""I wonder what might have happened if we'd intervened," an audience member mused at the end of Shaking the Tree's latest production, Dancing on the Sabbath. At check-in, we'd received a note on letterhead from the Office of Royal Protection-its black logo depicting an eyeball wearing a crown-explaining we would surveil five misbehaving princesses through an invisibility cloak. As Crown-sanctioned Watchers for the night, the audience's task was to discover how the King's daughters escaped their locked chambers and to follow them wherever they went."
"Dancing on the Sabbath, directed by Shaking the Tree's founding artistic director Samantha Van Der Merwe and adapted from the 1815 Grimm fairy tale "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," offers something more participatory still. The audience becomes the investigator, free to move from room to room in the first act, trailing the princesses and their captors as they piece the story together."
An immersive theatrical production casts the audience as Crown-sanctioned Watchers tasked with surveilling five misbehaving princesses using an invisibility cloak. The setting includes a Center of Compliance with moody lighting, harp music, fake candles, and a giant philodendron within an office and rehearsal space. A stone-faced Guard patrols with an assault rifle and jangling keys, enforcing silence while the princesses record thoughts in matching diaries and whisper when he looks away. A mysterious Praying Woman leads the princesses in a ritualistic dance. The staging adapts the 1815 Grimm tale "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" into a participatory investigation across multiple rooms.
Read at Portland Mercury
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