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Starting this weekend, theatergoers will pay $25 to wander through an old shipyard on the South Waterfront at sunset in order to summon the feeling of what it’s like to be suddenly unhoused. It’s a pretty different theater experience than sinking into a cushy chair for a couple of hours and passively absorbing a play—and that’s the point.
This is the third year that Hand2Mouth Theatre has hosted HOME/LAND, a play that’s part of the genre “immersive theater.” HOME/LAND is set in the aftermath of a fictional catastrophic event such as a natural disaster or a war. The government has asked anyone who needs shelter to gather at Zidell Yards for an intake process. Audience members are given a timed entrance ticket, three minutes apart, to begin their exploration of displacement and houselessness.
“It is a theatrical experience, but it’s rooted in authentic stories—it’s sort of an installation,” director Michael Cavazos says. “I don’t know of any other piece like it.”
HOME/LAND attendees will walk through the set under the Ross Island Bridge, exploring their new home—a fictional government-run shelter village called Lot 6B—while having interactions with actors who guide them through the carefully choreographed experience. The tour weaves through a government office set, down a path past huge old ship parts, to the hut, and finally to a gazebo where the play ends. It takes an hour and guests travel about three-quarters of a mile.
Via written texts and audio recordings on headphones, HOME/LAND weaves in true stories of displacement past and present, such as the 1948 Vanport flood, U.S. internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II, and farm workers who came to the U.S. as part of the Bracero Program, also in the mid-20th century. This year there’s an extra emphasis on displacement in Gaza, Ukraine and, as a result of homeless camp sweeps, Portland.
“From the very beginning, what was most concerning was being able to tell these stories without exploiting anyone,” Cavazos says. Cavazos and their team at Hand2Mouth originally conceived HOME/LAND in collaboration with New York’s WaxFactory and France’s Begat Theater.
The immersive, or interactive, theater movement got buzzy in New York City in 2011 with a production called Sleep No More. Audience members move through a converted Chelsea warehouse at their own pace while actors perform scenes based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. (Sleep No More is scheduled to close Sept. 29.)
Perhaps the most familiar immersive theater experience? A haunted house.
And though audiences will be exploring an old shipyard after sunset in HOME/LAND, Cavazos, who is also Hand2Mouth’s artistic director, assures that they will never feel unsafe, nor will they be put on the spot to perform. Rather, they will interact with a cast of five actors as they move through the show. Going through it alone is part of the deal.
“You are actually experiencing what it might be like to be isolated, alone and sort of thrown into this bureaucratic mess of a camp,” Cavazos says.
Actor Maia McCarthy played a role in the 2022 and 2023 productions in which they guided audiences through their new small houses on Lot 6B, encouraging them to touch things, read stories and rummage through a suitcase. Three minutes later, McCarthy’s performance began again with a new audience member.
“My role gets to be in really close proximity to the audience, so from a live theater perspective, it was really fun and intriguing to have that kind of an intimate experience one person at a time, over and over again,” McCarthy says. “I felt like it gave me a different opportunity than I have when I’m performing for a full-sized house to really take care of that person.”
Director Cavazos’ goal is to inspire people to be a little kinder to their neighbors and make sure they are safe and have their basic needs met—a message that’s especially poignant this election season.
“I would love Ted Wheeler to come see the show,” they say. “I want all of those running for mayor to see the show and think about this houseless problem we have.”
This piece has been modified to remove reference to a Shaking The Tree production.
SEE IT: HOME/LAND plays at Hand2Mouth Theatre, 3121 S Moody Ave., hand2mouththeatre.org. 7-10 pm Thursday-Sunday, Aug. 30-Sept. 14. $5-$25.