https://https://anchor.fm/happy-hour-on-the-fringe/episodes/S5-EP8-Candle-House-Collective-e14333u

April Rose:

Hello and welcome to Happy Hour in the Fringe. FringeArts is Philadelphia’s premiere presenter of contemporary performing arts. I’m April Rose, the independent artist programs manager here at FringeArts and today we invite you to join us in a happy hour conversation with Evan Neiden of Candle House Collective. Candle House Collective is an experimental theater company that creates performances for one audience member at a time. Their work typically takes place over the phone, which is why I was so excited to speak to Evan today and talk about how this work is made, what inspires the work, and how to engage with audiences remotely, which we’re all have been doing for the first time, many of us. This past year. Hey, Evan. How are you?

Evan Neiden:

I’m doing all right. How are you?

April Rose:

I am doing great. Evan, I gave a little bit of an introduction to Candle House and what you all do, but I was wondering if you could start us off with a little bit of a history of yourself and how you started this work?

Evan Neiden:

Absolutely. Well, I came to immersive theater from a few different places. One of them was, I had a fairly early fascination with alternate reality games. For those who aren’t familiar, alternate reality games are, in very basic terms, internet scavenger hunts that take the form of puzzles, and drops, and trails and discoveries across the internet. And they’ve been around since the internet was starting out.

These digital, long form, transmedia hunts that anyone with internet connection can get involved in and discover. And what I always loved about them, or some of them, is that they would adapt their content and their gameplay to the players sometimes. The game would actually develop in response to how the players were playing. And that’s something I was really drawn to, because the adaptation was taking place, not in a passive way, the way actors on the stage might adapt to an audience. Not passive, but in a cerebral way, but in a very real, tangible, intimate, immediate kind of way.

And to me, that represented something I wanted to see in theater as well. The idea that an audience member can actively change a space by being in it and they can do that wherever they are in the world.

April Rose:

Yeah. That’s awesome. Did you start out with performance, or were you more of a game person when you started creating this? Or what is your history with, I guess theater, we might call it, or drama?

Evan Neiden:

I have a theater background and also a background in traditional folk storytelling. And we consider ourselves to be storytellers first, because that’s always what I thought of alternate reality games, is that they were, it was this storytelling I’d never seen before, but it felt uniquely authentic. We’re very storytelling oriented, even the name of our company Candle House Collective, is a reference to probably my favorite folktale, bar none, called The Cottage of Candles.

Evan Neiden:

Our pilot project was called Lastcandlearx, also a reference to that story, which was pretty heavily inspired by both folklore and that alternate reality game format. It invited 50 participants to consistently engage with the world we’ve created over the course of about five months, and to shape it and affect it as we went along.

And from there, my background in theater, in storytelling and with alternate reality games, plus an early love of haunted houses really taught me a lot about what mediums, just how many mediums have the capacity to create this intimate, adaptable space. And how those could be applied, not just on a five month level, like an alternate reality game, or like our first project. But on a micro level as well, which is what led us to the shorter form ticketed experiences, which more closely resemble theater than alternate reality games.

April Rose:

Yeah. Let’s talk about the experience a little bit, because most of our listeners, I’m assuming wouldn’t have had this specific experience of seeing one of your, or not seeing, is a hard word to use, but experiencing one of your shows. If I’m an audience member for a Candle House Collective show what am I walking into exactly? What’s the experience like for me?

Evan Neiden:

In terms of our recent work, we are very much an experimental theater company. We like to play with all the mediums that are available to us, but we’ve made our home in your telephone. Your cellphone. For one of our standard shows you’d purchase a ticket, you’d get an email giving you some very simple instructions like, “Find yourself in your bedroom and turn down the lights.” Or, “Make a playlist of 20 songs that mean a lot to you.” Or, “Have a pencil and paper at the ready.”

And that, plus a very vague description of what the piece is on the website, is all you’re going to get. And then at the time that your experience is scheduled for you’ll get a call. You pick up the phone and your experience begins. Our one guarantee is that barring some light roles, maybe in some you’ll be a volunteer for a help line, in others you’ll be somebody going through a series of bureaucratic paperwork.

We have a lot of respect for lark and what that is, but that’s not what we do. We ask and expect that participants come as they are, and just come as themselves for everything that we do, which I think allows for a certain level of what’s going to happen when you pick up the phone, because you know at the very least nothing’s expected of you before then.

