NoPro’s 10 Most Anticipated New Works of 2023 (So Far)
Ten things we can’t wait to experience
Fans of immersive, and those who are just starting to become fans, know how hard it can be to find the next great experience.
For years, unlike movies and TV, it was the rare immersive event that is known about well in advance. Luckily that’s starting to change, and the NoPro Review Crew stuck our heads together, looked to the horizon, and pulled together a set of experiences that we’re looking forward to arriving on our various territories this year.
We limited ourselves to just ten picks for this time out, but without question, we’ll be revisiting the topic more than once this year. So don’t fret if you don’t see what you’re excited about… but do tell us via whatever social media channel led you hear. We want to hear it all.
A quick guide to this guide: we’re treating this like a travel guide, starting in the Western United States and sweeping eastward all the way to London, with a pitstop in Virtual Reality along the way. Here’s where we’re going this time:
- San Francisco Bay Area
- Southern California
- Denver
- Virtual Reality
- Texas
- New England
- London
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San Francisco Bay Area
NoPro’s origin is tied to the Bay, with multiple members of our team tracing their own origins there, and the experimental experiential spirit of the Bay Area’s indie artist and trickster traditions permeate many an immersive form. Not to mention the role that Silicon Valley plays in the development of virtual and augmented reality, the digital side of the immersiverse.
We Build Houses Here — Detour
May 4–20, San Francisco
One of the latest events to pique our interest is this piece of theatre that will turn the historic Oasis nightclub in San Francisco’s South of Market district into a desert island. Director Eric Garcia states that at the heart of the work “is a desire to honor the sanctuaries that nurture and protect our queer communities.”
Ensemble immersive theatre pieces are rare enough in the Bay (too rare if you ask us!) so that was enough to get us excited. That NYC’s Third Rail Projects has supported the development (how we’re not told) has ratcheted up our interest and, to be honest, raised our expectations a bit. We’ll be watching this one, and Detour, closely from here on out.
Keeping an eye on: Gray Area, Winchester Mystery House, Into The Dark, We Players
Southern California
NoPro HQ is nestled here, and while Los Angeles and its legendary Spooky Season may be the heart of our beat we’ve got half a state worth of immersive wonders to choose amongst. From multi-million dollar theme park attractions that put gaming into the mix to theatre festivals that put indie creators into the spotlight.
Neotropolis 2023 — Wasteland Weekend
April 26th-30th, 2023, Edwards
More than one NoPro team member, and a few friends, will be manifesting their cyberpunk selves at Neotropolis. This is the second run of the event, which comes from the producers of the well known Wasteland Weekend. Neotropolis is an “all-in” four day immersive festival in the desert for the 18 and over set. Cyberpunk and sci-fi are the theme, and we anticipate a serious amount of LARPing from the various crews that we know about. Damn. Maybe we should send some NoPro logo stickers with them. It’s not like our logo isn’t retro cyberwave.
If getting absorbed into a Blade Runner/Neo-Tokyo oasis in the desert sounds like your bag, then you better get your fit ready, choom.
La Lucha — Optika Moderna/David Israel Reynoso
Spring 2023, San Diego
Any year with new work from David Israel Reynoso and his collaborators in Optika Moderna has something going right for it. The company never fails to elicit wonder with beautifully crafted experiences that leverage Reynoso’s well-honed aesthetic and Mexican heritage. The latest, La Lucha promises to “transports visitors to a realm of ringside thrills and backstage secrets” in the world of Mexican wrestling.
A new Optika Moderna warrants a visit to San Diego all on its own, but lucky for all of us this will be running concurrently with the Without Walls festival, which is bound to have a few more treats for immersive fans. We’ll definitely see you there.
Also keeping tabs on: JFI Productions, Knott’s Ghost Town Alive, Tales By Candlelight, The Speakeasy Society, Without Walls, whatever is up with Secret Cinema in LA
Denver
The Mile High city is one of America’s capitals of immersive. From the Off Center division of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts to Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station, the city is home to some of the most significant immersive institutions in the nation. What you might miss is that it is also home to a bubbling scene of indie immersive creators.
Omega — Paralysis Immersive
March 24–25, 2023, Longmont
This one is the talk of the immersive horror set. Paralysis is a relatively new company with ties to Denver and Chicago. The premise we’ve been able to eke out has a lot of what folks expect in an immersive horror piece: lots of the unknown and a promise of intense scares. The mere prospect of it set the horror heads in the NoPro team chat on FIRE. (You should see the thread.)
This show has an extremely limited run, was by application-only, and has already sold out. So why bring it up? Because when we talk to our friends in the horror scene many of them are already feeling FOMO, and our Denver correspondent bought herself a ticket since she’s been searching for such a thing in the Mile High city for years now. We’ll aim to have an after action report in early April once she’s had a chance to recover. Who knows? Maybe a new immersive horror phenom is about to be born?
