Interview With Creator Kristen Renee Gorlitz

June is nearly upon us, and that means the start of the Hollywood Fringe Festival. I’ve been involved with the festival for years as a playwright, producer, actor, audience member and award judge, so I’m always excited to see what new shows are premiering, This year, I’m especially excited about Kristen Renee Gorlitz’s Mixed Reality play, ROOT. Kristen is an incredible storyteller, so I was delighted to hear about her immersive theatre show about life and not dying. BONUS, my readers, you can get use code ROOTTHEPLAY for 25% off all shows (only $11.25/ticket) or code WORLDPREMIERE for a FREE Ticket to the Preview show June 7th at 3:45pm. Tickets available here.

Creator Kristen Renee Gorlitz

What is ROOT about?

ROOT is a Mixed Reality play about not dying. We want to live and we want to live well, but what will we destroy in order to live forever? With life itself on the line, are we willing to risk the entire planet for a few to survive forever in a digital afterlife? 

So this is an immersive show. What should audience members expect to do during performances?

Great question. You can expect to be immersed in the story from the moment you step into the line queue. You're a part of the show. Everyone is invited to this Ascension ceremony in order to witness the miracle of the digital afterlife. You'll be able to use your phones the entire show to take pictures and document what you see. But the most spectacular part comes when our main character Pluto transitions into the digital world. At this moment, you'll take out your phones and see a digital human come to life in front of your eyes (through your screens). You'll still see the world around you, but now with a digital overlay.  Now you’ll get to see first hand the interplay between the real world and the digital afterlife.

What inspired this story?

It was covid, we were locked up, and I wanted to find a way to survive. I learned about the polycrisis we were facing and I had to find hope. I read and worked and talked and learned, and found that the best hope we have is each other. We are each other's safety nets, catching each other so we don't fall too far. But when trust is missing, these safety nets break. So if we can start to rebuild trust, we start to change the world for the better.

How did you decide that immersive theatre was the right medium for ROOT?

Well, I sort of answered that, but there's more. I brought on a writing partner, Oliver Britten, because writing alone in an experimental medium is maddening. Eventually, he started doing theater and I helped him out last year at Hollywood Fringe Fest. That opened the door to this idea. I had been so stuck trying to figure out storytelling for a VR headset, and then this theater thing cracked that wide open and said to me: theater is the real life virtual reality. There's no better medium for you to tell this story in.  

What was your process for bringing ROOT to life?

Failure after failure. Seriously, I quit this so many times. But I really needed to know an answer to how we survive. So I kept coming back with the hope that I could figure something out that others had a hard time saying. I have more than a novel's worth of failed ideas. But the question haunted me until I came up with this digital ghost story. 

Can you tell us anything about the cake?

It's Pluto's birthday, so there has to be cake! And Oliver randomly texted me one day with some crazy recipe he made up for beet cake. It looked delicious so I word for word copied his text into the script. I still haven't eaten this cake, but Oliver and my producer Emily are going to make it for us, and if you buy a VIP ticket, you'll get to eat it too! Otherwise, the virtual cake you'll get won't taste as good (or taste at all). 

Where and when is the show running and where do people get tickets?

We're at the Broadwater Main Stage, which is near Santa Monica and Vine: 1076 Lillian Way, Los Angeles, CA 90038

You can get tickets at the Hollywood Fringe Website here: https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/13518?tab=tickets 

Please come and see us!