Review Rundown: The One With Nightmares in Tokyo, Triumphs in Croatia, and Vampires in New Orleans
The Crew goes globetrotting, including dispatches from NYC, Denver & LA (Seven Reviews)
We’ve got a real travelogue for you this week, with dispatches from Leah Davis on a trip to Croatia, Nicholas Fortugno as he hits up New Orleans, and a special dispatch from Benjamin Beardsley, who volunteered to look into a show in Tokyo for us.
Plus Edward hits up two experiences out of NYC, Danielle drops in on Drunk Christmas in Denver, and Kevin has some thoughts on 40 Watts From Nowhere in LA, which has become quite the buzz this season out here.
If somehow you want more our most recent Rundown “The One With Eldritch Opera in London and Demodogs in LA” is right behind you! Oh, wait. No. It’s actually right here.
Are you a creator who looks upon these reviews with envy? Okay, the positive ones, at least? Then you might want to check out our How To Get Covered By NoPro guide. Want to get listed in our newsletter and have your event shared with our social media following? Submit a listing to Everything Immersive.
Don’t miss a thing by signing up for the NoPro Newsletter, and you can support our efforts by joining our Patreon. We are a community funded operation.
12th Night — Emit Theatre
PWYC; New York, NY; Run Concluded
Immersive Educational Entertainment is the goal of Emit Theatre, and they certainly provide that in this modern retelling of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Designed specifically for children (ages 10 and up) and soon to be performed in schools around NYC, I along with a few other adults were treated to see what the kids get to look forward to this year.
Over the course of the evening, audiences are invited to dive into the world of Illyria, with a wide cast of characters, all of whom are ready and willing to share their dreams and goals with you. Almost all characters are straight pulls from the original work, using much of the original dialogue in scenes that happen chronologically with the play, which you need to try to catch if you want to follow the play. If you are with them when not in one of their scripted moments, it is great to chat and dive into the characters with the actors who are clearly prepared and love the work. The set and prop design is simple, and clearly designed for an “on the road” approach, as it can be easily set up in almost any educational space. It feels haphazard, in the most loving way I can put that, with everything having a “made from scratch with love” sort of feeling to it.
The story has been updated to include far more gender diversity and inclusivity, with the entire township wanting to rebel against being forced to display “masc” or “femme” features, through behaviors and costumes. It’s an interesting addition to the Shakespeare work, which itself plays with gender in a “comedic” way. Yet I do wonder if this almost-meta addition to the work might cause some confusion to students who have been studying a non-Emit Theatre edition of the play. It’s clearly a worthy addition in many ways, but I feel there is a loss to some of the intent and story of the original play through the choices made.
There were a few children at the evening’s presentation, all of whom assured me afterward they had a wonderful time. They may not have been as engaged with the Shakespeare “scenes” as the adults in the room, but they were absolutely captivated with the performers and the characters that surround them. It was a delight to see the children sneak around the room with characters, looking for clues, working on missions, and solving side quests. 12th Night is a beautiful testament to the potential of immersive theatre for education.
All I can say is I wish I had had an Emit Theatre company when I was in school!
— Edward Mylechreest, New York City Correspondent
40 Watts from Nowhere — Mister & Mischief
$70; Silver Lake, CA; Through December 18
Noah covered 40 Watts from Nowhere when it ran at Without Walls earlier this year and it appears unchanged from that iteration: You and four other participants take on the role of Sue Carpenter, the woman who founded pirate radio station KBLT, as you try to keep the radio station up and running while dealing with bills, the risk of the feds, and mostly importantly, making sure there’s no dead air.
You can check out what Noah wrote for a more in-depth look at the what of the show, but because he already did all that explaining, I wanted to dig into something he mentioned: “When you’re in one of those shows that will be a touchstone of the genre, you’re left struggling to describe it by writing inane things like ‘it was kinda like a podcast mixed with an escape room, only it wasn’t so much a puzzle as just like, being in someone’s shoes, you know?”
40 Watts from Nowhere really does feel like something new in immersive theatre. In the pre-show introduction, Jeff and Andy Crocker describe it as a few things, but the one that rang truest to me after getting out of the show was “immersive documentary.” If that sounds boring, let me assure you that it is most definitely not.
Mister & Mischief have charged 40 Watts with different ways to play while you’re in Sue’s shoes trying to keep the records spinning and the station running. Throughout it all, the narrator/Sue will jump in and explain where she (and, by extension, you) are at in life with KBLT. It’s an inventive twist on immersive theatre and a clever way to use interactive and immersive elements to elevate the specific story being told.
