Experiential Theater Company Begs You to Exercise Your Nose

The curators of the Costume Institute‘s blockbuster exhibition commissioned Norwegian artist Sissel Tolaas to add dimensionality to the garments on view from the archives in Sleeping Beauties by creating smell profiles that visitors could experience by leaning into the walls at designated places to get a whiff. Smelling a musty dress didn’t really transport me anywhere except an old closet or a dusty attic. However, I was smitten with Tolaas’ “smellscape” of Central Park that she created for Cooper Hewitt’s 2016 Design Triennial. I closed my eyes and moved along the wall where the artist’s lab engineered scents were painted (scratch and sniff-style) smelling grass, bird shit, manure, acorns, a wet wood bench and other scents that conjured memories and images which fit with these various and unexpected smells. Smell is perhaps our most powerful sense as it bypasses the brain’s thalamus, or central processing unit, allowing it to trigger a memory—enhancing this bodily function is what the Pa:nStori team is investigating in their newest immersive production, At Your Scent.

”As a seeing person, working on this show was like building magic. The blindfolded audience’s imagination created the visuals in their minds out of the auditory and olfactory cues the performance provided,” the experience’s director, Chaesong Kim, wrote to Cultbytes. At Your Scent is the brainchild of Kim and Pa:nStori Productions founder Soo Young Choi, who is running the show in test runs ahead of its long-run premiere slated in September. Right now, it is an individualized experience where a sole audience member is blindfolded and guided by two actors, Qi and Yeena Sung, who use scent and sound to evoke the delicate, fluttering sensations of first affection. Some parts are direct, a cup of coffee is spilled, and the smell of coffee emerges, while others are more poetic. An excerpt from the script reads: “On the tip of his eyelashes is the scent of her.” And another, “Weaved in the thread was another scent, as kind as the voice I’ve heard.” There is no doubt that scents are sensual, lending themselves well to a story about love.

Seeing the performance space and being blindfolded in situ was exciting. As the piece progressed, the scenery around me changed in my mind—just as the director intended. In At Your Scent, audience members are invited to be seated while the actors move around them, crafting a multisensory performance that blends movement, sound, and scent. The performers physically enact the story as they whiff scents and fabricate the sound of jingling keys, crumpled paper, water splashing, and other details to match the story. “Smells brought so much joy, especially when I would hear something described and then breathe in to smell it. It felt like such a fun little game of guessing when the smells would come based on what was described. I was impressed by how many different smells there were,” one audience member commented to Pa:nStori. Kim and Choi have also adjusted the show based on the test run.

Visualization becomes an important and, for the director Kim, rather unwieldy concept as audience members will imagine based on the smell, touch, and sound of the play. “The performance did not exist on stage, but entirely in the audience’s experience, interaction, and immersion,” she continues. Her experience working at Columbia University’s Disability Services created a foundation for her to develop the work with a deeper interrogation into sensation, and lack thereof. She cites Ryan J. Haddad’s Hold Me in the Water as an aspiration—Haddad is a mostly autobiographical gay actor and playwright with cerebral palsy who integrates accessibility elements (like verbal descriptions, touch tours, relaxed performances, and ASL) into his work. Together, the Pa:nStori team developed new terminologies and methodologies to explore spatialization and temporality of scent and sound, which is still quite uncommon to use so frequently in a play.

In August, Choi plans to attend The Immersive Experience Institute’s yearly summit, The Next Stage Summit, a conference hosting workshops, talks, and discussions with industry peers. Choi thinks keeping the experience intimate is the way to go, and she focuses on working with talented individuals and building a team who are interested in the project. They have both proven to be exceptionally talented and contribute good ideas. “When there are people with the same passion together, I think we can create something phenomenal,” she explains.

Kim and Pa:nStori’s founder Choi both love perfume and enjoy exploring various scents. “I always believed that olfactory sensory is the most powerful sensor in our body that is linked to our memory and imagination,” Choi wrote to Cultbytes—explaining that a scent can suddenly and unexpectedly take you back to your childhood or a random memory. The piece is now fiteen minutes, however, that might change, as the company is still trying to find the right format to be sustainable. “It will come to us as we go through all the stages,” she explained, referring to the second test run. Some might be alarmed by her uncertainty, as much effort and funding go into theater production, however, Choi is a veteran, having worked on large-scale musical productions in Seoul to more genre-bending commissions for the arts and tech experimental gathering Art Lab Festival in Incheon, both in her native Korea. I certainly trust her process. After all, experiential theater is about innovation where creativity, ideas, and execution merge to shape something new.

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