The eyes have it at “Queen of the Night,” the immersive theatrical spectacle at the restored Diamond Horseshoe Supper Club in the basement of New York’s Paramount Hotel. There, amidst a bacchanalia that includes a communally shared feast of suckling pig, lobster, and ribs, and a show loosely based on Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” comely cast members roam the room inviting spectators into one-on-one intimacies that generally begin with an unsettling and prolonged stare.
“Interocular intimacy is the most universal taboo, even more universal than the incest taboo,” said Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and professor at New York University, quoting the emotion theorist Silvan Tomkins. “We simply don’t lock eyes with strangers except when we are courting or trying to intimidate. The effect is always electric.”
At “Queen of the Night,” the line between stage and audience is highly porous and often filled with approaches from the cast members doubling as staff — “butlers,” as they are called. A hand is slipped around the waist. There are kisses to the fingertips. Or an invitation to a private room where one can engage in flirtatious games, whispered intimacies, even a ritual bath. The overtures are a full frontal assault on the impulse to shy away from strangers, avoiding eye contact and keeping one’s body at a safe remove. So how does “Queen of the Night” not only get away with it but also induce people to play along with sybaritic abandon?
“What I love about immersive theater is that you just completely make up your own rules to make sense of the world that you are creating,” said Randy Weiner, one of the presenters of the show who has also produced the downtown hit “Sleep No More,” at the McKittrick Hotel. “You come into a situation in which you don’t know the rules and someone is telling you to do this thing that is alien to you. Some people are happy to go along with it, others fight it. But if you set up the rules properly, then people tend to live by them, no matter how crazy they might seem.”
To try to understand how the production team of “Queen of the Night” has been able to skillfully tread the line between celebration and violation, ARTINFO spoke with Haidt, the author of “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom,” about the social experiment underway at the Diamond Horseshow.
How does “Queen of the Night” manage to be so disarming in breaking through a person’s natural reserve?
Well, first the room is so beautiful. It feels like you’re in a high-class, expensive, 1930s or 1940s ballroom. In many ways it’s like a Roman orgy — let me correct that — a Roman feast with elements of sexuality. I can’t speculate on general social trends in society, but I study moral emotions and two of the main ones are moral elevation and disgust. Food and dining can be elevating and uplifting or it can be grotesque, an animal orgy. And we humans are animals, though we’ve spent thousands of years trying to cover that up.
When you attended the show, how was your interaction with the butlers?
Intense. A lot of us have a long history of flirting in our lives and this was a close proximity of it in many ways. It’s arousing for the novelty and sexuality of it. All the actors are beautiful men and women who are acting and moving in ways that are out of the ordinary. It’s visceral and unnerving. It throws you off balance the whole night because it’s constantly shifting.
Is it a power game that the butlers are playing?
They clearly have the power because, as at “Sleep No More,” we don’t know what to expect, we can’t predict what they’ll do. It’s up to them and we can’t or really shouldn’t say, “No.” The spectator has no power and that can be quite pleasurable. You’re giving yourself up to an evening.
Why can’t you just say, “No”?
You wouldn’t go there in the first place if you weren’t open to experience. “Openess to Experience” is one of the big five personality traits. People will go to something just because its new, they really appreciate having an artistic and theatrical experience they’ve never had before.
New Yorkers are famous for rolling their eyes in contempt.
New Yorkers don’t want to appear unsophisticated. So if there’s an event that’s the talk of the town, that gets rave reviews, and all your friends like it, then if you give yourself over to it no one is going to think less of you for it. And if you hold back and act like you’re above it all, you risk looking like a prude or a philistine. There’s almost a command to go along with it.
Are people likely to be more submissive by virtue of the fact that they are in a theater?
There’s a long tradition going back to Ancient Rome that the aesthetic experience makes us more passive and receptive. It calms us down and makes us more open to ideas.
What about the potential for the violation of body boundaries?
Well, moral judgments are not generally about objective physical movement. They’re about intention. If a doctor cuts into you, it’s not a moral violation. And if an actor or actress at “Queen of the Night” touches you in a way that has erotic overtones, I believe few people who elected to have this experience would feel violated. People are highly variable so it’s something that the producers — and their lawyers — have to figure out. But I would think that the rules of propriety and the boundaries of transgression are much, much wider in the theater than in almost any context of daily life.
Does the context of pigs on a spit, heaping plates of lobster, shared communal meals widen those boundaries even more?
Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy” suggests that performance has always been participatory. The idea of sitting and watching passively is a modern Western invention. Esthetic performances around the world have been much more participatory. Everybody sings, everybody dances, everybody is involved. “Queen of the Night” is anything but passive.
Do the lighting and scenic effects also encourage people as well?
It’s a setting of decadence, exclusivity, and darkness. Research shows that if you simply lower the lights, people are more likely to lie and cheat. It’s this idea that things that happen in the dark stay in the dark. Nothing bad actually happens but you feel just a little bit naughty about being there and that’s part of the pleasure of being there.
Is there something of “Queen” that takes us back to childhood, when we’re more open to fantasy?
I don’t think they’re activating thoughts and feelings from childhood. It certainly is playful. Human beings are unique in that, unlike other animals, we retain our playfulness as we mature. Humans and, I guess, dogs.
You mentioned that immersive theater as goes back to the authentic roots of the theatrical experience…
I can’t comment on the history of theater but I look at art as a psychologist. I think of the dozens and dozens of buttons and switches in our mind that never get activated. The aesthetic experiences I most treasure and remember are those that activate those buttons I had either forgotten about or didn’t know that I had. And “Queen of the Night” hit more of those than anything I can think of.
Why?
I think that Randy and the creative team are just brilliant intuitive psychologists. I think they have their finger on the pulse of the theatergoer and have designed an experience based on two things: understanding of psychology and the possibilities of the theater activating a broad range of psychological reactions.
