Life And Trust
Life And Trust is a sandbox-style immersive production written by Jon Ronson, directed by Teddy Bergman, and produced by Emursive in New York City that opened in August 2024 and is performing an open-ended run at the time of writing. The piece takes inspiration from the legend of Faust and is set in the 1920s around the stock market crash. Similar to Sleep No More, Life and Trust is a physical theatre/dance piece that unfolds over the six floors of Conwell Tower.
Following the same format as Sleep No More, the piece also requires audience members to wear masks as audience identifiers, although of a slightly different design to that of Sleep No More. It seems the mask rules are a bit more relaxed at Life and Trust, and it is unclear whether the same mask removal signification system is in place. At the time of writing, Life and Trust has opted not to provide adapted masks despite being produced by the same company as Sleep No More and therefore having that industry knowledge and experience. Thus, the glasses versus mask problem persists and is made worse because the Life and Trust masks lie flatter on the face with less of a gap at the nose. This means that it is impossible to wear glasses under the mask at all, with or without tissues, as the mask will shift to one side or the other, moving the eye holes and blocking sight entirely. I opted once again to see the show blurry, but I noticed other audience members wearing the mask on their foreheads to see with their glasses.
The curated environment of Life and Trust is also similar to Sleep No More in that there are many individually designed rooms that vary in the same accessibility triggers as listed above: uneven terrain, darkness or dim lighting, competing audio and sensory elements, lack of seating, and a confusing layout. Most surprisingly Life and Trust seems to have missed the mark on some basic safety measures that Sleep No More maintained, such as marking stairs and ramps glow tape, which is a very simple safety precaution to take for people of all abilities. While safety and accessibility are different aspects of the same overarching concept, any disregard for general safety further complicates accessibility. An unmarked step can be difficult to navigate for a non-disabled audience member, but the challenge is compounded for an audience member with mobility or spatial relationship concerns. In a way, safety measures can be considered as basic accessibility measures even for non-disabled audience members as they are the bare minimum requirements for access to the space.
While the staging is again highly dynamic, the focus seems to be on engaging with the environment instead of the audience.
The confusing layout is also made worse in this case by the bar, which is the “off-mask” safe space to take a break or get help during the performance, being highly inaccessible. I experienced a minor medical emergency during the performance I attended, and it took over fifteen minutes to navigate back to the bar to get assistance. This raised a huge safety red flag in that audience members should always know where they can go if they need help or need a sensory or physical break from the production. It was further compounded to become an accessibility red flag in that, as a disabled audience member, I couldn’t easily access the things I needed to take care of my disability during the performance without significant interruption to my experience. It seems that Life and Trust almost discourages people from returning to the bar by placing bathrooms and water dispensers within the world of the experience, which actually is a great measure of accessibility, but the safe space of the bar should still be available and clearly marked.
Life and Trust also utilizes stairs for staging, which leads to the same trailing pitfalls as Sleep No More, although Life and Trust’s elevator was easier to find than Sleep No More’s. The performers’ staging in Life and Trust is supremely athletic, and nearly all of the characters that I encountered seemed to be moving at a brisk pace if not fully running, so there is a certain athleticism required of the trailing audience member in this experience. The staging of the piece faces some challenges in that the architecture of the environment is not always well suited for audience sight lines, particularly concerning the presence of what I assume are structural pillars in some rooms. While the staging is again highly dynamic, the focus seems to be on engaging with the environment instead of the audience. Dance sequences prioritize using the set over showing the audience members the action. With the focus on the architecture, audience scramble to follow the action around the space, which proves especially difficult for audience members with mobility issues. It is worth noting that the audience capacity seemed more balanced at Life and Trust, meaning the audience is better distributed throughout the space; so the scenes are not overcrowded, which helps with sight lines. Both the McKittrick Hotel (Sleep No More) and Conwell Tower (Life and Trust) are around 100,000 square feet, so the audience is likely slightly smaller in the latter. However, the audience distribution I noted isn’t necessarily indicative of audience capacity, but perhaps that Life and Trust wasn’t selling as many tickets as Sleep No More at the time of my visit.
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