These bunnies are suited up and ready to engage you in absurd games and gladiatorial combat scenarios.
BY SEAN EGAN | Ah, Easter Sunday. We all know how it goes. The sun is shining, the grass is green and new, the brightly colored eggs are hidden — and the giant, six-foot-tall rabbits are waiting to fight you tooth and nail for possession of them… Uh, wait.
An Easter experience as demented as that could only be found one place: “Full Bunny Contact.”
Described as “NYC’s extreme egg hunt and twisted Easter carnival” in promotional materials, “Full Bunny Contact” (or FBC for short) is a crazy, multi-day, family-friendly celebration of the holiday. Its appeal lies in the wide variety of unique, bonkers-sounding Easter-themed games and events attendees are encouraged to participate in — the centerpiece of which is the titular Full Bunny Contact. In this game, participants are locked in a giant steel cage, full of grass mats and Easter eggs — as well as actors in bunny suits, trained to get physical. The object of the game is to collect as many eggs as possible, all while avoiding these bunnies, who will stop at nothing to knock the eggs from your grasp and prevent you from winning a prize.
This all may sound a more than a little nuts, but rest assured, once FBC’s origins are explained, a method to this (hopping) madness becomes clear.
“When I was growing up, we’d spend Easter playing these strange, invented games with friends and family,” says John Harlacher, FBC’s director.
According to Harlacher, FBC is the result of trying to “create games where the rules are clear, but the strategies are not apparent, so people can play and have fun in a pure way.” When placed in the context of spring and wrapped in a layer of Easter iconography, these games are meant to emphasize “birth and freshness” and the “joy of experimenting and trying things out” while evoking “feelings of childhood through play for adults.”
Still, a lot of planning goes into creating this sense of liberating fun. By Harlacher’s estimation, he and the FBC team started work at least six months prior to the opening. And while an event this singularly strange may seem difficult to pull off, Harlacher is no stranger to interactive live theater, having helmed the successful “Nightmare NYC” for years, in addition to last year’s installment of “Full Bunny Contact.”
His strategy for an event in which there are so many variables while performing is deceptively simple, but effective. Noting that, of the bunny actors, “You can’t sculpt their actions completely because you don’t know what the audience is going to bring to it,” Harlacher chooses to focus on “a bunch of character work.” Each bunny, he says, has its own persona. Once established, it’s all about “building boxes for the performers to engage in.” The games, in other words — which he notes develop in organic ways with the actors during rehearsals.
“This year is a fuller development of the ideas of the games, going deeper into what we sketched last year,” Harlacher asserts, continuing, “There’s new games, and the games you thought you knew have been re-imagined.” Harlacher compares many of these games to the show “American Gladiator” due to the athleticism involved.
Egg hunters become the hunted, while vying for prizes.
Offerings include Bunny Ball (“a basketball themed game”), Ride the Rabbit (featuring a mechanical bunny, courtesy of FBC partners Fun & Jump), a gladiator-style joust fought against a bunny, and a game of Tic-Tac-Toe fought against a giant chicken (which Harlacher reveals was inspired by a real life chicken he saw in Chinatown growing up — “He won a lot! It was weird.”). Less physically strenuous (but no less inspired) activities include a “Bunny Beauty Pageant” for attendees’ pet rabbits, and a “Biggest Brat” contest — in which both children and adults throw, and are judged on, temper tantrums. The winner of each division is awarded the prize of a “disgusting amount of candy” and, erm, an adult version of that, respectively.
Indeed, there are prizes awarded all throughout FBC. While Harlacher is quick to say that you’ll never get rich from winning at FBC, goodies include gym memberships, Off-Broadway tickets and Mets tickets. However, Harlacher also adds with a laugh that it is possible to get “crappy prizes, like a can of shaving cream.”
But still, he insists, “The biggest prize is the joy of doing this thing.” As for himself, the biggest reward comes during the performances. “I love that moment when people start seeing it, and it starts actually becoming what it is,” he said.
And what is it exactly? In Harlacher’s own words, “Full Bunny Contact is the most insane Easter experience you will ever have. It is unlike any other way you have experienced the holiday, and it is your new Easter tradition.”
“Full Bunny Contact” is produced by Daniel Demello and Nathaniel Nowak, with conception and direction by John Harlacher. Wed., April 1–Sun., April 5. Hours Vary Daily. At the Clemente (107 Suffolk St. btw. Rivington & Delancey Sts.). Tickets: $10 (Admission Only), $20 (Admission & One round of FBC) and $60 for VIP tickets. Appropriate for ages 10 and up (with an adult under 15). Info: fullbunnycontact.com.
