A Manhattan company has designed a show that takes place inside a taxicab.
For an intimate audience of up to three people, "Take Me Home" blurs art and life as the cab navigates New York City and follows a loose narrative, according to NPR's Marketplace.
"It's not really a play so much as it is an experience," playwright Alexandra Collier described to Marketplace, "a waking dream."
After waiting at an ATM vestibule on a Manhattan street, the audience climbs into the cab to be driven around the city for the interactive live performance. Around a dozen actors perform planned material, while music, audio, video and photos inside the cab follow the narrative.
But because the audience doesn't know who is acting and who isn't, the story blurs with real life.
"It's definitely unlike any cab ride I've ever taken," Elena Cohen, part of a backseat audience, told Marketplace. "Something about that view out the window, it's like being in a movie or something almost."
The open door between art and life is exactly what Collier wanted to do with the unusual concept performance.
"I want people to fall through the looking glass," she said.
With only three audience members at a time, the show can't bring in much money and only runs three times in a night.
We went the non-profit route," Lauren Rayner, the show's executive producer, told Marketplace. "We wrote grants, we approached individual donors."
Tickets for the 45-minute performance have been priced between $25 and $50; the show is currently on a waitlist of around 150 people.
Rayner financed the show with an $11,000 a month budget with the help of several sponsors and believes the idea could grow enough to make a profit.
"I would have six cabs, six unique drivers/performers," she explained. "If I had that many people per night, I could keep costs likely between $50 and 100 a ticket."
While Rayner and Collier have considered upping the cost of tickets, they are reluctant to price people out of seeing the show.
For now, "Take Me Home" will probably continue to be a small-scale, avant-garde labor of love.
"There has to be a deep and abiding love for the theater and for art and for what you do in order to keep doing it," Collier told Marketplace. "Or it's an act of insanity. That's also possible."
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