Thighs Wide Shut
Starring in the two-night-only immersive theater event inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut.” Written and directed by Michael Phillis and Rory Davis of Baloney. Photos by Nicole Fraser-Herron. Desperate diamond-digging fiancé played by me.
Lily Janiak & Joe Wadlington wrote for the SF Chronicle:
Scene: Magenta lights shine through Romanesque Revival windows. Revelers line up in sexy cocktail attire with black capes, harnesses, top hats, chokers and, most importantly, masquerade masks. The masks feature antlers, jester jingle bells, fur, even a lone “Creature From the Black Lagoon” get-up, complete with flippers on the hands.
It’s Friday, Oct. 14, and they’re here for the first of two nights of “Thighs Wide Shut,” a queer, immersive-theater response to “Eyes Wide Shut.” The 1999, extremely heterosexual Stanley Kubrick film, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, features a notorious secret society sex party scene where masquerade masks are required.
Participants wear masquerade masks at a showing of “Thighs Wide Shut.” Part of the appeal is that it’s not clear who is a performer and who is an audience member.Photo: Salgu Wissmath / The Chronicle
(Janiak and Wadlington, arriving at different times, are trying to find each other, and the masquerade masks don’t help, so they surreptitiously text each other.)
Janiak: (texting as she walks inside) In steampunk goggles!
Wadlington: (texting) I’m in a black rabbit mask.
Janiak: (thinking) I love how all the masks make me feel like I can stare at other people for longer than I would in real life.
CEO character: (taking the microphone inside the narthex-qua-bar, the first room) They said the pani would finish us! Congratulations on a fantastic Q3.
Wadlington: (thinking) Oh God, is this a tech party?
Fiancee character: (joining her husband-to-be on stage) I’m Dossier, it’s French.
Wadlington: (thinking) Ohh, this is part of the show.(Janiak and Wadlington are still searching for each other. A curtain opens, revealing the main sanctuary of the church. Renowned designer and St. Joseph’s Arts Society founder Ken Fulk has outfitted the interior with bespoke furnishings, including pairs of high-backed chairs with little domes that curve over your head and a lamp with a $2,500 price tag.)
Unidentified participant, presumably a performer: (to Janiak) There’s someone I’d like you to meet. Have you been naughty today?
Janiak: … Yes?
Unidentified participant: Would you like to be naughtier?
Janiak: … Yes?(Scene: Dungeon corner, one of the several tableaus tucked into the sanctuary’s darker side chambers. Cushioned benches look at an arrangement of heavy chairs and stools where eager subs are being flogged.)
Janiak: (thinking) Wow, there’s the sting of the whip, and then the vacuum of silence that follows the sting of the whip! (Finally spots Wadlington’s black rabbit mask and waves.)
Dom: Who is next? (Two men seated on a back bench raise their hands.)
Wadlington: I don’t know if the Subs are actors, but those Doms are real. They’re doing aftercare and everything — reassuring and complimenting the Subs after flogging.
Janiak: I’m so glad you came to this with me.
Unidentified participant in a red dress, presumably a performer: (to Wadlington) Have you been to a place like this before?
Wadlington: First time.
Red Dress: What do you think?
Wadlington: It’s gorgeous in here — classy, horny vibes.
(Another possible performer in a black dress grabs Wadlington by the elbow and leans in.)
Black Dress: You don’t want to talk to her.
(She leads Wadlington away from Participant 1 and gently sets him on the dance floor, between a 5-foot-tall crystal obelisk and a person being flogged.)
Black Dress: You look hot — might want to lose a layer. (She saunters away.)(After the pair head to a nude drawing chamber, the blindfolded pianist on the main sanctuary’s altar switches from party music to the plodding theme from “Eyes Wide Shut.” A model stands up, says goodnight, redons her cloak and seamlessly blends back into the crowd, epitomizing how the show erases the boundary between performer and audience.)
Red-robed character in gold mask: (banging the floor with his staff, high priest-style) You will be tested!
