SPOTLIGHTING VENUES & PERFORMERS POSITIVE CHANGE THROUGH IMMERSIVE THEATER BY SAM BLUM IN 2008, after spending years performing internationally, Patrick Mueller returned to Lakewood, Colorado, where he grew up. He believed he could use his background in contemporary dance and theater to position Denver as one of the country’s top performance art scenes. So, Mueller used all of his savings on a warehouse space in the Globeville neighborhood and created Control Group Productions. For several years, Control Group was based primarily in this performance space, where artists were given the opportunity to produce their original work. However, according to Mueller, the venue-based model was not sustainable, and he searched for other ways Control Group could have a greater impact. The limitations that came with working in such a small space meant that Mueller had to be creative in conceptualizing Control Group’s shows. Being able to rehearse and perform in the same space, Mueller explained, allowed them to plan not only how the performers would interact with the space, but also how the audience would. The advantage of controlling how the audience was integrated was Control Group’s first step toward immersive theater, and from there, their work grew into increasingly interactive performances that gave the audience roles in the productions. A few years after Control Group Productions was established, Caroline Sharkey, who had been studying and performing all over the country, decided to relocate to Denver. “Denver [seemed like] a place where you could be an artist and a human,” said Sharkey. “You could have a life alongside your artistic pursuits,” and that’s what drew her here. When she arrived, Sharkey looked into which groups were doing innovative work in the performing arts scene, and it didn’t take long before she came across Control Group. She reached out to Mueller, and they have been working together since. Sharkey now serves as the associate director of the company. Together, Sharkey and Mueller decided to fully transition Control Group away from operating in the warehouse venue, and instead, commit the company to immersive theater. They began doing what Mueller calls which he describes as taking people to specific locations for performances that would challenge the audience’s understanding of those spaces. Control Group continued its nomadic, interactive performances for several years before the COVID pandemic changed the performing arts landscape. “In general, [once the pandemic ended], we thought that audiences would be excited to return to the theater. That’s not the case. Everywhere, people are fatigued of going and sitting down,” said Sharkey. “Everyone [was] craving things to do. Our work is a thing to do rather than a thing to see.” So, Control COURTESY OF CONTROL GROUP PRODUCTIONS “nomadic, site-based work,” COURTESY OF CONTROL GROUP PRODUCTIONS Group leaned into their passion for immersive theater because they felt it was what the community needed. In 2020, only a few months into the pandemic, Mueller coined the term Expeditionary Performance, and it has been a guiding principle for Control Group’s work ever since. Expeditionary performances must be transportive; they must take the audience on a journey that engages their relationships with the environment. “Even though it’s expeditionary, it’s taking you into places that are familiar, places that you have context for,” said Sharkey. “It imbues your memory and your experience much deeper than a traditional performance would because you are getting and being in the context of the experience.” “The work isn’t just site-specific, but it’s site-invested,” Mueller added. According to him, the location provides the context for the art, and the art tells the location’s story, which strengthens the relationship between community and place. Additionally, Expeditionary Performance allows the audience to develop relationships with the art itself. It invites collaboration. It encourages each audience member to engage, and as Mueller explained, “They don’t have to reject values or identities, past history…to participate.” According to Sharkey, this mutual exchange of values and ideas informs all of the work Control Group creates. “And that’s the important thing,” Mueller said. The performance, the art, the experience, it all grows from not only the location of the performance but from the interaction between the artists and the audience. This perspective evolved into another guiding principle for Control Group’s work. They want to reframe people’s perception of art in general. Rather than the long-held view that art is solely a creation of the artist, a final, decisive product, Control Group wants people to see art as an experience meant to be shared. “Most art has incredible capacity to breed empathy. Immersive experiences, I believe, expand that capacity,” Mueller said. Performing within the framework of immersion and engagement allows Control Group to create art that can have a more profound impact on people. Sharkey explained that this impact can shift “how we value the world, the people around us, and the art.” Mueller explained that this framework also allows Control Group to challenge people’s views “in a non-prescriptive way.” Allowing and encouraging the audience to contribute fosters introspection and deeper thinking within the context of the experience. It also fosters dialogue, and this gives them the capacity to create positive change in the community. The pursuit of change has been deeply rooted in the company from the beginning. Control Group was founded, not only on the desire to create innovative art but also on the desire to help people, to help other artists. “We have always been both a company and an artist services programming arm,” Mueller explained. According to Mueller, when he founded the company, artists were not being paid fairly for their work, and “there weren’t pathways to emergence or growth.” Remedying that has always been a driving goal for Control Group. “It all comes from caretaking,” Sharkey said. “Giving artists space to make their own decisions, while still allowing them, and asking them, to create boundaries, has been really vital to the community that we are creating.” Control Group has always been equally devoted to service and creation. And that framework has extended into every aspect of the company. Part of their artist services programming is the Guest Artist Presenting Initiative, which helps emerging performers by providing them with the necessary resources to turn an idea into a production. Mueller said he makes a point to always take meetings with anyone who reaches out to him because Control Group strives to create opportunities for artists who have not found paths to emergence. Adjacent to its broad goal of helping artists, Control Group uses its artist services programming to challenge Denver’s larger perception of the landscape, to change how the community values not only the art, but the people creating it. “Paying fair wages, offering opportunities to other organizations, is both living out our values, but also modeling behavior that we hope spreads,” said Mueller. According to Mueller, there have not been any other theater companies in Denver that have found the same success that Control Group has. “That is absolutely not a brag, that’s a complaint,” Mueller explained. “[As part of my mission], I need to go back and blaze those trails so that other people don’t have to take 15 years to have a paycheck that they can live on.” Through the immersive experience, Control Group takes people on journeys through familiar places, shown in new ways, introspective journeys that challenge the way they see the world. They immerse their audiences in their art and invite them to engage with it. In doing so, they can pursue real, positive change in the community. But Control Group also embodies their model of change through immersion in the way they serve artists. They immerse the company itself into a new framework for the artistic community, one that centers on the livelihood of the artist. It gives artists more value as members of society, and it encourages people to value artists the same way — as people, not just creators. By immersing the company into this framework, Control Group has started to make it a reality. Through immersion, they are changing the artistic community for the better. ■ To learn more about Control Group and their upcoming works, visit controlgroupproductions.org. July 2023 DENVER VOICE 9
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