What is your story? Is it an honest expression of what you feel and value or something cultivated artificially because you feel it makes for a better read? These are the questions that Keight Leighn and Elisabeth Stranathan seek to probe in their new show, #bedrUmplaii2: The Stori of U. #bedrUmplaI, Leighn’s signature show, has gone through a number of incarnations since its inception in 2018, beginning in Leighn’s bedroom and co-starring Shayne Eastin before Stranathan joined in for the show’s second run. This was followed by <<LiVEPLAY>>, an adaptation of the show featuring Leighn on her own conducted through Skype. Now the show is back and taking place in Stranathan’s apartment/bedroom, a sort of mad hippie’s den full of esoteric art and artifacts, the sort of place I imagine you could get opium if you knew the right password.

As I make my way to the location, following a length of tattered red cloth, I see Leighn calling me to come and join her and as I am led to the balcony, with a stream of incense billowing into my face, I am presented with the first of many challenging hurdles of introspection and improvisation. She insists she knows me, that I was here before, and that there was a story I had left unfinished that she wished for me to elaborate on. From that vague and open-ended prompt arose a dialog where my truth was brought into question and I was forced to confront whether that truth was really my own. #bedrUmplaii2 is a strange beast, at once calm and meditative and harrowing in its construction, at times deeply uncomfortable but a discomfort of your own making as Leighn calmly and kindly works to dislodge the foundation of the ego.

It’s difficult to defend against Leighn’s line of inquiry, not that you would want to given how essential vulnerability is to allowing yourself to become part of the experience. She tends to talk in riddles, half-formed alien logic that can require a great deal of focus to allow you to follow her intent and muster a response but these labyrinths of thought have a way of making it impossible to talk your way out of disavowing truths you come to know are false. Her nature is disarming, with a friendly demeanor and copious amounts of body glitter that found its way all over my arms as she was covering them in written affirmations, she is the antithesis of threatening, which is ironic given how existentially threatening the nature of this show can be.

As our conversation reached its logical conclusion, I was led up to the upstairs bathroom adjacent to the bedroom where I was invited to clean off my arms and given a moment to collect my thoughts before opening the door to find Leighn replaced with Stranathan, who shared with me a poem she created for me. I can only assume it was written beforehand, either that or Stranahan has a remarkably deft and cogent stream of consciousness allowing her to write 3 pages of poetry in the time it took me to wash my arms off. It was nonetheless evocative and poignant to the story up to that point. I was invited to write my own poem in a large book that seemed to contain the recollections of those who came before me but alas, being a writer does not necessarily make one a poet and my still frazzled mental state allowed for no more than a couple token lines.

After returning to the living room and sharing what I had written with Leighn, I was given a memento of my time and sent on my way. Previously, the only show of Leighn’s I had experienced was <<LiVEPLAY>> and while there many of the same elements of the deeply personal experience shared between the two shows, #bedrUmplaii2 managed to resonate with me in a way that show could not, perhaps due to the unavoidable separation created by not sharing a physical space. While the show can be demanding and at times intimidating, I wouldn’t want to give the impression that my overall experience was negative. It’s a sort of theatrical bloodletting and if you allow yourself to face its challenges honestly, there is catharsis on the other side. #bedrUmplaii2 isn’t as thorough a deconstruction of the concept of immersive theatre as <<LiVEPLAY>> was but its strength lies in straddling the line between drama and sincere humanity and in questioning whether such a line need exist at all. Perhaps there is a place for scripted drama to serve as a conduit to break down barriers and open up novel channels of communication that are otherwise impossible through traditional means and there is no one more uniquely positioned to exploit that potential than Keight Leighn.

Tickets for #bedrUmplaii2 are available for select nights through October 12th and can be purchased at brp2.eventbee.com