April Rose:

Yeah. I mean, I’d like that. And we had talked about this before when we first met, and when I looked at some of the shows on your site. And I do like the idea that i as an audience member don’t have to come up with too much, because then you can just really, really be in it, as opposed to if I feel like I have to come up with my backstory or try to be clever, or try to do some type of role play, then I’m less focusing on what’s happening and more focusing on what my next move is. I do like the idea that it’s fully just me showing up and getting hit with whatever I’m getting hit with on the other end of the phone.

Evan Neiden:

Oh, sorry.

April Rose:

oh, no. Go ahead.

Evan Neiden:

Oh. And that’s our theater background at work, because a lot of us do come from, are either actors, or directors, or writers of theater, among other things. And we know the value of being able to escape the kind of responsibility that one might be used to. Now, in the stories you might be given other responsibilities, but starting from a clean slate. Starting with a clean slate is very important to us, because when you’re about to hear a story or when you’re about to see a play all you know is that you’re going to sit down when the lights go down, and something is going to happen.

And if all we’re asking you to be is yourself, then that’s all you have to do. You just have to wait for your phone to ring.

April Rose:

Yeah. Tell me a little bit about the other I guess, members of the collective. Who are the artists that are on the other end of the phone? Who are we meeting in this experience?

Evan Neiden:

Sure. We work with a pretty wide variety of actors, but our core team is currently myself, I’m the creator and I create most of the offerings. John Ertman is our director in residents. And we have some core ensemble members that, fans of Candle House will definitely be familiar with. Katy Murphy, Taylor Feld, and our intrepid logistics manager Kevin Garcia. And that at the moment is our core, but that’s in a constant state of flux, and we’re always very interested in adding more people. And embracing new voices.

In fact, we just announced our incubator program. Candle House Collective Fire Starter, which is going to be a program for new voices in the immersive style to create participatory pieces in collaboration with us.

April Rose:

That’s really exciting. That’s cool news to learn about. When I’m experiencing a piece and I’m on my phone, and I have someone on the other end, the performer on the other end, are they usually working with a script or are they improving a lot with the way that I respond? What is the structure like in the creative stages of it?

Evan Neiden:

We like to, well we tend to rather, keep those things behind the curtain, because really the most honest answer I can give you is there’s no one formula.

April Rose:

Okay.

Evan Neiden:

Every show, every offering necessitates something different. And everything calls for a different kind of interaction, a different kind of composition. What we focus on, and what we have focused on, one of our phrases that defines our creative process is, a story is a conduit for a connection, not the other way around.

April Rose:

Okay.

Evan Neiden:

What that means to us is, we always begin with that feeling, with that sense of, we do this as a form of connection and what kind of connection do we want this to be? How do we want to feel? What feeling do we want to offer other people? How do we want them to see themself or their space, or their loved ones, or their surroundings on mass when they hang up the phone?

April Rose:

Okay.

Evan Neiden:

And from there we find a story, either we find a story that matches that and that we feel can engender that feeling, or we build a story around that feeling.

April Rose:

Interesting.

Evan Neiden:

And because of that, the form stuff happens later. We don’t start with that, right? Because again, the nice thing about being an experimental theater company, is we do get to experiment and we get to tell stories on our terms, which is where this whole phone theater thing came from in the first place.

April Rose:

Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about your most recent project? What is on sale ticket wise right now? What this most recent piece is?

Evan Neiden:

As of the date of this recording our first Fire Starter offering is going on sale in a few days.

April Rose:

Okay.

Evan Neiden:

I can’t say a ton about that at the moment, but by the time this comes out go to our website, tickets will most definitely be on sale. Our most recent project though, and the one that is still also as of the date of this recording, is still running, is our help series, which is, our help series is three unique experiences all founded around the idea of the Etcetera helpline. This [inaudible 00:14:10] helpline for life’s inevitable everything else, is what it says.

April Rose:

Okay.

Evan Neiden:

That’s one of those, in which the participant takes on the role of a volunteer, and is given a very short training, sort of, before being jettisoned into a situation where they are being called to for help by someone. They’re being asked for help.

April Rose:

Okay.

Evan Neiden:

And one of our longest running pieces was actually a part of that series. It started in early 2020, called Claws. It was a 30 to 50 minute telephonic thriller for an audience of one, and that one, I think is a good example of what the standard of our work is. That one’s on the shorter side, for sure, but it’s a good example of, this is, if you want a sample of what we do, that’s a good place to start.

April Rose:

All right. And that’s Claws, you said? Is that the piece you’re describing?

Evan Neiden:

Claws. Yes.

