Immersive Entertainment Primer

I’ve spent a great deal of time the past few years exploring immersive entertainment productions all over the world. Like site-specific art, most immersive entertainment experiences exist for a short window of time in a specified place and then vanish forever, only to be remembered through descriptions, videos, and photos that hope to recreate what it felt like to actually be there. This transient quality distinguishes immersive entertainment from other productions like film, TV, and theater, and has distinct pros and cons. On the upside, it engages so many of your senses that your immersion in the story is very complete. In addition to sight and sound, you’re often surrounded by smells, may occasionally eat or drink, and are regularly making decisions that give you some over the experience. On the downside, they are not typically easy to package up and replicate for scale, and the engaging nature requires a level of participation greater than a relaxing afternoon at the movies. Nonetheless, I love immersive entertainment and seek it out everywhere I can.

I gave a TEDx talk in late 2016 at TEDxLA where I summarized many of my favorites. The slides are available here and I’m enclosing more details about each below the video.

Examples

Sleep No More — an immersive, promenade theater experience loosely based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth created by British theater company Punchdrunk and located in NYC. Devoid of all spoken dialogue and primarily set in a dimly-lit, 1930's-style hotel, Sleep No More aims to psychologically engross its audience in strange, uncomfortable, and panic-driven situations.

Escape Rooms — more a category than a specific experience, Escape Rooms have been popping up all over the world. The general format is a group of 6–12 people are locked in a room and need to figure out how to escape. The puzzles range from number and pattern matching to feats of dexterity and are usually wrapped in some theme, like detective or sci-fi. In Los Angeles I love Maze Rooms and Escape Room LA, and in San Francisco, Palace Games is incredible.

Skammekrogen — this 5-person Virtual Reality experience uses 360 degree video to tell the story of a family suffering a host of issues. The most compelling part is that you can experience the scene from each of five roles: mom, dad, eldest son, the new girlfriend, and the youngest son. There are special scenes viewed specifically by role, so you only get a complete picture of the scene by discussing with the other viewers.

Across the LineVR — another great VR experience from Nonny De La Pena showcasing VR’s capacity for empathy. This is the piece I referenced in the beginning of the TEDx talk about crossing the picket line at the abortion clinic.

Meow Wolf — George R. R. Martin (author of “Game of Thrones”) bought an old bowling alley in Santa Fe, New Mexico and worked with 130 artists and makers to create a wild, supernatural, art gallery/science center/inter-dimensional evolving ecosystem of interactivity. Go here ASAP.

Speakeasy Society — Formed by three CalArts alumni, the Speakeasy Society is a group of creative, artistic innovators adapting well-known, classic stories (Macbeth, A Christmas Carol) into engaging interactive theater experiences around Los Angeles. At their productions I’ve been an audience of one in an operating restaurant, survived the trenches of WWI and gone down the rabbit hole.

Elysium Conservatory Theater — The Elysium Conservatory Theater, located in San Pedro, California, produces more than just immersive, captivating performances; they are cultivating a growing community of free-thinking expressionists by redefining the relationship between performers and the audience.

Hopscotch — Hopscotch was a nonlinear, unfolding story that took place in 24 cars that drove around downtown Los Angeles, performed by professional artists as a mesmerizing, mystifying opera. The brainchild of Yuval Sharon and The Industry, they are the same team that filled Union Station with an opera delivered over wireless headsets called Invisible Cities that was also a blast.

The Encounter — Based on the true story of National Geographic photographer Loren McIntyre, The Encounter is a theater experience that captures its audience using state-of-the-art aural technology and remarkable story-telling that is both visceral and fantastical. The audience dons wireless headphones to be immersed in what the performer onstage delivers into a 360 degree microphone.

The Grand Paradise — performed in New York, guests to this immersive theater production were transported back to the late 70s to visit a tropical resort. In my talk, this is the company that sent me the postcard after the experience.

The Tension Experience — Disorienting and truly mysterious, the Tension Experience taps and tests all the senses in a very raw experience. So much happened in this production I had a hard time enjoying it at first but as more time passed, it’s grown to be one of my favorites.

The Latitude Society — Founded by Jeff Hull and his company Nonchalance, The Latitude Society was both an entertainment experience and an experiment in cult creation. It’s hard to describe the scope and scale of this project in a short paragraph. The movie The Institute does a much better job. Guests were invited by friends via small magnetic stripe cards. Once you signed up, you would be instructed to visit an address in the Mission area of San Francisco at a very specific time (with a 5-minute window). Once you swiped your card on the lock outside, it began an adventure that took you all over town into bars for secret information, a hacked arcade, and city streets for special clues. Their previous experience was an adventure primarily around Chinatown called Jejune Institute that was also spectacular.

Augmented Reality — Also a category and not a specific experience, Augmented Reality is a method for augmenting our vision with information that is not actually there. It will be transformational for entertainment when the hardware is ready. The video from Keiichi Matsuda called Hyper-Reality paints a dystopian picture of what life could be like if we don’t manage it properly.

Fellowship :A Play for Volunteers — I hadn’t experienced this at the time of my TEDxLA talk, but it belongs on this list. In Fellowship attendees visit a food bank and, as part of the experience, make lunches for the homeless. I loved how we were both completely immersed in learning about an issue, and simultaneously doing a small amount to address it as part of the entertainment.

If any of these sound like fun, I’ve found no better aggregator of immersive experiences than Noah Nelson and his newsletter at NoProscenium.com.

Stay tuned; I’ll be back with more reviews of immersive entertainment in the coming months. I usually post experiences on my Twitter and Instagram, too.