Eschaton is a surreal Zoom nightclub — and a theater for the age of social distancing
You can now hire a magician for a birthday party over Zoom. Companies have reworked escape room puzzles for players who can’t even escape their apartments. Video games like Fortnite and Minecraft are hosting big events like concerts and graduations. As interactive art site No Proscenium notes, Eschaton’s cast includes several veterans of Sleep No More and other prominent productions, trying their hand at a new kind of show. It’s currently in the preview phase, running every Saturday.
The virtual nightclub in Eschaton follows a similar formula to its offline counterparts. Participants buy a ticket and wander between a series of dramatic vignettes, taking in fragments of a loose, nonlinear story. You’re encouraged to dress up for “a night on the town” and have a drink, either alone or with friends. While most of the performers ignore their voyeurs, there’s always a chance of one-on-one interaction and an expectation that you’ll get an experience not quite like anybody else’s.
The experience also plays off the strange intimacy of group video chats. You can’t feel the body heat of another visitor, but you can see everyone else at the top of your Zoom screen, many with their full names on display and their cameras active, giving you a window into their homes. If you stumble onto a room with just a few people, abandoning it feels a little weird — leaving a performer to an empty live stream is somehow more awkward than an empty physical room.
Eschaton adds a gloss of ‘90s cyberpunk movie, taking place in a new reality where a hazy video chat room nightclub really can replace its real-life counterpart... if only because the real thing no longer exists.
If more people decide they can permanently live and work away from America’s biggest cities, it’s not unthinkable that their cultural products might also become a little more diffuse.
See the full story here: https://www.theverge.com/21266127/eschaton-chorus-productions-immersive-theater-zoom-nightclub-experiment