CEO character: Why don’t we give it up for these guys?
Red Robe: What you think this place is is not what this place is.
CEO character: Anyone can be anything for one glorious night.
Red Robe: Do not, at any time, remove your mask!
CEO character: Legal approved the tincture!Janiak: (to Wadlington) In a lot of immersive theater, I find myself wanting more room for audience members to do what they want — to roam freely, to talk to their friends, to grab refreshments. Here, there’s time to wait in an excruciatingly slow bar line without missing anything. I almost want more staged theater?
Wadlington: I found clues! There’s a woman in a red dress, half her mask is missing and her eye makeup is smeared. She’s looking for her boyfriend, Chase, who’s gone missing. And there’s another woman in a red dress, who someone in a black dress didn’t want me to talk to. And there’s a woman who is a reporter character who said she might need me as a source. She says she’s been following this company for years. She doesn’t know how they’re affording this whole party. They don’t have any money. She says the CEO doesn’t have any money.
Janiak: Wow, I got only a little of this. My mode in immersive theater is usually to hang back.
Wadlington: Oh, and the fiancee, Dossier, keeps dancing with someone else, not her fiance. People are saying she’s only marrying him for the money, anyway. And in the VIP area there’s a porn room and a tarot card room. They give you a reading, but it’s clues for what’s happening: the Fool, the Tower and the Devil. So clearly this isn’t going to end well. I think the CEO is the Fool.
Janiak: Maybe I’m the Fool.
Wadlington: I think I see another person I know. When I’m in drag, often people don’t know it’s you. So you can choose to reveal yourself or just stand beside them and pretend to be someone else. The masks do the same thing. I know that person is my friend Robert, but I don’t think Robert knows I am me. Oh, and there’s an afterparty, which is probably when it will get really good.
Janiak: Are you going to go?
Wadlington: No, I have to work. I’m go-go dancing after this till 1.
Janiak: What?
Red Robe: Come out my children. Reveal your true selves.
(A shift happens in the crowd. Actors squat, shed their robes, then strut to the stage to join a growing, writhing dance. Apparently everyone’s “true self” is a very hot person in lingerie. Fiancee, Red Dress, Journalist are all swept away. After 90 minutes, it’s not clear if the show is over, but Janiak and Wadlington part ways.)Janiak: (bicycling home, interior monologue) When I watched the movie earlier this week, I kept laughing at just how often perfect naked breasts kept appearing in Tom Cruise’s character’s life: at home, at the doctor’s office, in a back room at a party, then in the orgy scene. But then when his own red-robed character tells him to get naked in front of everybody, it’s like that’s too much for the movie. Female nudity is banal, but male nudity is a scandal. And then the film’s whole sequence of events is supposedly set off by Tom Cruise’s character’s wife, played by Nicole Kidman. It’s not that she cheats on him; she only confesses she’s thought about cheating on him — as if just the possibility of female infidelity is such a crisis to the male ego that this whole movie has to happen. Give me a break.
I’m glad Baloney queered it, even if I spent most of the show hanging in the shadows, people-watching.
(Scene: Interior of the Lookout, the gay bar overlooking Market and Noe streets in the Castro district. Red lights shine through large, square windows. Revelers arrange themselves around the bar in jeans, slacks and track pants; crop tops, blazers and minimal tanks. An off-duty drag queen sways in the corner.)
Wadlington: (Dancing on the go-go box, interior monologue) RuPaul says, “Drag doesn’t conceal who you are; it reveals who you are.” I think the masks did the same thing. At the masquerade, people weren’t talking as much. But you could feel everyone’s lighthouse eyes, heads on a swivel. There was a feeling of boldness. It wasn’t clear who was an actor and who wasn’t — if they were acting or simply acting out.
Here, people are chatting with their friends, but the swiveling is the same. They aren’t wearing a mask and black robe over lingerie. But I bet they’d unwrap just as easily, if prompted to reveal their true selves.