April Rose:

Claw. One of the things that was so, when we first met and you called me about participating in the Fringe Festival, one of the reasons I was so interested to talk to you, is that our artists that we normally work with in the Fringe Festival are live, in person performers. And you have been creating this work that, “Works.” In the COVID safe space for long before we were forced into isolation. I want to ask, as I have been asking so many artists, how working is different in this period, but have you noticed audiences reacting differently or being more accustomed to this kind of work? Or how has anything changed for you in COVID, or has it at all?

Evan Neiden:

Sure. One of the things, one of the biggest changes we noticed was the difference in the stories that we were telling. Before the pandemic we found ourselves creating work that embraced a degree of surrealism a lot of the time, that for which the phone was the most realistic conduit. But in which it was that, in which the phone was a conduit, because the phone these days, in the days before quarantine was something people were still used to. But I feel like ironically, once quarantine began people started having phone calls less, because why have a phone call when you can just be on Zoom and see somebody?

Evan Neiden:

Phone calls, which were already dying out a little bit as a mode of communication, especially among younger generations, were being replaced by text, Insta message, video of any kind. And then the pandemic happened and that switch happened completely, and we realized that we didn’t necessarily have to turn the phone into something else anymore, because it already is something else. In this time of isolation, a phone call means something unfamiliar. It means something we’re not expecting.

Most of the calls I get these days are reminders for meetings or spam, or things like that. Or wrong numbers, which I absolutely, I love getting wrong numbers. And I think help was a response to that, because we figured, “Okay, if phone calls have become as unfamiliar as they are, we don’t really need to work to make them strange anymore. We can just create things that would be on the other end of the line.” That’s what the help series was. It’s, you are a helpline representative and the calls you’re getting are, barring some fantasy elements or horror elements, or supernatural elements, fairly true to form.

And we found that people responded to those a lot better than we were expecting, I think because they didn’t need that threshold of revelation, of transition anymore, because getting a phone call is in and of itself a threshold of revelation.

April Rose:

Yeah. I get what you mean. I feel like, I mean most of my calls at this point are reminding me of my auto policy that I don’t actually have, and they’re just these robo calls. The idea that a phone call is already, it’s already something a little bit strange and if someone’s calling me I automatically start sweating and wondering why they’re calling me, as opposed to shooting me a text. Yeah. It is an interesting space to experience surprise and differentness.

Thank you for commenting on the COVID. I know that you’re already a pro in, “Distanced.” Experiences. Most of the artists that I speak to will talk so much about moving something over that was already in an in person space, moving it over into a digital space and talking about recording things, and putting something on Zoom and then, or taking a video or something. But to my knowledge none of your experiences are recorded. They’re all very in the moment, and very reactionary. Right? There’s no videos, or audio podcast version of what this is?

Evan Neiden:

Everything we’ve done so far has been live, because again, we come from a theater background, we know that live theater has that thing, that undefinable X factor that you can’t get from pre-recorded media. There are plenty of wonderful things that come from pre-recorded media. We love radio dramas and audio dramas, probably more than anybody else. But there is this electricity that comes with that, and when you add the uncertainty of something like a phone call it allows people to take the leap of faith, a similar kind of leap of faith to walking into the kinds of spaces that immersive theater usually inhabits, that may not look like traditional theaters, that may not look like a space that we understand.

A ringing phone can be anything. And to us, that potential energy there is probably the most inspiring part of this, of what we do.

April Rose:

That’s very exciting. Yeah. The idea. And so, in most of these experiences, this is such a specific question, in most of these experience or all of them the audience member is receiving the call, they are not making the call in?

Evan Neiden:

Yes. They’re receiving the call. There have been a few where they do actually make the call in. But again, it all depends on the story and the connection.

April Rose:

On the story. Yeah. Well, that’s awesome. I mean, I have yet to experience Claws. I saw the trailer for it. I’m very scared of it. It looks incredibly spooky, but it’s something that I live alone and I’m scared to call into, or have someone call me with that one. But I’m trying to muster up the courage, because I know the audience is supposed to be in their bedroom in the dark, and I don’t do scary things very well. But I’m excited to try it out. And I’m excited to see the new work that’s coming out. You said this week?

Evan Neiden:

Yep. This week.

April Rose:

Awesome. Can you tell us Evan, where to find you, where to find Candle House Collective, where can we access this work?

Evan Neiden:

Absolutely. You can visit candlehousecollective.com and you can follow us on Instagram @candlehousecollective.

 

Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us today Evan. And we’ll hope to see what you bring to the 2021 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. We hope to see you there, and thank you so much.