Who and what we’re watching: OddKnock Productions, Control Group Productions, Courtney Ozaki
Virtual Reality
There’s an infinity of possibilities in the growing multiverse that is the metaverse, but that possibility is far — faaaaar — from being lived up to. Which is why we get extra excited when there’s a new social VR game that makes connecting with friends to play easy (as opposed to risking the wrath of randos) or a performance that brings actors into contact with audiences in real-time.
Racket Club — Resolution Games
2023, Platforms TBA
When the Review Crew’s Patrick and Noah talk VR they inevitably get to talking about Demeo, the excellent game that recreates the tabletop dungeon crawling experience across VR and PC, including cross-play on the two platforms. Indeed, they keep luring others in to try it. Which is why we’re excited about the upcoming Racket Club from the same developer. Resolution Games seems to have cracked the code on making accessible social VR games that are fun to play and easy to get people together to play in. They’re also planning to drop the mixed reality multiplayer shooter Spatial Ops at some point in the future, which can turn a basketball court or open office floorplan into a sandbox for competitive video gameplay.
Racket Club is pure VR, however, and we can use every excuse we can get to try new social experiences with out headsets, especially with AltSpace and EchoVR getting shut down.
Keeping an eye on: Mighty Coconut, The MetaMovie, The Ferryman Collective
Texas
Meow Wolf Grapevine — Meow Wolf
Summer 2023, Grapevine, Texas
A new, still untitled, portal to Meow Wolf’s metaverse is opening in the Grapevine Mills Mall just north of the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. There aren’t a lot of details about this latest node in Meow Wolf’s ever-expanding collection of locations, but it joins a mall that is already home to a Legoland Discover Center, a Rainforest Cafe, and is currently hosting a Stranger Things store. Indeed, Dallas as a whole is definitely on the come up when it comes to immersive and themed entertainment, with the planned Universal Resort now announced and the second Two Bit Circus location already up and running.
What else we’re watching out for in Texas: The Department of Wonder, Strange Bird Immersive, SXSW’s activations
New England
InterconU — New England Interactive Literature
March 2–5, Warwick, RI
We love a good LARP and a good larp here at NoPro. (IYKYK.) Which is why our resident chief LARPing enthusiast Leah brought up Intercon Ultraviolet when it came time to compare lists. The convention is the premiere North American LARP convention, getting its start back in 1986.
Those who heed the siren call of live-action roleplaying inevitably find themselves on the road to Rhode Island, and this year we are no different. What will you find? Well, the list of events is exhaustive, from a game recreating the iconic “Cereal Convention” from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series to games where you get to act out a melodramatic death scene, to the Iron GM series where larpwrights have 24 hours to make a game for 5 to 11 players from scratch. (The list of events is huge.)
The Queen’s Ball: A Bridgerton Experience — Netflix & Fever
Dates Unknown, Boston
Last year a casting call went up for the Boston edition of The Queen’s Ball: A Bridgerton Experience, and while an announcement hasn’t gone up yet we wouldn’t be surprised to find Netflix’s popular touring show pop up where Punchdrunk first made a splash with the original Sleep No More. If you ask us, Boston is primed to have a LOT more immersive happen in it.
Waiting for word on: Club Drosselmeyer 2023, the latest in the Malden Gaming District, more new work from Intramersive.
London
There can be no doubt that London is the beating heart of immersive these days. Whether we are talking prestige works like Punchdrunk’s The Burnt City, the latest pop-culture-inspired shows from Secret Cinema, or surprises from the VAULT festival, London has every kind of cutting-edge immersive you can dream of and then some.
Rumble in the Jungle Rematch — Rematch Live
Date TBA
The moment we saw the footage of Rematch Live’s Wimbledon Rematch 1980 we were transfixed by the possibilities. Live sports, recreated through technology, choreography, and inventive theatrical staging all wrapped up with a recreation of the moment around historic matches. A fantastic premise with amazing promise.
Rumble in the Jungle is the next event from the company, and while the event got postponed from a midwinter launch, that’s not unusual in immersive, especially in London. Not in this day and age. If anything waiting just makes the anticipation greater, and we really want to see how the most famous boxing match of all time is reanimated by this team.
Phantom Peak Spring Session — The League of Adventure
Mid-March 2023
We were mightily impressed by what the creators of Phantom Peak put together this past summer in London, with a sprawling series of adventures in an open-world sandbox that really pushed the edges of what immersive gaming can be.
The team behind the attraction wasn’t content to rest on the laurels of the first iteration, however, and created seasonal updates for the Fall and Winter and will soon be back as they retool for Spring. It’s been a minute since the London Review Crew took a look at how Phantom Peak has evolved, and it sounds like we’re overdue for a check-up on this ambitious project as it circles around toward its fourth season under the London sun.
Who and what we’re watching in London: Secret Cinema, the return of Alice’s Adventures Underground, Parabolic Theatre, Arkham Asylum, Little Lion Entertainment
Discover the latest immersive events, festivals, workshops, and more at our new site EVERYTHING IMMERSIVE, new home of NoPro’s show listings.
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