On a recent Friday night in Manhattan, around 20 people and one terrier gathered in the living room of an Upper East Side apartment to listen to a string quartet perform Beethoven, Ravel and Tchaikovsky.  The guests sampled cheese and wine – several had brought bottles to share – and asked strangers: “Is this your first time?” Four young musicians took their place with their instruments in the centre of the room while everyone else sat with crossed legs on the floor rug. When the sound of an outside siren hurtling down Park Avenue finally faded away, the performance began.  There are similar events to this performance, organised by Boston-based chamber music concert community Groupmuse, happening in New York, San Francisco and four other cities every week: intimate shows taking place in living rooms of all shapes, sizes and levels of cleanliness, a paradoxically homely and exciting alternative to traditional theatres, concert venues and comedy clubs.  And it isn’t limited to classical music. Thanks to a range of organisations putting on events in the home, there’s a good chance that, if you were so inclined, you could enjoy standup comedy, live theatre and rock gigs in the comfort of someone else’s residence tonight. Welcome to the latest and greatest nontraditional venue invigorating the city’s live performance scene: the humble living room.  “A lot of folks seek out live music to feel like they are actively contributing to and sharing in something larger than themselves – not just standing by, observing the experience,” says Groupmuse founder Sam Bodkin. “Living rooms are just the best way to do that. It’s a space where a group of people can comfortably exist on its own terms – they can sit on chairs, if they want, or pig-pile on the carpet, which we prefer. People can clap when they want to, and play the air violin if they’re so inclined. There are no invisible institutional strictures that inhibit the way in which we want to participate.”  Air violin renditions or otherwise, it’s easy to appreciate the appeal of getting together with like-minded individuals in someone’s home. Live @ the Apt in particular purposely bounds over the line from performance to house party. It began as a small standup show that Drew Miller threw for some friends in his three-bedroom, fifth-floor walk-up East Village apartment. Several noise complaints and one eviction warning later, the BYO event now takes place roughly once a month in larger apartments and spaces all over the city, typically rented from Airbnb for the night, but still showcasing up-and-coming comics in close quarters with punters.  Apart from doing away with a couple of obvious factors which hamper the usual comedy club experience – the two-drink minimum and exorbitant admission fee – the setting naturally fosters the kind of audience-performer relationship ideally conducive to LOLs.  “Once you’ve removed those physical barriers between performer and audience, I think that helps to get rid of any mental or emotional barriers that might be hindering the connections between the audience and the comedian,” says Miller. “Stories become much more powerful – you feel like a friend is telling you these jokes as opposed to someone who is just going to disappear backstage when he’s finished his set.”  Another event with no green room or backstage area to speak of, Sofar’s weekly concert series similarly succeeds in blurring the lines between performer and audience. “You could be sitting next to the next lead singer and not know it,” says co-founder Rafe Offer – though this probably doesn’t apply in the cases of the numerous high-profile performers Sofar has attracted, including Karen O and Lucius (and, in London, Scarlett Johansson and Robert Pattinson, who had come to watch his friend perform and ended up belting out a song onstage).  Aspiring hosts in cities around the world fill out an app form to volunteer their homes; then Sofar goes to check them out to make sure they will fly. The gigs showcase the most fearless of musos at their most unplugged and exposed. For audience members and artists alike, the experience can be a revelation. “You get the chance to see the acts very vulnerable – many times quite nervous – because they are raw, stripped back with no lights, stage and mics to hide behind,” says Offer. “That’s very special.”  The conspicuous absence of a bustling bar is also a relief to many frustrated music lovers and concertgoers. Attendees behave better when not lurking drunkenly in the anonymity of a darkened moshpit – not that those types are attracted to Sofar events in the first place: “The focus is on the music rather than the drinking.”  Sofar’s New York community manager Dean Davis agrees. “People come to the event and find it a much more enjoyable experience because you don’t have to worry about people who are not there for the right reason. It’s a great atmosphere to be immersed in.”  The New Place Players, a troupe of Shakespearean performers-for-hire, have also been busy immersing audiences. The group has staged their productions of Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in homes all over the city, while also putting on regular supper-and-show performances in the sumptuous living room of the historic Casa Duse residence in Park Slope, Brooklyn.  The productions are a harmonious blend of music, lighting, theatre, food and drink, amounting to a communal atmosphere that harks back to the experience of catching a theatre performance in Elizabethan times. “This is our version of a sensuous Elizabethan feast,” says director Craig Bacon.  Reflecting the give and take between actor and audience in Elizabethan times (“If you weren’t careful things might have been thrown at you,” Bacon says), the New Place Players emphasize the sense of actor and audience sharing the same space, with only the subtlest of fourth-wall-breaking antics.  “The lighting on the actors and the audience is the same, and a character might take a sip of wine from your glass – it literally feels like you’re in the house with the characters. There’s a different energy to that.”  It would seem that this very energy is increasingly being discovered in people’s private spaces for the enjoyment of the relative few. “It certainly feels exclusive and underground … especially if the apartment is in a basement,” says Miller, before immediately regretting the joke.  The irony, of course, is that the more these events appeal to New Yorkers’ desire to attend exclusive gatherings of only the most in-the-know types, the more popular these events will become – the perfect excuse to get into someone’s personal space as soon as possible.
Why brave the cold and go to the theatre, comedy cellar or concert hall? These days, for a growing army of arts lovers, the performers come to you