Joe Rivera, Matt Korahais, and Enette Fremont Photo by Mari Eimas-Dietrich

"Are you worried?"

"Nah, I seen crazier stuff before. This is New York, right?"

I've attended a lot of immersive theatre in my close to fifty years of playgoing, but none of it has come close to the participatory nature of Sour Milk's theatrical game Dirt, which casts audience members as politicians and voters deciding how to build upon the newly solidified East River.

Written by Anna Jastrzembski with a game design by Christina Tang, director Carsen Joenk's production begins in the lobby of The Tank, where audience members scan a QR code to choose their persona as one of the 90-minute show's participants. In what I hope will not be considered a cancelable case of non-traditional casting, I was registered as Annie Choi, a 22-year-old self-described compost hippie who is "determined to make an egalitarian self-sustaining composting enclave somewhere in the city."

In the center of The Tank's small three-sided theatre is a basic model of the East River and the buildings along its two banks. Cameras give a closeup view from above on an upstage screen. Also on display is a tableful of snacks: graham crackers, Twizzlers, frosting, cheese puffs–more on them later.

After a ritualistic presentation by three actors demonstrating with instant coffee, baking soda, food coloring, and a huge amount of chocolate instant pudding how decades of pollution had turn the waterway into a solid mass, a television news reporter (Enette Fremont) gets reactions from various New Yorkers (all played with comic gusto by Joe Rivera) on the overnight evolution.

"I never should've moved to Williamsburg. I'm paying all this money for a waterfront view, and now it's just nasty out there," complains a $6500-a-month renter.

The bulk of the show is a series of mayoral elections, where audience members can run as their registered characters, with each administration holding a vote on how money should be spent to enhance the new land, now known as the FERT (Former East River Territory). Cell phone votes on whether to build a luxury high-rise or affordable public housing, Amazon corporate headquarters or a farmers' market, a church or a power station are tabulated by Alexandra Haddad, who operates the game from an onstage computer.

But since fair elections are so passé, actor Matthew Korahais, who anchors the show as the authoritarian reminder of the historical and moral implications of our community's decisions, explains, "Some people's votes count more than others. And this is because you got money. A lot of money."

So every time you vote for a winning or losing choice, you either receive or lose influence points, making your vote count even more or even less. More rambunctious audience members may take this as a cue to campaign for support for their favorite causes, and Fremont does a great job at crowd work, using both scripted prompts and improvised reactions to keep the elections running smoothly.

As development options are decided, the cast heads to the snack table to construct buildings out of crackers, streetlights out of cheese balls, public space out of fruit slices, and many other architecturally creative wonders until New York's latest community is fully realized. But can even such a delicious human creation survive the corruption of politics or the power of nature? That's the underlying theme that makes Dirt effective as social commentary theatre.

The performance I attended seemed to have several groups of friends sitting together, enthusiastically interacting with both each other and the rest of the audience. This is theatre for the more outgoing among us and it's especially well-suited to The Tank's intimate confines.

No doubt working with an Off-Off Broadway budget, the technical aspects of the production don't provide clear enough views of the FERT for us to fully admire the company's edible creations. Perhaps a better-funded future production can resolve that issue, but as it plays at The Tank, Dirt is a very enjoyable night out that may inspire more serious post-theatre talk about the choices societies make and the influence of power over population.