CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Young people suffer through emotional crises and their anguished parents turn to the healing power of nature in a multimedia theater production, “WILDERNESS,” coming to Krannert Center for the Performing Arts later this month. The documentary-theater piece tells the stories of a half-dozen adolescents who are sent to a wilderness-therapy program in the desert to work through the issues that are troubling them. It will be shown at Krannert Center at 7:30 p.m. March 28.
“WILDERNESS” was produced by En Garde Arts, a New York City-based nonprofit theater company whose mission is to engage the community by encouraging discussion of social issues through documentary theater. The show was a New York Times Critics’ Pick.
The production is the second collaboration of producer Anne Hamburger and director Seth Bockley, who co-wrote the piece. Hamburger and Bockley also created “BASETRACK Live,” a multimedia theater production about the struggles of veterans and their families, which was shown at Krannert Center in 2015.
The multimedia format of “WILDERNESS” is the result of the success the two had with “BASETRACK Live” in telling a story amplified by technology, Bockley said. The story was inspired by the personal experience of Hamburger and her son, who went through a wilderness-therapy program when he was 15 and suffering from depression.
“He was struggling to a great degree. We were really at a dead end and thought sending him to a wilderness-therapy program was the right thing,” Hamburger said. “It is really profound as a mother to say, ‘My kid needs more help than I can provide.’”
While developing “WILDERNESS,” she and Bockley spent a week at a camp in Utah – not the one her son attended – getting to know the young people there and hearing their stories. Hamburger also interviewed their parents by Skype, and video of those interviews is projected onto a large screen during “WILDERNESS,” while actors portray the young people in the program.
The production is not an endorsement of wilderness therapy, Hamburger said.
“While the wilderness is the setting for the show, at its core it is about the struggle for connection between parents and their children … (and) learning about oneself through these struggles,” Hamburger said.
“That’s the heart of the piece – trying to put yourself in the shoes of another, trying to understand where a kid or a parent is coming from,” Bockley said.
He said recovery-therapy models are based on listening to other people’s stories, and empathy with what others are going through is the basis for the production.
“The kids are ripped away from technology and peers and friends and lives, and they are also being ripped away from a contemporary culture that doesn’t take any time for contemplation or soul searching. This is in part what happens out there – people take the time to tell their stories and to be heard,” Bockley said.
In addition to the actors and the videotaped interviews, the production relies on movement and choreography of gestures to tell its story.
“Some of these people, the young characters in particular, are guarded with their emotions and how they express themselves, even out in the field when conducting a therapy session,” Bockley said. “Through expressive movement, we really get to the heart of the hope and the emotional turbulence these characters are drawing from.”
Some of the show’s music is taken directly from Bockley and Hamburger’s experiences while visiting the therapy program.
“One morning, we heard a counselor wake up the camp by singing a cappella out into the field where the kids were camping. She sang this beautiful folk song. We put it into the show,” Bockley said.
While the young people in therapy may be confronting some common issues among adolescents, such as depression, substance abuse, bullying and suicide, each of the stories presented in “WILDERNESS” is unique and three-dimensional, Bockley said.
“We’re not reducing them to a label of a diagnosis. These are really complicated families and they include parents who may have their own issues,” he said, adding that they looked at each situation from multiple perspectives.
The production shows the impact of mental health issues on families and helps spark discussions about that difficult topic, Hamburger said.
“Having it be accessible and heartfelt and funny and nuanced caused it to be kind of a magnet for people who are interested in these topics,” she said. “There’s so much shame and isolation around these topics, it’s wonderful to see how audiences have responded to this.”