{"id":11724,"date":"2018-07-05T12:44:24","date_gmt":"2018-07-05T19:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/Becomeimmersed.com\/?p=11724"},"modified":"2019-11-26T11:08:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T19:08:00","slug":"fringe-2018-2cents-theatre-unreal-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/becomeimmersed.com\/fringe-2018-2cents-theatre-unreal-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Fringe 2018: Take a Poetic Walk with 2Cents Theatre Group’s Unreal City"},"content":{"rendered":"
Unreal City,<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Under the brown fog of a winter dawn<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n I had not thought death had undone so many.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n -T.S. Eliot, \u201cThe Wasteland\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m being led down the cracked streets of Hollywood by a brightly dressed woman with a megaphone. She\u2019s giving me a list of rules. A lot<\/i> of rules. Apparently, I\u2019m about to become a brand-new resident of Unreal City, and I need to be prepared before I take my first steps into my new home.<\/span><\/p>\n Before I begin, though, she tells us we\u2019re entering a futuristic, apocalyptic landscape, a place bereft of trust and individuality, where feelings are forbidden and dangerous. In an effort to protect what\u2019s left of \u201ccivilized\u201d<\/span> culture, The Rose Queen has tamped down a revolution of those who, like me, don\u2019t want to walk numb through their lives.\u00a0 <\/span>But there\u2019s a new resistance bubbling underneath the darkened city, and maybe, just maybe, we can help bring it back into the light.<\/span><\/p>\n 2cents Theatre Group\u2019s Unreal City, <\/i>which premiered at this year\u2019s Hollywood Fringe Festival, takes audience members on a long and twisted journey through a sort of augmented-reality version of Los Angeles; using the familiar landscape as a backdrop for a post-modern world designed and directed by perhaps one of the finest works of poetry ever-written, T.S. Eliot\u2019s \u201cThe Wasteland.\u201d<\/span> It\u2019s ambitious, it\u2019s well-timed, it\u2019s beautiful in parts and, despite its best efforts, unavoidably flawed in others.\u00a0 <\/span>Yet it never wavers from its intention: to make the text of \u201cThe Wasteland\u201d<\/span> come physically alive.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n