The No Proscenium Podcast

This week on the show our dear friend Graham Wetterhahn is here with us to talk about the upcoming Los Angeles Immersive Invitational, which is produced by his company After Hours Theatre Company in collaboration with The Immersive Experience Institute… and we’re unveiling seven of the teams that will be participating in this year’s invitational — and it is QUITE the lineup.

The Invitational’s Sunday Showcase is coming up on April 21st at the Nocturne Theater in Glendale and the tickets are ON SALE NOW and you can find a link right here in the show notes.

The 2024 Los Angeles Immersive Invitational (Tickets)

After Hours Theatre Company

The Immersive Experience Institute

The 2024 NoPro Audience Awards (Backers Only)

The 2024 NoPro Reader's Special Award

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This week on the show we’ve got a DOUBLE HEADER!

First up Amy Ashton & Mia Fiorella of La Jolla Playhouse’s WITHOUT WALLS FESTIVAL will be here to give us a preview of the fest that is headed back to the UC San Diego campus for the first time since 2015 this April 4th - 7th.

Then Samantha Gorman & Danny Cannizzaro of Tender Claws, the studio behind NoPro favorites like The Under Presents and Virtual Virtual Reality are here to talk about their latest release: STRANGER THINGS VR which launched on Meta’s QUEST platform last week.

• Without Walls Festival
• Stranger Things VR
• The 2024 No Proscenium Audience Awards Nominees
• 2024 NoPro Audience Awards Ballot- (Backer Access Only)
• 2024 NoPro Special Reader Award Ballot

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This week on the show artist Risa Puno joins us to talk about some of their latest work, including the upcoming Group Hug at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia and Unresolved Rage Game, developed with theatre artist Ran Xia which was recently at Worlds in Play at ASU’s MIX Center in Mesa Arizona.

We go deep into the motivation behind both pieces and how Puno explores emotions through game mechanics. 

Content Advisory: there’s some frank talk about the wave of hate directed at Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders that the pandemic unleashed and that includes some strong language including the identification of slurs that were directed at Puno themself. Telling you that upfront so that you’re not caught off guard.

• Risa Puno
• Group Hug
• Unresolved Rage Game at Worlds in Play
• Los Angeles Immersive Invitational Sunday Showcase Backer Exclusive Pre-Sale

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Joining us on the show this week is designer Jaden Andrea, most recently the Art Director of Gather, the virtual gathering spot for remote teams that was home to more than a few interactive experiences during the height of the pandemic, and who has done installation work at Lightning in a Bottle, Neotropolis, and Burning Man. 

SHOW NOTES

• Jaden Andrea (portfolio)
• Nostalgia Purgatory
• Gather
• Neotropolis
• Lightning in a Bottle
• CASTING
• NYC Immersive Weekend
• LA Immersive Invitational

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Joining us this week is Ben Enos, Senior Director of Product Design at The Escape Game to talk about his path from being an escape game super fan to heading up a team at one of the largest location based game companies in the U.S.

• The Escape Game
• NYC Immersive Weekend 
• CASTING in NYC Pre-Sale

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Joining us this week is Gry Worre Hallberg the artistic director of Copenhagen based Sisters Hope a performance group and movement organized around the idea of a creating “an ecological awareness of connectivity” outlined in the book Sensuous Society – Carving The Path Towards A Sustainable Future.

Sisters Hope was the group behind the event Sensuous Governing, which took place at the Danish Consulate in Edinburgh as part of the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe, which is where our own Toronto correspondent Katrina Lat encountered the group’s work. Katrina will also be joining me today as co-host.

• Sisters Hope
• Sensuous Governing
• The Best Immersive at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2023

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This week the co-creators of the hit show The Order of the Golden Scribe: Initiation Tea — writer/director Arlo Howard and producer & puzzle-master Shuai Chen — join us to talk about their show which not only made multiple members of our Review Crew’s Best of 2023 list but also got a coveted Golden Lock from Room Escape Artist — all ahead of a return engagement in New York City which kicks off on February 11th.

The Order of the Golden Scribe: Initiation Tea

COMING SOON: The Order of the Golden Scribe

COMING SOON: The Tiger's Bride

NYC Meetup (Waiting List Active)

LA Meetup (Waiting List Active)

CALL SHEET

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This week  Sean Cawelti and Chelsea Sutton of Rogue Artists Ensemble — the LA based company behind works like Kaidan Project: Walls Grow Thin, and Señor Plummer’s Final Fiesta — are here with us for a quite lovely conversation about their upcoming projects including the one-off Carousel of Fools taking place in Santa Monica this month and the full length immersive show Schlitzie: Alive and Inside the Decaying Sideshow which is slated for later in this year.

• Carousel of Fools
• Schlitzie: Alive and Inside the Decaying Sideshow
• Kaidan Project: Walls Grow Thin
• Señor Plummer’s Final Fiesta
• Rogue Artists Ensemble
• NoPro NYC Meetup (Jan 29th)
• NoPro LA Meetup (Jan 29th)

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Joining us this week are Eric Garcia & Kat Cole co-directors of Detour, the San Francisco based performing arts company, whose website says everything you need at a glance in big bold letters: “DEVISED THEATRE. DANCE. DRAG. IMMERSIVE.”

In 2023 they brought us We Build Houses Here, and this March they will be workshopping a new production set in the same world as that show: The Twilight Aristocracy.

This month the company is offering a series of workshops on devised theatre and drag performance — we’re going to talk to them about all of it. 

Hosted by Noah Nelson.

• DETOUR
• Devising Immersive Theater: Craft, The Ensemble, & Audience Experience
• NYC Meetup Jan 29th @ 7PM
• LA Meetup Jan 29th @ 7PM

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This week we continue our annual end of year tradition of inviting our colleagues to a round table to look back at what was.

For 2023 we're joined by Sabina Graves of i09, Todd Martens of the LA Times, and Scott Stein of CNET to talk about they year we’ve had in immersive — both on the live and digital side — how folks in media outside our field see it, and where they hope this is all going in the near future. 

Sabina Graves at i09

Todd Martens at the LA Times

Scott Stein at CNET

Love a TV Show? Now You Can Live It. (Alexis Soloski for The New York Times)

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