Ay Marsh ’23 (left) and Daria Popova ’26 rehearse Disorder, an immersive theatrical installation by Reed Leventis ’23 in the Wallace Theater. Photo Credit: Abe Jacobs
(PRINCETON, NJ) -- The Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Theater at Princeton University will present Disorder, an immersive theatrical installation conceptualized, designed, and led by senior Reed Leventis, with sound design by senior Emily Murray. Highlighting stories and writing sourced from the Princeton University community, the installation illuminates and investigates the frays and strains of the American medical industry. The installation further utilizes audience participation and reflection as a mechanism to reimagine spaces of health care as communal sites of radical listening and vulnerability.
Performances are on February 17, 18, 24 and 25 at both 8:00pm and 9:30pm; and February 23 at 8:00pm only in the Wallace Theater at the Lewis Arts complex on the Princeton campus. The show is free and open to the public, however participation is limited at each performance so advance tickets are required through University Ticketing. The Wallace Theater is wheelchair accessible. The February 25 8:00 p.m. performance will be American Sign Language (ASL) interpreted. Some audio will be available online as written text from QR codes posted in the installation. Guests in need of other access accommodations are asked to contact the Lewis Center at [email protected] at least one week prior to the event date.
Murray and Leventis proposed Disorder as their senior independent work in the Program in Theater. Leventis is a pre-med student at Princeton and pursuing a certificate in theater. He drew upon his studies, his experience as a patient, and his work volunteering as an EMT in rural, suburban, and urban settings, where he witnessed gaps and disparities in the healthcare system. He has spoken with nurses, doctors, and paramedics about their experiences in the healthcare field. Leventis was interested in bringing visibility to these issues through the power of theater. Murray suffered a severe illness a few years ago and experienced issues with the nation’s healthcare system firsthand, and she has a father who is a nurse and shared stories from his work.
The pair assembled a team of student collaborators who shared their perspectives to devise the immersive experience in Disorder. One of those collaborators is junior and co-director Ethan Luk. He and Leventis met in a fall 2020 Princeton course on devising musical theater with Tony Award-nominated director and choreographer Sam Pinkleton at the height of the COVID pandemic. The class utilized an investigative performance-driven process to create recorded virtual works reflecting on the global pandemic. Disorder offered Leventis and Luk the opportunity to explore similar issues from the course with in-person, live performance.
Limited to 20 audience participants per performance, the audience, led by nursing staff, are first issued into a waiting room – the first space of Leventis’ designed experience. Inside the waiting room, audience members are instructed to fill out a form and await their turn to enter the rest of the installation. The majority of the live performance occurs in this waiting room with nursing staff immersing audience members into this world. Once their name is called, audience members are brought into a second, larger space. In the larger space audience members are invited to move through at their own pace and can listen to pre-recorded monologues (written by members of the Princeton community) with a stethoscope, view two visual art installations, and reflect on their own experiences with the healthcare system.
Leventis is majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology and pursuing a certificate in global health, as well as in theater. He has worked in the Program in Theater as lighting designer for the original musicals Early Decision/Late Bloomer in 2021; as web designer for Little Shows about Death, the production resulting from the course with Pinkleton; as lighting designer for Macbeth in 2020; and set designer for Mother Courage in 2019. He has also worked as assistant technical director for the student group Theatre Intime for two years.
Murray is the sound designer for Disorder. Previously, she served as assistant lighting designer for the Program in Dance’s senior collaborative concert Us in 2022, as well as assistant stage manager for Almost, Maine, produced in 2022 by Play, Princeton’s Center for Jewish Life theater group. Hailing from just outside of Boston, Murray is majoring in astrophysics alongside her certificate in theater.
Students performing in Disorder include senior Ay Marsh and first-year student Daria Popova. Some of the students performing as voice actors for the piece are alumni Milan Eldridge ’20 and Katie Heinzer ’22; graduate students Juyoung Lee and Gillian Tisdale; seniors Elliot Lee, Emily Murray, and Rooya Rahin; and sophomores Fatima Diallo, Dominic Dominguez, Kate Stewart and Daniel Viorica. Some of the community members providing written monologues include alumni Heinzer, Eldridge and Naomi Hess; seniors Alexis Maze, Rahin, Jennifer Lee, and Eliyana Abraham; junior Juliette Carbonier; sophomores Dominic Dominguez and Daniel Viorica; and first-year student Grace Wang.
Members of the production team, in addition to Leventis, Murray and Luk, include junior Juliette Carbonnier as visual artist and an early collaborator who helped to conceptualize the installation, graduate student Ellie Cherry as composer, junior Julia Stahlman as visual artist, sophomore Lev Ricanti as stage manager, and Kenza Bennazzouz as assistant stage manager. Faculty advisors include Director of the Program in Theater Jane Cox on production design, Lecturer in Theater Lawrence Moten on scenic design, and Lecturer in Theater Rob Kaplowitz on sound design.
All visitors to Princeton University are expected to be either fully vaccinated, have recently received and be prepared to show proof of a negative COVID test (via PCR within 72 hours or via rapid antigen within 8 hours of the scheduled visit), or agree to wear a face covering when indoors and around others.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about this event, the Program in Theater, and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, and lectures presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts, most of them free.
