In immersive theatre experience The Last Resort, a cruise ship sets sail to the Bermuda Triangle in 1971
Fairlith Harvey drew on her experiences as a funeral attendant in creating the experiential work
Fairlith Harvey. Photo by Chelsey Stuyt
Dreamqueen Collective presents The Last Resort within At the Waldorf on November 10, 17, and 24
FAIRLITH HARVEY LOVED her job as a funeral attendant, a role she held for two years post-pandemic. With a background in dance and theatre, the local arts producer served 11 different funeral homes and worked with 43 different funeral directors. The experience gave her some hope for humanity.
“The stakes are very high for the families, so no matter how bad a day someone was having or no matter what kind of drama might be happening in a workplace…as soon as the funeral started, everyone just snapped into making it as wonderful as possible,” Harvey says in a phone interview with Stir. “I have never seen anyone not give their 100 percent to making sure a funeral goes well and just always found it to be this really beautiful microcosm of human beings helping other human beings.
“I love producing theatre,” she adds, “and being involved in funeral services is the same thing, just on a very tight timeline.”
Harvey, the founder of Dreamqueen Collective, is the visionary and the co-writer, co-director, and co-producer of The Last Resort, a new immersive theatre experience that opens on November 10 and is set to run for three consecutive Sundays within At The Waldorf, a multi-venue complex in East Vancouver. Set in 1971, it follows a group of cruise-ship passengers who wind up in the titular hotel in the Bermuda Triangle. Audience members are the newest resort guests, while the actors serve as a mix of staff members and patrons among them.
While working in the funeral industry, Harvey was essentially what she calls the babysitter of the deceased; she drove the hearse, styled their hair, folded their hands just so, and so on. Her time spent caring for the dead got her thinking: What would happen if you died prematurely for whatever reason and got stuck existing in the afterlife?
The cruise-ship element of The Last Resort also comes from Harvey’s true-to-life experiences. Two years ago, a travel-agent friend invited her to go on a repositioning cruise with her and a bunch of her friends. Harvey was surprised to learn that out of a group of nine, she was the only person not dating someone.
“I really, really enjoyed it…but it was really weird to be on a ship in this weird situation and it got me thinking ‘What would happen if the afterlife, like a cruise ship, was this place you couldn’t leave and it was a constant party?” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, with its themes of never-ending parties and introversion, influenced her as well.
Harvey studied at New York’s American Musical and Dramatic Academy, programmed immersive sci-fi dining experiences at Times Square’s Mars 2112, and has contributed content for Disney Cruise Line as well as for the Vancouver troupe Geekenders. As someone who identifies as neurodivergent, she loves the idea of immersive experiences. Disneyland—which she views as the ultimate in experiential design—is her favourite place in the world to visit.
“It’s very hard for me to turn my brain off, and it goes very, very fast,” Harvey says. “They designed Disneyland so you don’t have to think of the outside world, and I thought ‘Vancouver doesn’t have anything like that. How can I give back to my community and help them feel this magic I feel when I visit a theme park or go to visit New York City’s Sleep No More [an indoor experiential promenade performance]?’ I want to share that forgetting about the outside world.”
For audiences at The Last Resort, it’s very much a choose-your-own adventure kind of scenario. Upon entry, they’ll be given a lei: a colourful one means they want to participate and interact with the actors; a white one means they don’t. The cast members are all named and modelled after tarot cards, such as Death, the Devil, and the Magician, among others. Each ticket includes two cocktails or three mocktails, which are inspired by the seven deadly sins.
There are four venues within At the Waldorf, and in the upstairs bar people are welcome to talk to characters, have a drink, or maybe watch some juggling or a dance performance. “It’s just a normal bar that’s afterlife-y,” Harvey says. “The rules are very simple: don’t open closed doors or curtains; don’t speak unless spoken to; don’t touch unless invited to.
“The idea is to flip the script of the actor-audience contract,” she continues. “So instead of giving the actors a ton of energy and making them feel wonderful, the actors are setting out to make the audience feel wonderful. Your role is that you died on a cruise ship in 1971 and to let the actors take over and give you an experience from there. You don’t have to do anything. We practise making people comfortable and obtaining consent; we never want to make people feel dropped or like they don’t know what to do. A large part of our rehearsal is making sure people are comfortable. Just get ready to get swept away.” Kind of like The Last Resort passengers who ended up in the Bermuda Triangle. 
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