The mobile audience divided into groups wears headphones as they movie from locale to locale in Miami New Drama’s immersive Lincoln Road Hustle. (Photos by Morgan Sophia Photography)
By Michelle F. Solomon
Artsburst.com
When Miami New Drama staged its original interactive production Seven Deadly Sins with actors performing in empty storefronts along Lincoln Road, it was in the midst of the pandemic. Small groups watched from seats outside each space while there was only a smattering of people walking around Lincoln Road.
Miami New Drama (MiND) then staged its next immersive production, The Museum Plays, in February of 2024 where guides would lead five groups of 30 people from one play to the next to watch original art-inspired short plays inside The Rubell Museum, a somewhat easily contained environment although not without its challenges.
For its third production, the regional theater company, based at the Colony Theatre on Lincoln Road, is “pushing the boundaries,” as Michel Hausmann, founder and artistic director of MiND puts it about its Lincoln Road Hustle, now playing along Lincoln Road through Sunday, Feb. 16. Hausmann commissioned Miami-based documentary filmmaker and playwright Billy Corben and New York-based playwright Harley Elias (who had worked with MiND on one of The Museum Plays) to imagine a story that takes place throughout Lincoln Road.
Corben says that Lincoln Road Hustle is site specific and inspired by the Miami Beach location, albeit a fictional story. “Everyone has gathered at the 1100 block of Lincoln Road for a ceremonial groundbreaking,” says Corben describing the premise.
Robert Deleon, a Miami developer and Medicare fraudster, is going to be demolishing the entire block to build a 75-story luxury hotel condo – “starting at the reasonable price of $3 million,” adds Corben. It isn’t the first time Corben’s created an original script with MiND. In 2019, Hausmann teamed playwright Aurin Squire (who also penned MiND’s “Wonderful World” which is now playing on Broadway) to work on turning Corben’s mega successful Cocaine Cowboys documentary into a play, Confessions of a Cocaine Cowboy.
Add to the intrigue that Deleon is also building a multi-level Vegas style casino, Miami Beach’s first ever. It’s not too far-fetched from Miami’s real world as new development continues to take hold around every corner and Jeffrey Soffer, the billionaire owner of the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, is in a constant rally to open a casino inside the iconic hotel.
“There’s a lot of what I call Miami fan service in Hustle, ” says Corben, a term originating in Japanese anime but fits the bill here, delivering archetypes of Miami characters. “Like a Miami Only Fans model. A Miami Instagram food influencer. Or a Miami mama’s boy that still lives with his mother well into adulthood.”
And then there’s the plot twist, Corben says, that could “thwart this multi-billion-dollar development.”
At least that’s where the script was a week before opening. “We have been writing it for some months and, to be honest, it’s still ongoing,” admits Corben.
The logistics of having a live performance along a busy pedestrian stretch of Miami Beach are a challenge. “It’s as if you were juggling a bowling ball, a flaming torch and a machete, and then someone tossed you a chainsaw,” says Corben. With that said, Corben promises that it’s a fun, full night of theater.
Carlos Fabian Medina and Steve Anthony hustling
“We spent a lot of time on the 1100 block of Lincoln Road (the play takes place along two of the pedestrian walkways blocks),” says co-playwright Elias. “We would walk the streets to look at different times of day from different angles. Inevitably someone would say, ‘Wait, did you see this . . .?”
Lincoln Road Hustle is the brainchild of Hausmann, who put Corben and Elias together. “I wanted a story that took place on Lincoln Road and boy, did they deliver.” Notwithstanding it is a bigger undertaking than the last two interactive productions. “It’s an experiment, right? But we use the abundance of people on Lincoln Road in our favor.”
In one scene, audience members eavesdrop on a conversation between two actors, Irene Adjan and Krystal Millie Valdez, who are seated at an outdoor table at Issabella’s restaurant as regular diners are around them.
The experience is made accessible, according to Hausmann, by a reliance on audio technology. Members of the audience are each given a set of headphones to wear and can hear the dialogue and the actors. “We can’t really control lighting outdoors but what we can control is the sound doing it this way.”
Hausmann says the use of the sound devices was made possible by a Knight Foundation grant which was used to develop, purchase and design the audio.
Here’s how Hustle works: Five groups of about 40 people are outfitted with headphones to navigate through each scene. For the first scene, the prologue starts with everyone at one spot – the Colony Theatre location. Then using a color-coded system, groups are divided into sets of five where they are guided through five 12 to 14 minute scenes. Unlike the past two original interactive plays, Hausmann wanted more than a thematic relationship but a script that was “complete, a whole” and together with a beginning, middle and end.
For the finale, all audience members come back together for the end scene.
Some of the action takes place in the middle of the street, some inside storefronts, and, says Hausmann, it is definitely an evolution in how the company began with Seven Deadly Sins, then The Museum Plays and now this third installment.
There have been what Hausmann calls “accidental triumphs.” For instance, a scene that was to take place inside a store was so fraught with difficulties that it was pulled out of the location and restaged to take place on the street. “It actually works much better now,” says Hausmann who is directing the production. Would he have preferred having someone else wearing the director’s hat? “Yes, but the learning curve is too steep.”
Corben confides more than once during the interview that it isn’t a secret that almost daily, he’s half-jokingly said to Hausmann, “Why don’t we just stage this on the proscenium in the Colony Theatre?’ ”
And Hausmann’s answer is the same. “Anyone can pick out a play from a catalogue. We do world premieres that are about our community and that’s what excites you, right? And this is a hyper-local play, Lincoln Road – it’s isn’t just about Florida, it’s about Miami.”
He adds: “I think there is a responsibility when it comes to theater companies and nonprofits,” he says during an interview. “There is a big crisis around the country for regional theaters. Many are closing, many are having a hard time. (Theater companies) need to constantly expand the base to keep afloat. The traditional theater audience is not enough to sustain regional theaters today,” says Hausmann.
The outdoor interactive experiment “Seven Deadly Sins” produced its “youngest and most diverse audience that we’ve ever had,” says Hausmann. He’s honest in the fact that he believes theater needs to meet people where they are, but he states emphatically while not “talking down to them.”
There’s also the commitment of time on the part of an audience.
“We have to come to terms that people’s attention span has dramatically decreased. To ask for two or two and a half hours to sit inside a theater, that’s a tough sell,” says Hausmann. “There are hundreds and thousands of people who will spend money to see a sporting event, to go out to a restaurant, but they don’t go to see a play. This experience is a ‘night out’ and with this, we can get those ‘night out’ people in.”
For playwright Elias, he wanted to capture the essence of what he loves about theater and to find a way to have something intriguing and exciting enough to pull people away from the television and streaming services.
He says the answer for him as a co-creator of “Lincoln Road Hustle” is this. “Let me tell you a story in a way that you haven’t heard and that you haven’t seen and that we haven’t had the opportunity to tell before in some kind of new and exciting way. . . . that will make you laugh and put you on the edge of your seat.”
WHAT: Miami New Drama’s “Lincoln Road Hustle” by Billy Corben and Harley Elias
WHERE: Starts at the Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 7 p.m. Sundays through Sunday, Feb. 16.
COST: $85 or $95 for premium seating; $49 for standing room.
INFORMATION: 305-674-1040 or miaminewdrama.org
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