How To Make Immersive Theater Your Full Time Job (Feature)
A guest feature from Houseworld & Bottom of the Ocean’s Andrew Hoepfner
We’ve had a good year in Brooklyn performing Bottom of the Ocean. As I write this, I’m sitting by myself in our gymnasium on a Saturday morning, supervising the last half hour of a music video shoot in the back third of our venue. In a half hour, I’ll wrap the production, reset our immersive theater props in the front two-thirds of our venue, and then perform a double shift of BOTO. At 10:30pm, two late night renters will shoot two more music videos. I’ll go to sleep around 3:15am.
In 2018, I worked as a piano teacher and church musician. When my venue Gymnopedie took off, my full time job became this combination of directing and performing theater and facilitating photo and video shoots. It’s a creative way of life that is meaningful to me. I believe this art and business model can be replicated by other folks across the United States, and most likely across the world. If the life I’m describing appeals to you, I’ve put together a tutorial of how you might set up something similar for yourself.
My tutorial consists of a twelve minute video I made in 2019 and a ten minute video I made this month in 2022. After six months of clearing out the garbage from Gymnopedie and designing my initial humble decor of fabric and colored light bulbs, I was super excited about what was taking shape. I couldn’t resist shooting the first video. Yet despite the satisfaction I found in my unique, freshly cleaned basement, I knew that communicating this enthusiasm to the public would be premature. I stowed away my video and hoped that in a year or two, more artistic progress would better justify sharing my story.
Although we had to adapt to the pandemic, our venue did blossom. Perhaps its most interesting and unexpected virtue is its utility as a production studio. Music videos, dance videos, films, and events of all kinds have found a home at Gymnopedie. The revenue from these rentals fueled Bottom Of The Ocean and allowed us to produce our show at a level that we never would have been able to otherwise reach.
The crux of these videos is in Part 1 from 5:30 to 6:00. Here we find the seed of my production studio idea. You can sense that I considered this venture a side hustle. Maybe I’d make an extra $75 each month hosting someone else’s rehearsal.
In Part 2, I delve into the process of sharing our immersive theater space with outside renters. I’ve learned a lot since 2019.
These videos contain the sorts of information that I personally enjoy digging into the most. I love specifics! Maybe you can relate to the feeling of looking at Sleep No More or Galaxy’s Edge and thinking, “Yes, but I don’t have millions of dollars.” How does a person who’s about to write their first immersive theater show give themselves the best chance of making something that’s substantial and successful? How does a person with a day job progress into working full time on their art? Can you show me a start-to-finish trajectory? Can you show me something that real people with regular incomes can do themselves?
If you watch these videos, you’ll see that this is not a just-add-water sort of process. It took me years of daily work and certainly some amount of luck. The fact that I happened to spend decades working as a church musician is an essential ingredient to my theater venue recipe. I can imagine someone else watching this video and thinking, “Without the church connection, these tips are useless.” My hope is that if you look a little deeper, you’ll find more applications. If you want to deepen and expand the immersive theater work in your life, I encourage you to examine your own personal landscape and notice the resources that are unique to you. Maybe you’ll have certain jobs, friends, or circumstances in your life that I don’t have access to. Hopefully the ideas in my videos can inspire you to innovate and create an art life for yourself that brings you fun and happiness.
One personal motive is that I still don’t see indie immersive theater happening at pre-pandemic levels. I selfishly want to go to more shows! Make more immersive shows! I want to go out to them.
If you want to pick my brain, I’m always down to talk shop at houseworld@houseworld.nyc.
Andrew Hoepfner is the Creator at Houseworld Immersive
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