‘Where I End & You Begin’: Bechtold’s sabbatical project premieres at MASS MoCA this winter

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we lived in a world of isolation. Gathering together as a community was difficult, and public events were completely shut down. For Performing Arts Department Head John Bechtold, this meant creating theater required innovation.  

For Bechtold, theater is so important because it offers a “live public forum for meaningful connection.” Finding connection in a post-pandemic world is also what drove Bechtold to his current project, Where I End & You Begin, which can be found at MASS MoCA this Winter, the product of a six month sabbatical for Bechtold. 

Designed as an immersive audio walk for two people, Where I End & You Begin seeks to create meaningful connections between the audience and their environment. Bechtold wants people to connect more warmly with each other and with the museum than usual since he says museums are usually about “a person confronting a work of art.” The goal for the project is to give MASS MoCA lots of physical and emotional accessibility, as well as helping the audience to connect with the museum’s history. 

Growing up in a very small rural New York town, Bechtold was surrounded by nature, which became a baseline for imagination when gathering with friends or neighbors was difficult due to a spread out town. His school’s theater class was small, but nonetheless it stuck with him as a focus for his creativity, and it stayed as a extracurricular hobby even as he initially studied English in college at Bates College in Maine. 

His real connection with theater would start when he went back to Harvard for a master’s degree in theater, but his college curriculum wasn’t the only root of his education. 

While attending classes at Harvard, Bechtold discovered an “Immersive Theater” production called Sleep No More, put on by British theater group Punchdrunk. For Bechtold, his experience gained through Sleep No More was as important an education to becoming a teacher and artist as his Harvard education, saying that working on this show and seeing what immersive theater could do for the first time was “so impossibly magical.” He still remains connected to Punchdrunk and Sleep No More today.

Bechtold pioneered the first immersive theater program in a school theater nationwide at ARHS in 2010; He brought his experience with Punchdrunk home to Montague, as he shifted from being an English teacher to the head of the Performing Arts wing. 

For several years, Bechtold continued his personal artistic projects while balancing teaching and camp counseling, but this semester he’s finally taking sabbatical for his own work, and although Bechtold said “teaching is a lifestyle choice and not just a vocational choice,” he’s revelling in being able to control the way he spends time on his work.

Bechtold’s current personal work originated during the pandemic, when he started looking into locative audio technology, which is defined as “a way to use digital content and real-world locations to create interactive experiences.” His aim was to connect the audience with their environment in a time when connection person-to-person was so difficult, and having a medium which is “so readily deployable” and enabling of an “on demand theater experience” was perfect for Bechtold. 

Starting with a series of audio-guided immersive nature walks called Promenades, Bechtold’s work caught the eye of a MASS MoCA curator, which led to the residency he’s working on today. 

Taking a sabbatical to work on Where I End & You Begin was a process that began years ago for Bechtold. He had been working on the project with MASS MoCA and collaborator and Theater Professor Alli Ross (a longtime friend from Harvard and Sleep No More), as well as Soundscore Composer Sam Perry and Choral Composer Sasha Yakub. 

Previously, work on the project happened whenever Bechtold could squeeze it in after teaching or on weekends, but when Ross took a sabbatical from her own work, it spurred on Bechtold to begin the long process of applications and board meetings to be approved for his own sabbatical. After getting approved for leave last fall, Bechtold is now taking time off from teaching at ARHS to focus on his current project. 

“After working on Where I End & You Begin during the school year and on weekends, doing my residency while working full time as a teacher and camp director, now I just get to be a full-time artist going [to MASS MoCA] five to six times a week,” said Bechtold.  “The work process is accelerating, my work now is really an inflection point. I’m usually either on-site or on the computer editing or in a meeting about the project. It’s intense, but I’d describe it as ‘positive obsession,’ shoutout to Octavia Butler for the phrase.”

Although it’s currently still just in residency, Where I End & You Begin can be found at MASS MoCA in January of next year, where it will remain for a few years as a full installment of the museum. Variations on the project are in development which involve live dancers and a children’s version, also at MASS MoCA. 

On the horizon, Bechtold has similar locative audio projects with the Emily Dickinson Museum, as well as shows with Eggtooth Productions as Creative Director and Lighting Designer. 

“I think we’re onto something really fun,” said Bechtold. “I can’t find any other work that parallels what we’re doing.”