If the subway brings everyone down to the same level, so does a sauna, where the barriers of social class melt away into a shared experience of heat and discomfort. On a humid, rainy evening, theatergoers in the East Village found themselves at the historic Russian and Turkish Baths, ready for a unique blend of both worlds.
Stripping down to swimsuits and navy robes, a diverse crowd of attendees gathered, young and old, to experience “Dutchman.” This powerful play, set within a sweltering, un-air-conditioned subway car, was returning to the 10th Street bathhouse for its second staging. In 2013, acclaimed visual artist and filmmaker Rashid Johnson, inspired by his weekly visits, had adapted and directed Amiri Baraka’s incendiary 1964 play on race and sex, choosing the sauna as its unconventional stage.
“It felt so natural,” Mr. Johnson, 48, said of the dramatic setting. “It’s almost strangely obvious.”
Now, this impactful one-act play returns for a limited five-night engagement, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Performa, New York’s renowned performance-art biennial. This revival also aligns with a significant career milestone for Mr. Johnson: his first major museum survey, currently showcased at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum until mid-January.
“I wouldn’t dare have an expectation for an audience to receive anything in any sort of specific way,” Mr. Johnson said. “I would like for them to be really present. And I think I’ve created a condition, and the circumstance, to which that presence is almost guaranteed.”
It is not a show for the faint of heart. Racial slurs are hurled multiple times, and, in temperatures that far exceed most home thermostats, one could actually faint.
“Somewhere in the 150s,” revealed Dmitry Shapiro, a co-owner of the historic baths, after a quick check of the Russian Room’s thermometer. While a bit cooler than its usual 194 degrees, it was still hot enough to cure beef into jerky.
The evening began in the bathhouse’s restaurant, where attendees lounged in their matching wrap-tie robes, without their phones, and chatted beneath the “Russian Home Cooking” menu (daily offerings include “beer shrimp,” tuna salad and Anna’s borscht).
“I think even the way we’re entering into this is part of the experience,” said Alexandria Pang, 35, a global luxury brands director and a member of Performa’s young visionaries steering committee. “There’s a vulnerability to it.”
Video: Scenes from the immersive performance.
Mr. Johnson got the room’s attention by asking everyone to clap once. He then warned that we’d soon all be “on top of each other” and asked more experienced sauna-goers to sit higher up.
“Heat rises,” he said, “it’s a simple science lesson.”
Attendees clutched the railing as they descended the stairs, careful not to slip, to the cavernous baths, where the play unfolded over three spaces: The Turkish Sauna, a rest area and the Russian Room, the spa’s crown jewel.
The group of 40 crammed into the wooden benches as the actors, lit entirely by flashlights, took the center of the room, inches from the audience’s faces.
In “Dutchman” a Black man named Clay meets a white woman named Lula. The premise is simple: She approaches him on the train, they flirt. But what ensues is a volley that devolves into a pressure cooker of aggression.
The show, a tight 45 minutes with dialogue so sharp it bites alongside the heat, stars just two actors: Jerod Haynes and Tori Ernst.
It’s a return to the role for Ms. Ernst, who played Lula in the 2013 staging when she was 22.
“It’s sort of that old saying of like, ‘Wow, this piece is still relevant, how amazing and how sad,’” she said. “I think that that’s really struck me this time around.”
Ms. Ernst, with her hair in a high ponytail and clad in a red bikini, red lipstick, and a black mesh dress, taunts Clay with seductive advances, then swings into wild monologues oscillating from the dismissive, “You’re a well‐known type,” to the surreal, “You look like death eating a soda cracker.”
As the heat took hold of the audience, shoulders began to slump, plastic popped as guests reached for their bottles, and some ditched the robes entirely.
By the time the show reached the Russian Room, Lula’s flirtation was no longer eccentric. She shrieked and moaned and cooed in baby voice, rabid with racist remarks.
Everyone in the room was agitated. Breathing had become more labored. Suddenly, audience members turned their water bottles onto themselves. One man seated closest to the sauna stove stood up and sat back down, pacing vertically as he seemed to weigh the costs of exiting before deciding to ride it out.
“The heat is the main character,” Mr. Haynes said. “It forces you to confront what’s in front of you.”
As Clay grew taller, the audience withered. When he erupted, his rage, no longer contained, gained speed like a salad spinner. Droplets flung from his mouth and hands, joining the room’s sweat.
The audience had become their fellow subway passengers, wiping brows underground right along with Lula and Clay, until the climactic finale, when they became something darker: witnesses to murder.
As Lula’s knife fell to the ground, the audience was both stunned and ready to clap.
The actors collected bouquets of roses and took a bow.
“Now let’s get out of here,” Mr. Haynes said, using an expletive. The theatergoers cheered, filing out of the Russian Room and into the cold plunge.
Daniel Humm, the visionary restaurateur behind Eleven Madison Park, is no stranger to the world of saunas. Yet, he described this particular experience as “uncomfortable, which was precisely the point.”
“It was intense,” his wife, the “Succession” actress Annabelle Dexter-Jones, said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
As people wrung out their towels, Matthew Filbert, 31, sat on a bench and stared into the distance.
“I’m just trying to digest it, honestly,” he said.