On a recent weekday evening, I found myself in a romantic position for which I have had zero training for: a dating coach. Yet there I was, at an East Hollywood bar, listening and analyzing a conversation among two prospective partners. The pair had already debated local hiking spots, yet when one said she leaned homebody and the other favored nights out, our trainees needed help.
A sudden lull in the chat caused a panic, and a coach for the other team called for a pause. “Time for a sidebar,” she said, as we all huddled around our dating cadets for a quick assessment and to provide tips to steer the course of the conversation.
The clock was ticking. This was a speed-dating setup, and our apprentices only had a few minutes to get to some important conversations. Dating with intention and commitment was important to the singleton that I and another were tasked to manage, so we decided to get straight to big-picture goals. It worked — sort of. Asking questions about the future caused the other party to waver and stumble. A red flag?
This is “Love Game,” a new interactive play from the Last Call Theatre company staged at the Virgil, a bar and live-music space near the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Virgil Avenue. We as audience members play matchmaker in this 21-and-older show. And in our role, we’re working for a researcher who believes they have cracked the formula for love.
The bulk of the actors play wannabe daters. The stakes gradually ramp up throughout the production. With only a handful of singles available, the desire to pair up my assigned actor increased as the show progressed. I didn’t want to fail them by having the show end with them being dateless.
Expect curveballs — some may pitch polyamory, causing a near-existential crisis in a single who longs for a fairy-tale romance with one individual. And get ready for debates as to what makes for the best long-term partnership — where do we compromise, and is it even healthy to yearn for romance above all else in life? Does love erupt thanks to some undefinable equation that just sort of happens, or can we approach dating like a science, mixing and matching personality traits until we’ve created a foolproof pairing?
The primary theme of “Love Game,” says director Michael DiNardo, is self-improvement.
“I think when a lot of people who are going out to date or looking for a lifelong partner, they’re looking for a lot of affirmation and validation from outside sources,” DiNardo, 29, says. “But all of these characters, the ones who are dating in the show and are outside of the dating experiment of the show, have aspects about themselves that need self-reflection.”
“Love Game” is Last Call’s eighth show in about three years, a relatively brisk production pace that has helped establish the young troupe as serious players on the L.A. immersive theater scene. At any Last Call performance, storylines are heavily improvised, there are multiple endings and audience members can expect to interact with actors in exaggerated settings. The team has in the past created shows influenced by an Ikea-like setting, 2023’s “The Showroom,” and on a pirate ship, last year’s “Pirates Wanted,” which was staged at San Pedro’s Los Angeles Maritime Institute.
“We put the power in the hands of the audience,” says Ashley Busenlener, Last Call’s executive director.
“They have the agency to affect and change the story,” Busenlener continues. “If there was no audience, there would be no show. The actions they take and how they interact with the characters change it every night. You can change one character’s mind about something. You can change the entire plot of the show. There’s a structure and there’s different endings, but the audience is the protagonist of the story.”
Created by a team raised on video and tabletop games, Last Call’s shows unfold like games, so much so that the troupe has a tendency to refer to its actors as “NPCs,” or non-player characters, a term from the gaming world that identifies those personas not controlled by the player. Busenlener, 27, is an avid “Dungeons & Dragons” player, and the fantasy role-playing game has influenced Last Call productions, specifically in the creation of elaborate character sheets that outline for the actor someone’s interests, background and motivation.
“Individual backstories and world-building is something that happens in the rehearsal process with the actors,” Busenlener says. “That’s something I’ve gotten a lot of practice with [in] ‘D&D.’ We write journals in character and different exercises like letters and things. When you’re in these shows, an audience member can really ask you anything, and you have to have an answer for it. Like, ‘How is your relationship with your mother?’ And you’re like, ‘I know the answer because in our second rehearsal I wrote a letter to my mother.’”
Yet what truly sets Last Call apart is its desire to experiment with show themes and topics in the immersive space. The seeds of the company go back to when Busenlener and DiNardo were students at USC. Both fell in love with the immersive format for its interactivity — Busenlener after seeing a production of “The Great Gatsby: The Immersive Show” while studying abroad in London, and DiNardo after experiencing a handful of local, intimate shows that allowed for actors to converse with the guests.
In Los Angeles in particular, the immersive scene tends to be most active in September and October near Halloween season. Shows are often constructed around a mystery or the exploration of a haunted environment. A production like “Love Game,” a romantic comedy timed for Valentine’s Day and equally influenced by reality television and dating-simulator video games, is relatively rare.
“What we get to do is touch on all the different genres and realms of worlds where you can play, whether that’s been sci-fi or postapocalyptic, or fantasy with pirates, or more modern realistic with ‘Love Game,’” DiNardo says. “There’s a way for us to delve and see how this format works in any genre. That way we can open up opportunities for audience members who might be big sci-fi fans but have friends who are more into reality TV shows.”
Adds Busenlener: “I love Halloween season in L.A. because there’s so many cool things going on, but I also love being able to go to fun immersive stuff outside of that season.”
And now, with “Love Game,” L.A. has a show for Valentine’s Day season.
Let’s just say I wasn’t the most successful of matchmakers, but “Love Game” offers numerous quests — we can attempt to increase the flirtation among actors by setting up karaoke sessions or can opt instead to chat with an in-show bartender, receiving a less scientific love analysis. At one point, I found myself attempting to steal research documents in a bid to get more information on the singles in the show.
All of that equals another Last Call trait, that is, to expect a sense of humor. “With this type of structure, when you bring in such a large unknown of the audience, and who knows what ideas they’ll bring in and how they’ll want to play in the space, you have to inherently accept a little bit of campiness,” DiNardo says. “I am all on board and in favor of it.”
And what, after all, would be a series of first dates without a little exaggeration?
