{THE AND} Live Experience: The Night Humanity Takes the Stage
A room of strangers. A few brave questions. Then, something real. Laughter fades, walls drop, and connection takes over. That’s the ripple effect of {THE AND} Live Experience, where humanity stops performing and starts being seen.
It begins simply. A room full of strangers and a few cards that ask questions most people tend to avoid.
At first, there’s laughter, nervousness, curiosity, and a little uncertainty. But then, someone speaks. A sentence breaks through the small talk and lands somewhere deeper. You can feel it. The shift in the air. The collective inhale.
That’s when it happens, what Topaz Adizes, creator and host of {THE AND} Live Experience, calls “the ripple effect.”
“It’s like dropping a stone into a calm lake,” he says.
“You see the ripples move out across the water, but in this case, it’s a wave of humanity. That moment when someone says something so true it gives everyone goosebumps.”
That’s the magic {THE AND} Live Experience is built on. It’s not a performance you watch, it’s one you become part of. In whatever capacity you decide to do so.
Each show unfolds differently. Some nights, the energy is wild and unexpected; others, it’s tender and quiet. But it’s always alive and breathing, because the audience is the performance.
There’s no script, no actors. Just humans showing up with their stories, their laughter, and their truth.
A Living Experiment in Connection
Born from our Emmy Award-winning documentary project {THE AND}, the Live Experience transforms that same essence of deeper connection, intimacy and curiosity into a shared, participatory performance. It is an interactive experience that turns audiences into both participants and directors. Using minimal technology and a self-selecting participation process, it crafts a playful yet profound environment where people can safely explore what connects us and makes us human.
Across more than 40 performances in seven countries, from the Tribeca Film Festival to Paris and university halls, the format follows a loose but powerful structure:
- In Act 1, people volunteer to share personal stories.
- Act 2 brings them together in pairs to ask each other intimate questions.
- By Act 3, a selected pair takes the stage to play {THE AND} Live.
- Act 4 invites the audience to write customized questions for them.
- In Act 5, those questions are read aloud as the pair interacts live, raw, real, and unrehearsed.
It’s a ritual of presence disguised as a show.
Beyond Performance
By hosting these events and guiding people through them, Topaz has learned that you can’t plan connection. You can only invite it. “I used to ask myself if the ‘aha’ moment happened for them, now I ask: what is this moment asking of me, and how can I fully show up for it?”
That shift, from performance to presence, is what gives the experience its pulse. Because even if you hosted the same show two nights in a row, it would never be the same. Everyone in the room has changed. The questions land differently. The laughter echoes in new places.
The experience has found resonance and relevance in corporate environments, community events, universities, and festivals, with all kinds of souls and hearts, where the emphasis is on building connection, trust and nurturing authenticity beyond roles and metrics.
The Art of Human Design
At its heart, {THE AND} Live Experience embodies Topaz’s life’s work as an experience design architect, creating spaces that unlock the transformative power of deeper human connection. Through The Skin Deep, we have created the space for more than 1,200 intimate conversations exploring love, family, identity, and the universal need to be seen and heard.
Topaz often describes his work not as filmmaking, but as experience crafting, where empathy, curiosity, and courageous vulnerability become the tools of design.
Why It Matters
{THE AND} Live Experience is an exercise in trust, the art of letting humanity reveal itself, over and over again. And that’s exactly why it works so beautifully in spaces that need connection: companies looking to build trust, communities healing from distance, teams that crave authenticity beyond meetings and metrics.
It’s an experience that reminds us that vulnerability isn’t weakness, it’s the beginning of understanding.
So whether you’re a festival producer, university organizer, or company leader looking to deepen connection in your space, this isn’t just an event. It’s an awakening.
Because {THE AND} Live Experience isn’t a show you attend. It’s a moment you live.
You can learn more and bring {THE AND} Live Experience to your community, company, or event: topazadizes.com/experiences
Regina Zuniga
The Skin Deep Digital Content Specialist
Comments ()