The average viewer in our modern media landscape is no stranger to an interconnected fictional universe. Everyone knows the MCU, a hefty chunk of the CW’s programming includes superhero television shows in a shared world. However, writer/director/artist Travyz Santos Gatz has gone above and beyond to craft a cohesive multimedia multiverse without the studio budget in The “Gatzbyverse”. The project is a multiversal storytelling framework for multiple writers to add their work to an overarching storyline. Key elements, themes, characters, places, and even events connect what are otherwise independent storylines. While the project is primarily geared toward writers, but intended for any artistic medium to contribute.
The Gatzyverse’s “B-Side: Limbo” Sells Out at The Hollywood Fringe
The main timeline will feature five plays told in the traditional five act structure. As each play goes into production the Gatzbyverze will reopen and focus the year toward bringing the artists together. The universe so far includes the play The Sound of Silence along with a web comic entitled “Into the Gatzbyverse”. The most recent entry into Gatz’s multimedia world is another play “B-Side” Limbo.” In which protagonist Brandon finds himself stuck in the same routine living in his hometown; smoking, drinking, playing video games, and longing for his high school crush. When his friend Vaughn decides to move North from their sleepy hometown to San Francisco, Brandon must accept the changes or be left behind in a suburban limbo. Directed by Harry White, the play finished a sold out run at the 2024 Hollywood Fringe, operating successfully both as an entry into its shared multiverse as well as a standalone piece.
“B-Side: Limbo is a piece about the danger of sedation by nostalgia. Most of the characters haven’t done any maturing in the last decade of their lives due to their inability to step away from their childhoods. I think that’s a real problem today, heck, I can’t even go a week without an Instagram reel popping up on my phone telling me that life will never be better than when I was a kid playing Pokemon for the first time,” reflects White.
“And it makes me sad because I believe it. The main character Brandon is living in the past, still longing for his high school crush and playing Mario Kart. Throughout the play we watch a lot of characters, sort of in the same boat as Brandon, struggling to move on with their lives. And not until they get off their couch and actually start to take physical action as opposed to philosophizing about their problems do their lives begin to kick into motion. That’s how I try to live my life and that’s what drew me to the play.” White, along with a talented cast, brought the millennial ennui and inertia deftly to life in “B-Side”. The director shrewdly utilized their cramped venue at the Fringe to further reinforce the claustrophobia Brandon and his partners in passivity feel, and eventually rebel against throughout the piece.
Elliot White, who played Brandon, excelled at coloring what could have been a one-note protagonist into a person his audience could root for. Gatz, who wrote the piece under the pen name Preston Piece, shades the rest of characters with palpable pathos, preventing them from solely being the tropes they’re based on in the Gatzbyverse’s sandbox. Sophie Lachlan and Mariluna Beacy are “B-Side’s” silent MVP’s, adding much needed doses of heart and emotional anchors to the piece.
The Gatzbyverse to Continue to Expand on Stage this Fall
Creating an story that links disparate narratives across vastly different forms of storytelling is no easy feat. While the Gatzybyverse is still very much in progress and one cannot be sure if Gatz has fully landed his narrative plane, his universe is certainly one to watch. “B-Side: Limbo” at the Hollywood Fringe was a triumph. Another play is slated to premiere this fall, “A-Side: SubUbran”, and no matter what, one must commend him for bringing multiversal storytelling to the stage.
