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Please Open Your Mouth


SUMMIT


Joanna Garner

(she/her)

SUN, JAN 7 | 10:30 AM - 11:15 AM (MST)
Screening Theatre (MIX 201)

Presented in a double-header performance with The Mint Experience! By Robert Karimi




An excerpt from Joanna Garner's immersive experience of food and pleasure.

Please Open Your Mouth is an immersive, participatory theatrical experience of food and sex. Audience members gain entrance to a clandestine culinary orgy where a charismatic host, brooding chef and a cadre of returning supper club members lead the guests through a series of wildly unexpected dinner courses. On the menu: a feast of taboos, fantasies, and fetishes. Please Open Your Mouth explores the link between food and sex and how restriction leads to fantasy and kink in both worlds. 

    Playing with Reality: Lessons from designing ARG experiences for Meow Wolf


    SUMMIT


    Joanna Garner

    (she/her)

    SAT, JAN 6 | 9:45 AM - 10:30 AM (MST)
    Screening Theatre 201 (MIX 201)




    A behind-the-scenes look at how Meow Wolf has been exploring Alternate Reality Gaming mechanisms and planting clues towards a larger connected story universe.

    Since the inception of Meow Wolf, artists and designers have been subverting expectations of reality. The first Omega Mart exhibition in 2011 was a "real" grocery story in Santa Fe; In 2021, the company opened an even more "real" grocery store in Las Vegas with enough reality bending that conspiracy videos have popped up online about the story and experience. From a SXSW scavenger hunt to a fake/real radio broadcast in Santa Fe, from an existential law firm, to the entire Society of Peripheral Studies, Meow Wolf continues to push participants to question what they believe. Joanna Garner (Senior Story Creative Director 2018-2023) describes these efforts, what's worked and not, and what they might be adding up to.




    From the Artist

    Joanna Garner

    Senior Creative Director & Narrative Designer (Formerly Meow Wolf, currently Fairview Portals and others; Narrative Director for Omega Mart)


    I began writing this immersive experience in 2013 as a way to rebel against my own dietary restrictions and imagine a world where gluttony is celebrated and food sexualized, to the extent that characters begin to substitute food for sex. I wanted to give the audience opportunities to press up against their own taboos and make a choice to indulge or not, to consider their relationship with what they eat, and explore how the can freely experience pleasure without judgment. More than anything, though, I wanted the audience to have a truly unique, exciting night at the theatre where they take risks, connect with one another, and leave satisfied. The play premiered in 2017 at Cafe Nordo in Seattle with a sold-out run and lots of risk taking on the part of the audience and performers. Since then, I’ve been reworking the script to create a version that might be able to be experienced outside of a theater and possibly with no performers at all. 




    CREDITS


    Photo credit- Austin photo by Roy Moore; directed by Katie Van Winkle.
    Seattle photos by Ryan Warner; directed by Norah Davis.

    Meow Wolf; Leo Brown, Meow Wolf Backend Software Engineering Manager/previous Artist & Experience Designer; Hannah Manikowski, Story & ARG Consultant for Meow Wolf Omega Mart