Getting Lost in a Good Play

You enter a dimly lit (1) hotel. You are shown to a strange room that features a large, glowing exit sign and a framed jigsaw puzzle. This does not sound like a (2) prevalent night at the theater, but it is the beginning of a theatrical performance. Dominic Hubder’s Hotel Savoy. The production is part of the growing world of "immersive (3) theater." According to producers and fans of immersive theater, (4) Hotel Savoy is one of the most entertaining and creative performances of this form.

In Hotel Savoy, actors playing hotel (5) employees leading participants into various parts of a building, designed to look like an old-fashioned European hotel. Participants enter the hotel's specially arranged rooms, while clerks, maids, and fellow guests engage them in conversations that are by turns courageous, friendly and ominous. Exploring the mysterious rooms and talking with the actors, each audience in effect becomes the star of his or her own show. Theater critic Mitch Montgomery likens the experience to being hurled into a series of new worlds: "Huber has fashioned tiny pocket realities for us to confront and feel our way through."

Some works of immersive theater demand more vigorous forms of participation. Louise Ann Wilson's production The Gathering, (6) moreover, takes audience members hilting across a farm and up the foothills of Mount Snowdon in a work that (7) uses: dramatic scenes, music, and visual arts to examine the lives of Welsh sheep farmers. (8) Prior familiarity with Welsh culture is not required: participants are herded-much like sheep-through a vast green countryside as the sounds of a brass band mingle with the voices of farmers, the barking of (9) ,sheepdogs and, the sound of a stream running through the hills.

The recent increase in the popularity of immersive theatrical events such as Hotel Savoy and The Gathering (10) is sometimes attributed to the fact that audiences have become used to other forms of interactive and immersive entertainment. Some have compared immersive theater events to online role-playing games in which participants are free to explore the virtual space, interact with other players, and (11) to influence the course of events. Because they happen in real space and allow direct contact with other human beings, immersive theater events can be even more engaging than online role-playing games. Whatever the reason for their popularity, though, immersive theater productions are some of the most exciting productions in theater- though not necessarily in theaters-today. 

A Landmark of Building Preservation

On November 27, 1910, more than 100,000 people flocked to the heart of Manhattan to witness the opening of Pennsylvania Station-nicknamed Penn Station-in New York City. Built by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, Penn Station was not just an entryway to the company's newly constructed network of underground train tunnels connecting New York City with the Pennsylvania Railroad: it (12) made every traveler who moved through it feel important. Visitors were struck by the sheer immensity of the edifice-covering nearly two full city blocks, it was the world's fourth-largest building-and they marveled at its pale granite façade, imposing (13) columns, and vaulted glass roof. Evoking the grandeur of ancient (14) Rome. Its awe-inspiring design was meant to reflect New York City's status as a world capital.

After just a few (15) decades however, the luster began to fade. With the growth of automobile ownership and commercial air travel, railroads lost customers. As the Pennsylvania Railroad (16) Companies' profits shrank, the station fell into disrepair. In 1961, the struggling company made a drastic decision: it would sell the station's land and air rights-the rights to build at and above ground level-to the Madison Square Garden Corporation, which would raze the original building and replace it with a street-level terminal, sports arena, and high-rise office building.

Outraged by news of the impending demolition, a group for young architects formed the Action Group for Better Architecture in New York (17) (AGBANY) to promote the public uses of architecture. AGBANY worked tirelessly to rally public support and persuade city officials to intervene, writing letters, circulating petitions, and (18) to organize a public protest in front of the station's entrance on August 2, 1962. It won the support of several politicians and journalists and even (19) assured a hearing with the mayor. (20) Likewise, government officials said they had no legal authority to take control of Penn Station and showed little interest in becoming involved in the issue. AGBANY continued its petitions and protests, but the train had left the station. On October 28, 1963, (21) picketers stood by in disbelief. Wrecking balls began to chip away at the elaborate granite façade.

Though Penn Station was not saved, its loss called attention to the need to preserve buildings of historical value. Many New Yorkers found they missed the old Penn Station and came to regard its destruction as a loss to the city. With the aim of preventing similar events, the city established the Landmarks Preservation Commission, a government agency with the authority to designate and preserve historical buildings, in 1965. The original Penn (22) Station can be seen in superb black-and-white photographs compiled in such books as Lost New York.

