Theater review by Marcus Scott
As a subject in American mass culture, cults have moved well beyond a cult following. They are hard to escape these days, whether in horror films—from Hereditary and Midsommar to more off-angle offerings like The Menu, Opus and Him—or in the realm of nonfiction, where real-world sects like the Zizians, NXIVM and the cult of Mother God have fueled documentaries, exposés and bestsellers. And now contemporary theater is finally catching up to the Zeitgeist with Nazareth Hassan’s Practice, an incantatory deep dive into the sociologies of performance that is as disturbing as it is riveting. Expertly directed by Keenan Tyler Oliphant, with electrifying movement by Camden Gonzalez and an extraordinary ensemble cast, the play’s world premiere at Playwrights Horizons conjures a theatrical experience in which the line between artistic rigor and psychic violation is perilously thin.
Practice | Photograph: Courtesy Alexander Mejía
In the play’s opening scene, a study in human pliancy, seven young performers stand on a bare stage, auditioning with the same monologue. With each take, they absorb direction unquestioningly: bending without breaking, desperate to prove themselves to a gaze they cannot see. The disembodied voice dispensing notes from the aptly named “God mic” belongs to Asa Leon (Ronald Peet), a critically acclaimed auteur whose MacArthur “genius” grant—“Not that I would label myself as a genius,” he protests coquettishly—has enabled him to convert an old church in Brooklyn into an ascetic sanctuary for rehearsal. A consummate aura farmer, Asa gathers the actors to participate in a devised work that draws on their own histories and psychic vulnerabilities to generate material that will be staged in Berlin and London. (The mere mention of Europe sends a near-comic tremor of excitement through the company.) This ensemble is to be sequestered together for eight weeks; as though in a radical docuseries, all of their interactions are to be recorded for “authenticity.”
Practice | Photograph: Courtesy Alexander Mejía
These actors are a motley group: overachieving party girl Savannah (Amandla Jahava); hypervigilant Yale dropout Angelique (Maya Margarita); flamboyant chaos agent Keeyon (Hayward Leach); easygoing Ro (Opa Adeyemo); try-hard Tristan (Omar Shafiuzzaman); self-effacing Latina heiress Mel (Karina Curet); gawky German transplant Rinni (Susannah Perkins). On their first day, they go through innocuous theater games and icebreakers—joined by Asa’s designer and nonmonogamous husband, Walton (Mark Junek), and dramaturg, Danny (Alex Wyse)—followed by a communal meal at which Asa invites them to embrace destabilization as the crucible of artistic growth. They nod along, brimming with credulous devotion, as Asa unveils a key instrument of their training: a chart inscribed with their names and a series of purported values. Each week, they are to mark where their colleagues “need some work,” to determine whether they require “no adjustments” or a more ominous “reassessment of your needs and our needs.” They willingly chart their own undoing, intoxicated by the validation it delivers at every step.
Practice | Photograph: Courtesy Alexander Mejía
Structurally, Practice is an audacious diptych. The almost perversely elongated two-hour first act immerses us in the granular mechanics of rehearsal: a meticulous, meditative accumulation of gestures, glances, and interpersonal micro-negotiations that slowly metastasizes into something more disquieting, with dynamics that evoke Stanley Milgram’s famous obedience experiments. The first act’s punishing duration serves as both endurance trial and ethical provocation, implicating the audience in the ritualized degradation onstage: a theatrical stress test of power and complicity that suggests the lengths to which both performers and spectators will go in the name of “process.”
Practice | Photograph: Courtesy Alexander Mejía
After all of that, the sudden break for intermission feels almost like a slap. The seductive Asa stays onstage, supervising the load-in of Walton’s set—a mirrored cell for the insane, stripped of any padding—and in the taut, 40-minute second act we see the performance-within-a-performance toward which the first part of Practice has been building: a staged event pointedly christened Self-Awareness Exercise 001. Lighting designer Masha Tsimring drenches Afsoon Pajoufar’s set in a sinister scarlet glow, while sound designer Tei Blow floods it with alternative opera that is at once ominous and absurd. It all lands with a kind of grotesque inevitability: You keep hoping for catharsis, illumination, a glimmer of moral clarity, but Practice withholds such comforts with unnerving discipline.
Practice | Photograph: Courtesy Alexander Mejía
In theatre, intense vulnerability can function as both a rite of passage and pedagogical tool: methods derived from Stanislavski, Meisner and other luminaries demand that participants excavate personal trauma, embrace unfiltered emotion and submit to peer scrutiny. To outsiders, such exercises can appear coercive or psychologically intrusive, but within the training space, they are framed as indispensable to authentic performance. Drama school alumni, consider yourselves warned: This play’s depiction of power asymmetries is painfully recognizable and almost queasily intimate. Yet Practice is also exhilarating. The pacing may alienate audiences who crave a more conventional narrative arc, but I was mesmerized by its seamless combination of fascination and dread. This is among the most compelling and provocative works of the year. It left my jaw on the floor and my mind circling its implications long after the lights came up.
Practice. Playwrights Horizons (Off Broadway). By Nazareth Hassan. Directed by Keenan Tyler Oliphant. With Opa Adeyemo, Karina Curet, Amandla Jahava, Mark Junek, Hayward Leach, Maya Margarita, Ronald Peet, Susannah Perkins, Omar Shafiuzzaman, Alex Wyse. Running time: 2hrs 45mins. One intermission.
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Practice | Photograph: Courtesy Alexander Mejía
