Press One to Process Your Grief With ‘Lennox Mutual’
Spend your time wisely with Lennox Mutual. Each phone call is only 20 minutes long. Photo courtesy of DDPR.
It takes a lot of skill to make this millennial excited to answer the phone, but that’s exactly what Candle House Collective has done with their phone-based theatrical experience, Lennox Mutual. It’s ostensibly an interactive, episodic puzzle in which you have to figure out how to make an appointment with the “life ensurance” company on the other end of the line. You’ll tangle with your customer service representative in 20-minute intervals, navigating opaque menu options, gleaning useful information as you go, and revealing new chapters of sprawling, multi-pronged stories along the way. At least that’s one way to approach it. You could also just talk.
On the phone with Lennox Mutual, I’ve been asked deep, probing questions about my philosophies on life, death, love, loss, and grief. And I’ve offered up my experiences and opinions without hesitation — to a virtual stranger, or, a fictional character if I’m really going to be honest with myself. Yet it felt correct and natural in the moment. My customer service representative has held my heart in their hands, and I’ve trusted them to do so. Because at the core of Lennox Mutual — without offering spoilers — is a narrative that explores the value of life within the context of loss. A refrain of “Do you feel like you’ve spent your time wisely?” ends every call, and the question echoes well beyond your previous 20 minutes of selecting menu options and dialing extensions.
“It really is an invitation to follow your instincts and to just surrender to the tide of your own mind for 20 minutes at a time,” says Evan Neiden, the founder of Candle House Collective and co-creator of Lennox Mutual, alongside company members Olivia Behr and Joel Meyers. The Lennox Mutual experience is a vast and unpredictable one, shaped by the decisions you make as a caller and the responses you evoke from your customer service representative. A 20-minute phone call only allows you to scratch the surface and isn’t nearly enough to reach a satisfying end. I’m six calls in and see no end in sight, so consider me locked in until further notice. “There are conclusions to be reached in the piece, and I say conclusions plural, because a piece like this couldn't have just one ending,” says Neiden. They shared that the most calls anyone has ever booked was 72, but making certain choices can lead to finales closer to the 30-call mark.
Asking your audience to stick around for 30-plus phone calls that could play out over the course of months or even years is ambitious, to put it mildly, and demands a certain amount of confidence in the product. For Neiden, that confidence comes well-earned. They’ve developed roughly 25 interactive pieces in their career, taking learnings from each to build Lennox Mutual’s incredibly complicated infrastructure. “At a certain point, you get it down to — not a science — but maybe a philosophy,” they say.
And part of that philosophy is engendering a deep trust between actor and audience member — quickly — because as a caller you won’t get very far unless you offer up certain elements of yourself. “One has to create an environment where trust is inevitable,” says Neiden. “Where the connection is completely unavoidable, to the point that it's easier for the person on the other end of the line to seek that connection and to foster it than it is to resist.”
That connection is forged through a concept Candle Light Collective calls “The Tether.” Neiden explains, “It’s one simple sentence: I hold you at the edge of a cliff.” Picture a customer service representative holding a rope. A Lennox Mutual caller has the other end tied around their waist as they lean over a cliff’s edge. It’s the customer service representative’s responsibility to keep their caller safe — while still giving them a thrill once in a while. “There are times we might give them a little more leeway to go further down the cliff. There might be times we pull them to a little more safety,” they say. “There might be times we let the rope lurch and give 'em a good scare. As that relationship is developed, maybe we can let go of the rope a little more. But we never wanna pull somebody all the way onto the cliff because then the stakes disappear. And we never wanna let go of the rope, especially not by accident, because then the person falls and you can't regain that trust once it’s lost.”
The intimacy of that connection carries through the experience, even as you engage with different customer service representatives on different calls. Every call picks up exactly where the last once left off. “Regardless of whether you're gone for a week or a year, Lennox Mutual will remember you,” says Neiden. That’s thanks to extensive record-keeping, which Neiden and their company are very protective of.
“We keep our backend, in its many forms, under pretty hardcore lock and key,” says Neiden. “We may not be legally required to abide by HIPAA law, but we do our best anyway, and we take that very seriously.” While a bit frustrating as a journalist who wants to understand the inner machinations of a behemoth like Lennox Mutual, as a caller I’m reassured that I’ve spilled my guts to those who respect their participants’ privacy. “It's that feeling of being a custodian of information, almost a librarian for people's lived experiences,” says Neiden. “We are fiercely protective of all of the information in question, no matter how sensitive or mundane or anything in between.”
As Neiden has asked their audience to engage with grief inside Lennox Mutual, they’ve used their own as inspiration to create the project. In 2019, they were diagnosed with cancer. “That had been a fear of mine my entire life — the biggest monster under the bed from when I was a very little kid. And then it happened, and my world imploded,” they say. “It was just news after news, hit after hit. What is it now? What's changing now? What agency have I lost now? What do I have to say goodbye to now?” In processing the grief of their diagnosis and treatment, they’ve created an opportunity for others to do the same.
“This is not therapy. I should be very clear,” says Neiden. “But there can be a therapeutic component in processing that information. For 20 minutes at a time, we sit with it, we make space for it, we engage with it, and then when the 20 minutes are up, the timer dings and it is released.” For me, Lennox Mutual has become a place to engage with grief in a safe and semi-anonymous space — where the person on the other end of the phone can relate and grieve with me, even if they’re in character while doing so.
“A lot of the art that I see these days is very excellent at giving people what they want,” says Neiden. “The exercise in Lennox Mutual is giving people what they need instead. It doesn't always give people what they want, and sometimes it actively resists giving people what they want.” So don’t get too frustrated if your attempts to make an appointment are thwarted over and over again. The journey is the point. Use your time wisely.
Lennox Mutual is ongoing. Calls are currently available through May 31 .
