David Byrne at Forest Hills Stadium
photo by Amanda Hatfield

David Byrne bringing "hybrid performance installation" to Denver in 2020

David Byrne‘s American Utopia on Broadway shows run through February 16 at Hudson Theater, and when they’re over, he already has plans for his next project. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Byrne said that next summer, he’ll open Theater of the Mind at Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

Theater of the Mind was previously workshopped on Governors Island in October and November of 2017 with production company 600 Highwayman, who describe it as “a hybrid performance installation about human perception, and the stories we create to define reality. Small audiences are guided through a series of visceral, sensory experiments. Who we are is how we perceive the world. If we can create new ways of seeing, can we create new ways of being together?”

For the Denver edition, Byrne told Rolling Stone, “it will be in a warehouse, where it’s divided into a bunch of different rooms. A group of 16 audience members will go from room to room and experience these perceptual things. When they leave one room, another group goes in there. That way, you can get 400 people in from 6 p.m. to 10. You get the same number as if it were a theater show, but you get more in small groups.”

“The Denver Center for the Performing Arts have done immersive things like this before,” Byrne continued, “not quite like this — but they’ve cultivated an audience in Denver.” The location, where weed and psychedelic mushrooms are legal, has other benefits too, according to Byrne, who said to Rolling Stone, “I am so convinced that because it’s about perception and sensory stuff, there’s gonna be a lot of gummy bears and other stuff in there.”

Stay tuned for more on Theater of the Mind.