On Tuesday, in an empty room inside Reid Murdoch Building downtown, former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne stood at a keyboard in front of a small audience. The Oscar, Grammy, Tony and Golden Globe winning artist — currently in Chicago for a stop on his “Who is the Sky” tour — stroked two keys on the piano as he explained his forthcoming “Theater of the Mind” production, opening next spring in Chicago.
“Theater of the Mind,” which Byrne co-created with writer Mala Gaonkar, combines elements of neuroscience, art and storytelling for a walkthrough experience on the first floor of a Chicago office building. It is modeled after a production that Byrne opened in Denver in 2022 and will be part of the Goodman Theatre’s century season, marking yet another show under artistic director Susan Booth to be backed by a big name celebrity.
In the demonstration for Tuesday’s press event, Byrne played two piano notes and asked observers to identify which note was higher. The trick, or illusion, lies in the fact the notes are identical in scale but our brains trick us into believing they are different.
“Theater of the Mind,” Byrne said, is intended to be an experience that will lead audiences to question themselves and the world around them.
“You experience the unreliability of your senses, and therefore your own memories and identity,” explained Byrne. “By the end of the show, you realize that’s what allows us to change and evolve and become the people we are at the present.”
Byrne said the idea of the experience came from his reading of an experiment in Stockholm called “Being Barbie,” in which people used virtual reality headsets to experience life as a doll. Byrne incorporated that idea into an art installation that he unsuccessfully tried to take to New York; ultimately, he partnered with Gaonkar to grow the idea from an isolated art exhibit into an immersive theatrical show with a story that could be enjoyed by audiences.
Once the idea was formulated, Andrew Scoville was tapped to direct. Scoville, an Elmhurst native, has a reputation for immersive and live-experience theater.
“They wanted to move the experience of this neuroscience from a more clinical art installation experience into something that felt more like theater,” said Scoville. “And use storytelling to land the points of the implications of all of this neuroscience.”
The project will be a one-of-the-kind experience using 15,000 square feet of the downtown building. Sixteen audience members at a time will take the 75-minute journey that will touch the senses: see, hear, feel and taste. Each group of audience members will have a guide, dressed in a costume based on Byrne’s childhood wardrobe, that leads them room-to-room in the experience.
“I’m not in the show. Sometimes people make that assumption,” said Byrne. “But the guides are all called David. None of them look anything like me, but they are dressed the way I was dressed when I was 2 years old.”
The show has autobiographical elements from Byrne’s life, but the bulk of the production is fictional. There is one room with a disco ball and music, but Byrne said that the show is not a musical and will not feature new music from the award-winning musician who created it.
The audience however, will have their autobiographies re-written for the performance. “When the audience comes in, they get new identities,” said Scoville. “They choose a name, and the name is different from their own given name. And what I like about this concept is, with the guides being called David, and the audience having their own names as well, it sort of puts the guide and the audience in the same game. They’re all sort of living in the same dream world that has similar rules.”
Booth said she made the decision to bring the show to Chicago in an effort to take a big swing for the Goodman’s 100-year anniversary.
“If there’s something that in 100 years we’ve never done, 100 is the time to do it,” she said. “We have this conventional notion of how theater works. You come in, you sit in the purple velvet seats, then there’s people performing for you. What if we turned that on its head and said, ‘This, too is theater.’”
With shows like “Theater of the Mind,” Booth said she wants to take a chance on being on the cutting edge of what the art form can be.
“Our art form is completely dependent on the stream our audience is swimming in right now,” she said. “And if we’re over here behind our pillars saying this is what we think you should care about, then we’re not paying attention. So I think of 100 years as a wonderful gesture that this city has supported us for this long. But it’s also a huge provocation to get uncomfortable.”
Mike Davis is a theater reporter who covers stages across Chicago.