By Mariah Davis

On November 1st, I had the pleasure of attending the MAXmachina weekend event at MITU580 located in Brooklyn, New York. This special one-day event presented a trio of immersive and engaging works representing a cohesive blend of dance, comedy, and technology. The laboratory sets a stage for artists to connect directly with the audience, providing an entrance into the virtual world of impactful storytelling. The first showings of the evening were presented as a double feature, with performances Vibrating Waiting for You to Touch followed by Have a Great Night! These two sets highlighted human connection through comedy and recognizing the faults in one’s character in a day and age of social media and smartphone addiction.

Vibrating Waiting for You to Touch is our opening performance, directed by Julianna Johnston, with sound design by Dylan Marx, and choreography by Annelise Gehling and Lavy. This intense and strangely humorous performance piece is presented in three acts, merging interpretive dance with the digital screens upon our smartphones. It challenges the question of how we are able to lose ourselves in mindless scrolling on our phones and the emotional and physical process of losing connection with our sense of touch for ourselves and towards others. The dancers Gehling and Lavy make their grand entrance in the darkened theater, and the deafening silence, accompanied by the array of vibrating phones on the floor, creates a tense, eerie atmosphere. An arrangement of bold synth music blares throughout the theater as the dancers immerse themselves in a phone and dance with taut, intense movements. They become almost animalistic and primal, bending their limbs in uncomfortable ways, leaving the audience cringing at their twisted movements. Leaning into a more horror-like aspect, the dancers begin to intertwine their bodies in a tangled mess as they latch onto the phones in their hands, signifying the disturbing and unhealthy attachment to the devices. Bright red lights beam across the theater as the dancers crawl grotesquely in circles, eventually separating and meeting in the middle at a pre-set podium.

The performance takes a sudden turn into a comedic bit as the dancers begin to converse through their thumbs, the screens behind them projecting the scene up close. The several-minute-long conversation entails a personal discussion on losing one’s touch with reality and the desire to feel again. The two vent to each other on their mutual issues and slowly come to an understanding on the importance of human touch and how their phones have created this physical and figurative divide between them. The dancers, like puppeteers, engage in humorous movements while tossing their thumbs around textured slabs of turf, gravel, and a hollowed phone case with nothing but the edges intact. The scene ends with a thumb wrestling bit as the dancers interlace their hands into a tight embrace and separate in quick fashion. The third act brings the audience back into deafening silence as the dancers quietly dress themselves in a large set of hyper-realistic hand costumes. Playing back into the uneasiness, the large hands controlled by the dancers begin to caress each other, grappling upon the palms and loose digits of the oversized costumes. It’s an awkward, yet intriguing exchange between them as I sit and wonder how much of the choreography was planned versus intuitive.

They eventually undress themselves and bring the final act into closing with Lavy disguising themselves as a large thumb, and Gehling lying upon an oversized phone screen as a spotlight shines on the duo. Lavy takes control of the thumb, mimicking the action of scrolling through gentle, full-body strokes on top of Gehling’s body that lies still on the screen. The mood feels serious, yet funny, as the audience lets out giggles periodically until the lights fully dim, leaving us to ponder the strange events that have just occurred in the final few minutes. Overall, it was a beautifully constructed performance that told a story through unique mixed media and allowed the audience to question their own relationship with their phones and how we are all affected by excessive screen usage. I enjoyed how the director took such a mindless act we all do and created a thought-provoking performance with morbid choreography. Vibrating Waiting for You to Touch was abstract, and the anticipation paired with the comedic bits created a wonderfully complex performance piece that blended the world of technology and art with thematic elements of horror, drama, and comedy.

The second performance of the evening, Have a Great Night!, is directed by Peter Mills Weiss and Julia Mounsey, starring comedians Tim Platt and Peter Smith. Weiss takes the stage, posing as a moderating host, introducing the audience to the stand-up show we are about to witness. He opens up the floor to ask the audience what it means to have a great night. The interactive opening segment is humorous, yet also philosophical, as Weiss questions the short and mundane responses stated by the audience. He says he seeks a deeper understanding of contentment through media and decides to tackle this subject through stand-up comedy. He introduces the comedians Tim Platt and Peter Smith, or Timmy and Pete as they are referred, and provides some background on the comedic duo, stating that he met them at a comedy show where, in his words, he watched Timmy “bomb” his set while Pete “murdered” his.

For the next half hour, Weiss sets up calculated, timed segments for the two comedians to dish out their jokes, allowing the audience to provide feedback. The humor is crude and, at times, horrendously not funny, but the delivery of the jokes has everyone laughing regardless of the material. The timed intervals are separated into six segments of five minutes, two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, 15 seconds, and then one final closing joke. After each comedian takes their turn, Weiss offers advice, critiques their jokes, and has Timmy and Pete tell the audience their inspirations and backstory that led them to comedy. Timmy’s character is passionate about his craft, however, his jokes were quite awful, and I found myself laughing at his gags out of pity rather than humor. As this event took place the day after Halloween, Timmy kept repeating “Happy Halloween” at the start of every segment and reused his jokes multiple times. His joke material also consisted of repetitive mockery of his influencer girlfriend and distasteful Dracula jokes. Weiss becomes very combative with Timmy in between the segments and is confused about why the lackluster comedian is terrible at something he claims he is well-versed in. It is a hilarious exchange between the two men, with each intermission of their opposing chemistry consistently met with audience laughter.

Pete, on the other hand, is the obviously better comedian from the duo and definitely steals the show during his performance. Pete takes on an alter ego during his segments and turns into this self-deprecating and monotone character. The jokes that follow are not necessarily jokes, but rather depressing confessions made by Pete that have the audience laughing hysterically from his deadpanned delivery. Commentary on his catholic upbringing, an estranged relationship with his father, and nihilistic questions asked to the audience are discussed in Pete’s set. His closing joke was my favorite of the night: “If I were the last person on Earth, would you be mad?” Pete’s conversation with Weiss is quite the opposite of Timmy’s, with Weiss impressed by Pete’s comedic timing and how he utilizes a serious attitude to create a more humorous mood. What caught my eye was how Pete would immediately become very bubbly and talkative with Weiss during his critique, which further showed how well executed the pessimistic persona was.

Weiss closes out the show by hilariously informing us that we most likely did not have a great night, given the whirlwind of comedy we were just subjected to. The performance was surprising, and I went into it with zero expectations of the content I was about to see. It was delightfully amusing and felt as though I was in an actual comedy club rather than an art theater. Interactive performances are a favorite of mine, and Have A Great Night! nails the merging of a mockumentary-style of a stand-up show with that of a scripted performance piece. In comparison to Vibrating Waiting for You to Touch, its approach to comedy was, albeit disturbing, but it was a great representation of how uncomfortable visuals can be framed amusingly. The juxtaposition of the double feature presented at the MAXmachina event highlighted interesting forms of multimedia and the various genres that can be executed through performance art.