Performer Greg Wohead goes one-on-one with audience

Greg Wohead: “The Backseat of My Car (and Other Safe Places)”

Oct. 13-15; several showtimes each day starting at 8 p.m. $5-$10. Ferst Center for the Arts, 349 Ferst Drive, Atlanta. 404-894-9600, www.arts.gatech.edu.

Greg Wohead isn’t always the easiest guy to get in touch with. He’s finally reachable after finishing a 15-day, no cellphone backpacking trip along the John Muir Trail in California from its beginning in Yosemite Valley to its end at the summit of Mount Whitney.

It all sounds about as far as possible from Georgia Tech and the innovative, boundary-breaking theater pieces the writer-performer is preparing to bring to the campus’s Ferst Center for the Arts from Oct. 13-15, but he points out there is actually a common thread.

“The two works that I’ll be showing at Georgia Tech are both about the experience of moving through time — reflecting on where you’ve been and looking towards where you might be going — so in that sense, hiking has a lot in common with my artistic interests,” he says. “On a long walking trip, in a very practical way, you’re constantly evaluating where you’ve just been, checking in with yourself in the present to see how your body feels and what it needs, and trying to plan as best you can for what’s to come while also not being able to predict what will happen. That’s a lot like how we move through life.”

And as in life, Wohead's performances are never exactly the same thing twice. His work "Hurtling" is an outdoor performance in which audience members wear a pair of headphones and follow Wohead's directions in a recording specifically remade for each location in which it's performed. His work "The Backseat of My Car (and Other Safe Places)" is a performance during which participants interact with Wohead one on one in his car.

“At the time I made these works, I was very preoccupied with memory and looking back on your life,” Wohead says. “‘The Backseat of My Car’ is sort of a re-enactment of a moment from my memory, and I wondered what it would be like to have an audience member step into that re-enactment with me. By doing that, it then triggers connections in the memory of the audience member from their own life. ‘Hurtling’ is more clearly looking at how we experience time and trying to deconstruct that as best we can … I think the idea for both of these pieces is to take something that feels huge and universal — like the experience of moving through time — and trying to make it as intimate and personal as possible.”

As a performer, Wohead says it’s that sense of intimacy he’s always seeking to create. “One of the most fantastic things about one-on-one performances is that it creates a different relationship and a different sense of possibility than if the audience member is allowed to disappear in a crowd,” he says. “It means that you get to encounter each other as two individuals.”

Wohead grew up in Mesquite, Texas, near Dallas and was initially drawn to traditional theater. In 2005, he moved to London to attend drama school, but while there, he was exposed to experimental performance works by the likes of Forced Entertainment, Tim Crouch and Forest Fringe.

“I find that the performance work I’ve seen that affects me most deeply is work that shakes the traditional forms of what we normally think of as ‘theater,’” he says. “My mind started opening up to what performance work can be, which is something that doesn’t necessarily strive to impress, but something that strives to make space for people to think about themselves, each other and the world differently.”

And if his pieces at Georgia Tech can prompt viewers to think about the world differently, then he regards his work as a success.

“As an artist, I’m interested in connecting with people as deeply as I can, and I’m interested in creating spaces where people can connect with each other and themselves,” he says. “A typical proscenium stage performance creates a distance that can feel safe and comfortable, but can also mean there’s less of a chance for the performance to really hit you hard. I feel less interested in theater and performance work that you can appreciate from a distance and more interested in work that can really get under your skin and affect you.”