Don’t know how many #immersiveexperience friends are on Mastodon yet, but highly recommend Candle House Collective’s “Collect Call”.
CHC shows have this habit of pushing my buttons and eliciting STRONG emotional reactions, and, um… Collect Call was definitely not an exception.
@Thacher @bcbishop Hooboy, where do I start. First off, I felt that the construction of Andy as our protagonist (especially as what I perceived to be as an unreliable narrator) didn't really land for me.
I wanted him to charm the pants off me but that didn't happen. Maybe the actor could have done more but I don't think the material /script really lent itself to it.
Also the mother and girlfriend both felt like props when he was explaining all of the things that had happened in his life. Mom died and said horrible things to me as a kid, girlfriend is dying, Dad was abusive, and yet it didn't feel believable to me. More like caricatures of people, but, given that we're getting this through the lens of Andy maybe that's OK.
Plus, having worked for a pharma client several years ago, I already knew that COPD when diagnosed in young, non-smoking patients without other comorbidities is VERY rare so that really didn't help with the plausibility of his story.
@Thacher @bcbishop And then we get to the actual murder? Still not believable to me, I questioned his whole motivation and why he resorted to killing someone. Why is that the answer when it comes down to a female CO that he likely would have been able to overpower, and left behind, regardless.
But without this senseless act, we don't have a story, I know, I know. It still rubbed me the wrong way, particularly since he says that he's sorry but hasn't done anything to prove it because... well... he's a psychopath, right? Right? Or is he? Like you said, Bryan, he's a frustrating character.
Then I kind of brushed a lot of that aside during second half of the call. And, of course, the audience is pretty passive up until that point and so when it gets much more interactive so you don't really have time to process the first 20 odd minutes of what he's told you.
And the final call the next day is truly heartbreaking. CHC almost always sticks the landing.
Bryan Bishop
Kathryn Yu
Sara Thacher