“Every Day I’ll Hope” – A Charming Experience that Rewards Vulnerability

After more than a year of experiencing far too much of my social interaction over Zoom, including the majority of COVID-era theater, there’s something oddly familiar about stepping into a voiceover recording booth for Siobhan O’Loughlin’s “Every Day I’ll Hope.” On the one hand, it’s an in-person show. I’m out of the house, with a small group of strangers, eager to once again break the fourth wall and have some meaningful face-to-face interactions with my fellow humans. On the other, I’m sitting in a chair (well, on a stool), wearing over-the-ear headphones, and speaking into a microphone while the show unfolds on the other side of a glass screen. It’s a strange middle ground between isolation and (at least for immersive theater enthusiasts) normalcy.

You’re Talent, Right?

“Every Day I’ll Hope” has a deceptively simple premise. Glittery e-girl Bambi (played by O’Loughlin) is making an audiobook, and guests are voice actors who have been hired to lend their talents to the recording. After showing proof of vaccination and a brief primer, guests are led into the recording booth of a Sherman Oaks-area voiceover studio. Once you’re all settled in, Bambi enters to take her place on the other side of the glass as writer/director/producer/engineer. Almost immediately her mask of composure slips. Bambi is overworked, overwhelmed, desperate to succeed but terrified of failure, and bitter at how trying to monetize her passions has sucked so much of the joy out from them.

Over the next hour, guests are taken on an emotional journey under the guise of helping to record a trailer for Bambi’s upcoming audiobook. Alternating between a lampoon of O’Loughlin’s own experience as a VO professional, a raw dissection of the pressures facing female creatives, and getting surprisingly deep into guests’ own anxieties and hopes, “Every Day I Hope” focuses on creating intimacy and openness through a calculated rhythm of humor, soul-bearing, and soundscaped poetry through movement.

I Have Everything I Need

The structure and flow of “Every Day I’ll Hope” will be familiar to those who’ve attended O’Loughlin’s ongoing “Please Don’t Touch the Artist” (aka PDT) series. O’Loughlin knows what she’s good at and plays to her strengths, drawing on lessons from a year of at-least-weekly Zoom productions focused on interactive storytelling. Much of the power of O’Loughlin’s performance is how much care goes into both crafting the stereotype her character embodies and then breaking it. Bambi, like previous personas she’s created, seems to represent a specific archetype of womanhood–in Bambi’s case, e-girls–but the point is to strip away the mask. To take the audience beneath the surface into a rich, complex person who is stifled by society’s expectations and yearns to just do what she loves on her own terms.

Is This Thing On?

Another area where O’Loughlin is able to successfully draw on her experience with Zoom shows is in the costuming and lighting. Whether intentional or not, placing guests in a recording booth means the show is framed very much like a computer monitor. O’Loughlin uses the same kind of lighting as in her PDT shows, which works surprisingly well in the audio engineer’s room given the minimalist setup. Also, having guests view her through a glass rectangle gives O’Loughlin a defined frame for her scene–not unlike performing in front of a webcam.

Do You Think It’ll Work?

To be fair, “Every Day I’ll Hope” isn’t for everyone. As an interactive monologue it’s a fairly passive experience. There are no puzzles to solve, no mysteries to unravel, no spaces to explore, and not a ton of lore to dig into. If your tastes in immersive theater run more towards investigating an elaborate space or probing characters for clues, you may find less here than you’d hope. And for those familiar with O’Loughlin’s prior work, “Every Day I’ll Hope” can feel like more of the same. It’s an excellent translation of her Zoom-based shows to an in-person setting, focused more on recreating something tried-and-true in a new format rather than branching out.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The reality is, if you have seen O’Loughlin perform before and enjoyed it, you’re probably going to have a great time at “Every Day I’ll Hope.” But it does mean that it sits closer to traditional theater than a lot of other site-based performances.

You’re Free to Go

If you enjoy an opportunity to open up in a safe, often hilarious space with strangers, “Every Day I’ll Hope” is a wonderful time. You’ll laugh. You may even cry. You’ll feel that “oof” from something hitting close to home. You’ll learn some surprisingly deep things about a handful of friends and strangers. You’ll hear your own words recorded and replayed, woven into a heartfelt conclusion about finding hope amid looming despair.

Ultimately, “Every Day I’ll Hope” is about being vulnerable. About embracing an opportunity to peek at the parts of themselves that people hide away for fear of not fitting in, and to let people see a couple of yours in return.

How to Attend

Tickets for “Every Day I Hope” are $45 per person, and available from O’Loughlin’s website. Performances are approximately 60 minutes long, allow up to four participants in one show, and take place at a voice acting studio in North Hollywood. Showtimes are still available through August 2021.

Guests must show proof of vaccination, and submit to a temperature check before being allowed in. Guests also remain masked unless all agree they are comfortable taking them off while in the recording booth.

You can learn more about O’Loughlin’s other work on her website, or by following her on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.