New York, NY (Top40 Charts) In conjunction with the premiere of the immersive production Theater of the Mind, co-created by creator of the Broadway hit American Utopia,
David Byrne, and writer Mala Gaonkar, Byrne has created a series of seven lenticular artwork images in five editions and a short piece of new music to coincide with the production.
The lenticular proceeds benefit Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) Off-Center and Arbutus, Byrne's non-profit which celebrates, re-presents and amplifies ideas found in surprising places, ensuring that our picture of the world contains the joy that it should, and is accessible to everyone. "I wanted to create works for the lobby of Theater of the Mind that would embody the themes touched on in the show," he says. "In this case, malleable identity. We're constantly changing. Do we even have a fixed self? I realized I could do this with lenticulars. I took photo portraits of the band members and crew of American Utopia and combined three different faces in each lenticular. Depending on where you stand when looking at one of these, you will see different faces, and sometimes more than one face at the same time. Folks who have seen them find them a bit surprising and also a little disturbing. I like that."
The lenticulars are available for purchase arbutus.world/theater-of-the-self/.
Theater of the Mind was originally scheduled to debut in summer 2020 but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The production takes place in a 15,000-square-foot historic warehouse within the adaptive reuse campus of York Street Yards in Denver's Clayton neighborhood. Theater of the Mind takes audience members through an immersive journey of self-reflection, discovery, and imagination, inspired by and grounded in neuroscience. Theater of the Mind is led by a Guide, whose stories are inspired by the creators' lives. Audiences explore how they perceive the world through sensory experiments that reveal the inner mysteries of the brain.
"I hope participants will be as surprised by these experiences as I have been - it really is a new kind of theater," says Byrne, who also composed a short piece of new music for Theater of the Mind that attendees will hear as a recording while they experience the production in person. This music is now available for streaming on theateroftheminddenver.com/about.
Critics are already raving about Theater of the Mind, with The Denver Post calling it "a full-blown, immersive experience about time, identity, perception and, best of all, tenderness," and the New York Times proclaiming it to be "Byrne's most ambitious art project to date." The Denver
Gazette says it's "the largest immersive theatrical adventure ever attempted in Denver to date." Early audience feedback is just as rapturous, with attendees describing the experience as "like nothing I've experienced before," "revolutionary," "magical" and "mind-blowing."
