- Title: Whisperlodge is immersive theater through live ASMR
- Date: 15th August 2018
- Summary: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (AUGUST 14, 2018) (REUTERS) WHISPERLODGE PERFORMER, AMANDA WALLACE, TYING BLINDFOLD AROUND WHISPERLODGE GUEST, THERESA PIAZZA WALLACE WHISPERING INTO PIAZZA'S EAR PIAZZA TAKING OFF SHOES AND BEING LED INTO HOME WALLACE AND MAKEUP BRUSHES IN A TRAY WALLACE BRUSHING MAKEUP BRUSH ON PIAZZA'S FINGERS VARIOUS OF WALLACE BRUSHING MAKEUP BRUSH ON
- Embargoed: 29th August 2018 14:57
- Keywords: Whisperlodge ASMR immersive theater theater experience spa zen autonomous sensory meridian response
- Location: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
- City: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment,Theater,Editors' Choice
- Reuters ID: LVA0018TAQ9G9
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: New York's Whisperlodge is the first-ever immersive theater focused on the autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) experience its creators say.
ASMR describes the pleasant tingling sensation that some people feel on the back of their necks when confronted with particular audio-visual stimuli.
"A lot of people will say that ASMR causes them to feel tingles," Whisperlodge's co-creator Melinda Lauw said.
"Now tingles can mean so many different things depending on each person. Some people say it's like static going down your spine. Other people say it's a warm, fuzzy feeling in the back of your head. But generally, it makes you feel super relaxed and it's sort of like the opposite of the feeling you get when you hear nails scratching down the chalkboard. It's like an impulse reaction but super calming and pleasurable," she continued.
Lauw came up with the idea of Whisperlodge two years ago in Brooklyn.
"Whisperlodge is an immersive sensory journey through live ASMR," she said. "It was created by me and another artist, Andrew Hoepfner. We were both really interested in immersive theater and ASMR, so we just started experimenting. We wanted to actually go experience ASMR in real life, so we started Googling and we were so surprised to just like, not find anything out there. So we decided to make our own."
Lauw and Hoepfner went to thrift stores and experimented with items that would elicit ASMR, trying it out on each other. The props came together and the team formed stories around them, developing the whole Whisperlodge experience. The idea took off and the response was overwhelming - Whisperlodge sold out of all of their shows.
The 90-minute show, usually in a borrowed or rented apartment in Brooklyn or Manhattan, is performed entirely whispered. Performers whisper stories and words while crinkling items in guests' ears, brushing their hair, stroking their faces and arms with makeup brushes and applying struck tuning forks to their foreheads - carefully curated scenes to draw out the warm, comforting feeling of ASMR.
"The entire time here, it was just very calming, very relaxed, very spa-like, where even just the littlest things or noises that I would 100 percent ignore going throughout my day, hearing them isolated and in a quiet space was very calming," Whisperlodge guest Theresa Piazza said. "There were times where I felt like as the sounds were moving around me that it was giving a massage through my whole body, even though nothing was touching me."
ASMR started in online communities and people post videos like playing with slime, cutting bars of soap and jelly into slices with a hot knife in an effort to trigger the response in viewers. Many people use such videos to help themselves relax and to feel less anxious.
"There's this huge online community of people who have discovered something tactile through just being online, through something intangible," Lauw said. "But what we are doing now is bringing that online phenomenon into real life again and almost going full circle."
The Whisperlodge experience is $75 to $150 and runs in New York from August 11 through 19. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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