announce freeFall’s next season in late summer (expect a few more technical innovations and experiments), considers the “drive-in” series a success. That was created purely as a response to the pandemic.

Still, moving back indoors – with something new and exciting like The Rose and the Beast – has been a long time coming.

“With vaccinations and relaxed CDC guidelines, it will be more relaxed,” he says. “People going through will be just with their own party, so masks will be optional, whatever people want personally to do. Of course, if people are not vaccinated, we recommend they follow CDC guidelines and wear a mask. But that’s up to them.

“I don’t think it’ll feel like a ‘Covid survival theater choice,’ like a lot of the things we all came up with.”

Details and tickets here.