Written by Jonathan Tignor
Though the Norberg Studio in Cornerstone may not seem like your typical location for a motel, Colorado College’s Theater and Dance Department set up shop there and brought the Paradise Motel to life last weekend. Paradise Motel is loosely derived from the well-known playwright and author Sam Shepard, and the play creates an almost-interactive and multisensory experience. The continuous installation performance enlivened the wide array of theatrical possibility and actively engaged the audience in the modern motel milieu.
“Paradise Motel was conceived as the best way to stage very short scenes written by Sam Shepard—little glimpses of different worlds—in the setting of a seedy motel,” said Andrew Manley, the director of the show. As the audience enters the studio, they fill an open space surrounded by visible motel rooms, in which the actors perform various activities. Some stare at the ceiling, men play checkers, one man stares at a sex doll on his bed. The performances expressed the mere wanderings of personal life. Crickets chirped softly in the background under the glare of a bright neon sign that read PARADISE MOTEL.
Part of Paradise Motel’s allure was the vast differences between each of the scenes; there was an incredible range of both realism and absurdity. At times, I wondered if I had fallen into the middle of a David Foster Wallace book. For example, one scene featured a man and a maid practicing swimming on a bed, each intensely paddling through imaginary water. “Each scene simply tried to be true to what Shepard had written,” shared Manley. “The beauty of his writing is that each was so different. The people were different, the situations they were in so different, from the severely realistic to the more absurd and dreamlike.”
However, no matter how bizarre or how commonplace the scenes were, they were all captivating. The audience would wander through the center of the motel space feeling like unseen eavesdroppers, wanting to be as attentive to every scene as possible. Though most gatherings formed around the livelier rooms, occasionally a crowd would form around a quiet room. Nothing especially notable would take place, but there was still a sense of something to be gained, something worth viewing.
“I did like how in many of the scenes nothing much happened,” said Manley, “and yet this was watchable. After all, in much of life—or an average night—nothing much happens!”It would be easy to throw a label like “avant-garde” or “surrealist” on a production like Paradise Motel, but Manley views such tags as trivial. “Ultimately they don’t mean anything, they’re not helpful,” he said. “But theater is unique in that it can change its form so easily . . . you name it, it can do it. That’s what makes it exciting; the days of an audience watching a play sitting in straight rows facing the action in a church-like atmosphere are over—well, should be over.” This evolution of performance that Paradise Motel represents is exactly what allowed for such an engaging experience.
The audience wasn’t filled with passive spectators; they were necessarily active participants. You couldn’t just sit yourself down and consume, decisions had to be made as assorted auditory cues pulled you in all directions. “They could choose what they were interested in, what they wanted to watch,” said Manley. “It was the individual member of the audience’s choice. You weren’t stuck watching a play you didn’t like or relate to or found too long (and how often does that happen?)—you could choose what to watch!” Those in attendance had to work and make their own choices, in no way was the performance a passive experience. In doing so, playgoers could reach deeper realizations about themselves.
“Realize why you were attracted to a particular scene or character—it’s because they resonated with you,” Manley stated.