Suspicious Package: An interactive iPod noir has been delivered to Pittsburgh's Cultural District.

This weekend only Future Tenant is presenting Gyda Arber's Suspicious Package.

Photo Credit: Suspicious Package

Suspicious Package has been labeled an "interactive iPod noir play" and has something to say about the new-wave participatory theatre experience. This is a space where reality, technology and performance all collide.

The play has been adapted for audiences of four or six and unlike other immersive work, this is a play where as an audience member you are given the opportunity to play one of the characters in the play.

Upon arrival you are given a character, a costume and a Microsoft Zune Media Player. The mp3 player acts as your guide through the 45-minute tour around a block of Pittsburgh's cultural district. Each guide plays a character-specific audiovisual file complete with directions around the neighborhood, flashbacks that provide the necessary exposition, and of course a script to be read by you, the actor -- all underscored by an appropriately melodramatic score.

The Power of a Program

It has taken me a while to make a post about Bakerloo Theatre Project's first Pittsburgh season because it has taken me some time to separate what I actually knew when I was buying my ticket and what I took from the performance. This is both a good thing and a thing of questionable worth. What I have learned is that my experience as an audience member of Henry V was entirely altered by one specific reference in the program.