There is a joke about several seasons of “Dimension 20“genre mashup actual play series streamed on Defectionwhere the actors refer to filming in the cold stock somewhere in Los Angeles during stressful or tired moments. But game master Brennan Lee Mulligan and “Dimension 20The production team is now excitedly spending some time in a warehouse in New Jersey to prepare for “Gauntlet at the Garden,” a live show of their “The Unsleeping City” promotion at Madison Square Garden, which sold out in under an hour.
The proposition, and the great pleasure, that actual plays offer is a double immersion in storytelling where the audience enjoys the story created by the actors and the saga-spinning improv dynamic of them as players at a table, working through dice rituals and reacting to failures and successes in real time. But the number of people who help make this new entry into the story of heroes living in a magical version of New York happens in New York City is much bigger than even fans of “Dimension 20” might realize.
The show has toured live in the UK and Ireland and produced “Dimension 20: Time Quangle”, as a set of stand-alone episodes, or one-shots, for Defection; but to put it in D&D terms, Madison Square Garden has a much higher Challenge Rating than performing to 2,000 and 3,000 people. “When you go on tour, you have to work out a whole workflow for lights, sound, video, projections, animations, music, and it has to be LIVE,” executive producer Carlos Luna told IndieWire. “You might not have the same people on the fourth night that you trained on the second night. It was a total trial by fire, both for the new live crew and our staff.”
For “Gauntlet at the Garden,” that includes crew Luna, production designer Rick Perry, director Michael Schaubach, producers Clinton Trucks and Ebony Hardin, executive producer David Kerns and makeup director Denise Valentine, as well as people for whom Madison Square Garden and other venues for live- to-band is their favorite terrain: director Sandra Restrepo and production manager SJ Grevett, who also worked with the D20 team on their UK tour. Creative Director of Art and Design Paula Searing and Head of Post Production Lauren Stone are also waiting behind the scenes to take what’s happening at MSG and make sure it doesn’t stay on MSG. And working on this scale is part of the leveling Mulligan is happy to do with “Gauntlet at the Garden.”
“If it was up to me, I’d just be on a little toad in the woods and create stat blocks for different types of dragons,” Mulligan said. “But I think the brass ring at Madison Square Garden is really special for what it can hopefully do for all the great people who have worked on the show.”
“Madison Square Garden” is one of those magic phrases that can act as a bridge between Internet-based comics and legacy media, creating the context for a series that might otherwise be emptied into its own domain, outside of which, Mulligan said, it’s hard to talk about why something is worthy of awards. The “D20” team’s planning to make the most of the experience has been ambitious and, at times, fantastic — which says something especially for “The Unseelping City,” where Stephen Sondheim (yes, that Stephen Sondheim) has been kidnapped by goblins and ridden inside in battle on a bear.
“There were some crazy ideas, especially before we decided on a ‘show,'” Luna said. “What if Billy Joel is lowered from the ceiling while playing ‘New York State of Mind?’ What if Run DMC started singing ‘Walk This Way’ but we change the lyrics to ‘Roll This Way!’ None of us know Billy Joel or Run DMC. So people will have to settle for the fun game we have planned.”
One lesson from the “Time Quangle” tour has been that the fun game differs from, if bordering on, the usual rhythms of the “D20” dimensional dome, where Mulligan and the cast can tease and stretch stories over 10-20 episodes. However, their highly condensed nature allows the stories to work for both complete newcomers and “Dimension 20” veterans without having to bend or adjust the “canon” of the regular series.
“Foreshadowing something that’s coming in 15 episodes is very different from foreshadowing something that’s going to be resolved in 90 minutes,” Mulligan said. “The scripts (for the live shows) by definition have to be compact. So it’s like, ‘Here’s a problem; let’s solve it in the next two hours, shall we?’ It’s good for people who are new coming in. I think you also want to reward the people who have seen it all.”
Those rewards are less about shutting up and playing hits than understanding that the relationship with the audience is something different. “You move from a space that I think is very tailored for a kind of theater, almost like black box theater (experience) when you’re in a studio; and then you go to a live event and it’s the Thunderdome,” Mulligan said.
The answer to the intricate cosplay, rowdy cheers, and even some well-intentioned rule corrections shouted from the audience (please don’t do this) that happen at live shows is a slightly adapted style of performance and storytelling. Actors Emily Axford and Brian Murphy have toured their play “NaddPod” (Not Another D&D Podcast), and Mulligan cited them as showing how to keep the story moving while hitting one-liners and keeping the audience’s energy up.
“The energy of the audience is much more like a sports audience than people who are, let’s say, in a passive place where they’re consuming a play. When you’re watching that kind of theater, you’re trying to get to a place of total immersion, ego -death, “I’m just absorbing the art here.” And I’ll tell you, that’s not what happens at a live show, Mulligan said.
Continuing with the sports metaphor, the “Gauntlet at the Garden” will be both a home and away game; home in the sense that New York is the setting for the show, and there was really no other choice for what “Dimension 20” would do in Madison Square Garden. “(Doing Unsleeping City was) like ‘Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade’ where he’s in that room with all the different chalices, and he knows exactly which one is the Grail. All the other ones don’t make sense, you know?” Luna said.
But being away from his home studio and working on a different timescale for photography has meant that “Dimension 20” has had to prepare differently. “We learned a lot (from the UK tour)! Mainly to over-prepare a bit more and really rethink what we’re doing for this show,” Luna said.
The trick is to prepare a little, but not overreact to what’s fun about “Dimension 20” and “The Unsleeping City,” which is why Mulligan thought two months was a good amount of time to get ready for “Gauntlet at the Garden.” Part of it is the art of having fun playing games with your friends. “I’m actually doing this interview from a hotel in New Jersey. Today was the first day of prep and testing, and we just got back from having dinner at Red Lobster,” Luna said. “It was Rick’s (Perry) first the time he went and he thought it was just “good.” (Print it!)”
New Jersey may have only rolled a 10 on its Performance Check, but the “Dimension 20” team will take their initiative at Madison Square Garden on Friday, January 24th.