Food on the Move

Mozzeria Hongry Kong. Big Top Waffles. In cities across the United States, people line up to snag their favorite fare from these cleverly named eateries, (23) so they're not waiting for tables; instead, they're lining up at the serving windows of food trucks. In the past few years, the food truck industry has seen strong growth as entrepreneurial chefs (24) will discover a new way to share their love of food. For aspiring restaurateurs who want a more affordable option to establish their own business, food trucks might offer the ideal way to get started.

When compared to traditional restaurants, food trucks are a less expensive way to embark on a career as a culinary entrepreneur. The biggest required investment is the truck. Fortunately, the options are plentiful: from school buses to delivery vans, almost any large vehicle can be retrofitted with the equipment required to cook and serve food. Considering that (25) the startup cost of a modestly sized restaurant can easily be two or three times the price of establishing a basic food truck, the financial advantage is clear.

 [1] The mobility of food trucks allows operators to reach a broader market than they can with a fixed location restaurant. [2] A successful truck can even develop a loyal fan (26) base, Kogi-a popular Los Angeles-based food truck owned by Roy Choi, attracts hundreds of customers who are passionate for (27) its Korean short-rib tacos and kimchi hot dogs. [3] Choi posts a weekly schedule on his website and sends updates to over 100,000 fans via social media. [4] Often, he is greeted by a line of (28) hyper people when he arrives at his daily destinations. [5] While a fledgling restaurant has to wait for customers to discover it, a food truck can park in a business district for the lunch hour rush and then cruise to a popular residential area to reach a dinnertime crowd. (29)

Like Choi, many food truck operators prepare a brief and focused menu to highlight ethnic dishes and niche cuisines such as Indian dosas, soul food, and even gourmet snowballs. Kim Pham, Philip Shen, and Terri (30) Phillips, authors of Food Truck Road Trip-A Cookbook write that food trucks offer chefs the chance to do "one thing and do it well." (31) It might seem like a limitation to the budding chef. In fact, it is an opportunity to develop a specific dish to its full potential.

As with any new business venture, there are challenges to operating a food truck. Complex mobile vending regulations in cities can lead to costly citations, and there are often strict rules of operation. (32) Specializing in one cuisine reduces the amount of equipment an owner needs to purchase. Owners also stress the intensive time commitment a food truck requires. (33) Nevertheless, the low cost of startups and the creative freedom afforded by the food truck business model make it an ideal way to launch a career as a chef or restaurateur.

Ant Charmers

Ants communicate with one another using a variety (34) of: sound and chemical signals. These signals coordinate ants' elaborate social behaviors, but (35) they can also be employed by parasites to bypass the ants' defenses. Among the most successful ant-mimicking parasites are Paussus favieri, Moroccan beetles that encounter no resistance as they enter the nests of the ant Pheidole pallidula and feed on the ants' larvae. Hoping to learn about the adaptations that allow these infiltrations, (36) a mode of ant communication that the beetles are specially equipped to mimic was focused on by entomologists low-frequency sounds called stridulations.

Researchers at Roma Tre University (37) obtained samples of P. favieri from the atlas mountains in Morocco. They hypothesized that P. favieri mimics P. pallidula stridulations (38) to be infiltrating the colony. The entomologists recorded the P. favieri sounds and compared them to sounds made by worker and queen ants, observing that P. favieri emit two distinct types of stridulations: a pulse (a short burst of sound) similar to the stridulations of queens and a pulse train (a series of pulses) similar to the stridulations of workers. The scientists (39) ruminated that P. favieri use these sounds to avoid (40) being detected as predators and to assume a role similar to P. pallidula within their nest.

To test this hypothesis, the researchers monitored (41) the types of sounds emitted by P. favieri when recordings of worker stridulations, queen stridulations, two P. favieri stridulations, or white noise-as a control sound-were played over a speaker. They observed that (42) only the stridulations of worker ants and queen ants elicited a considerably greater rate of response among the worker ants for the behavior of walking toward the speaker than did white noise. When researchers observed the behavior of guarding, an on-alert pose adopted only by ants near the queen, the rate of response to P. favieri single pulses was closer to the rate of response to the stridulations of the queen herself than it was to that for white noise, which elicited no responses. Thus, P. favieri not only are able to acoustically blend in among the ants of the colony but also can acquire the rank and protective treatment of a queen.

"The ability of ant nest beetles to fully integrate into ant society has fascinated and mystified scientists for decades," says entomologist Wendy Moore. In P. favieri, scientists have discovered a refined acoustical (43) adaptation, it exploits the complex array of behaviors required to manage ant colonies. Other kinds of (44)  insects, however, have been observed infiltrating ant nests, and researchers say further experimentation may uncover evidence that signal mimicry is more common among insects than previously appreciated.