Those elements aren’t anything too out there, (and some are a little silly in a very fun way!) but they are incredibly effective in telling Sue’s story. The other key piece is in positioning the entire audience as Sue instead of a random DJ passing through the station. That choice adds to the stakes of the show while creating a lot of empathy for Sue’s situation and the specifics of her life. If it was just a group of five DJs running the station for a night and hearing Sue’s story told by the narrator, 40 Watts would lose something along the way.
In another weird year, where I haven’t been to that many immersive shows, this one was a great reminder that there are still new avenues to explore and ways to use immersive theatre to tell so many stories. Plus, it’s fun as hell.
— Kevin Gossett, LA Reviews Editor
Dancing in the Nightmare — Dramatic Dining
¥8000; Nihonbashi, Tokyo; through Dec. 4th
In Dancing in the Nightmare the creative team of Yui Takeshima and Kaori Kondo of Dramatic Dining have created an immersive experience unique to Japan yet universal enough to transcend the limitations of language in an experience that unfolds differently for each viewer and upon each viewing.
But viewing is the wrong word.
This is truly an immersive experience in which the lines between subject and story — the dreamer and the dreaming — are deliberately and expertly blurred. The story begins in mystery and ends in ambiguity, inviting each participant to find their own meaning in the haunting vignettes masterfully presented in unique settings by a virtuoso team of dancers.
For the iconic Swiss psychologist Carl Jung the unconscious was represented by the element of water, so the beloved Japanese folktale of Urashima Taro is a natural fit for this multi-dimensional exploration.
In the myth, a fisherman falls in love with the daughter of the emperor of the sea. He descends to an enchanted underwater kingdom where he spends three days intoxicated in rapt revelry with her. But when he leaves her to return to the ordinary world with the mysterious box she gifted him — with instructions never to open — he discovers that three hundred years have passed and things can never be the same.…
Taking this beloved story as a starting point, Dramatic Dining has crafted a site-specific re-imaging staged in collaboration with the BnA Wall Art Hotel — itself a living work of art comprised of 26 rooms designed by 14 world-class artists centered around an atrium housing the eponymous 5 meter tall mural wall, all used to masterful effect.
From the lobby our mystery begins as we are invited to separate rooms to find our way deeper into the liminal realms via a host of techniques including hypnotic trance induction, shadow puppetry, masterful dancing, glorious tableaus, and exquisite use of the architecture of the space.
Each audience member is guided to a series of rooms, each room a unique setting for scenes of loss and longing as we’re led on an emotional journey through the labyrinth of the dreamy world we may recognize from our own nightly forays into the collective unconscious.
Deliberately ambiguous and delightfully disorienting, the show is an invitation to fill in the blanks and make sense of the collage of images that haunt the rooms and hallways of the hotel.
This production does more than transcend the limits of language. It draws us into the shared realm of dreams and dreaming, loss and longing. Like the two specialty drinks offered in the lobby at the beginning of the show — Hypnosis and Discover — the mystery of the experience will leave a lingering impression.
While some parts of the performance may be lost without some understanding of Japanese, there is text provided in English, and the story unfolds almost entirely through movement. There is more than enough here to provide a satisfying experience for viewers from any background. If you are in Japan and have the resources to enjoy the show we recommend making the trip.
— Benjamin Beardsley, Tokyo Correspondent
Drunk Christmas — Audacious Theatre
PWYC-$15; Denver, CO; through Dec. 17th
If you’re a Christmas Scrooge like me, Audacious Theater’s Drunk Christmas offers a hilarious twist on the overtold but timeless tale. As no strangers to site-specific performances, Audacious Theater takes their holiday show to four different local breweries over the show’s four-week run, appropriately setting the stage for an evening of raucous, Christmas-themed debauchery.
This show serves as Audacious Theatre’s annual fundraiser, so the production and interactivity are scaled back in order to keep focus on the evening’s two most important goals: making money and getting drunk (with, perhaps, a bit more emphasis on the latter than the former). Everyone from Jacob Marley to Bob Cratchit to old Ebenezer himself had a tall glass of real beer in their hand (refilled many times over) from start to finish in the performance. The actors get for-real tipsy as part of the show, and that’s certainly a large part of the fun.
Though presented in more of a proscenium format than is customary, Audacious Theatre still took care to include immersive add-ons available for purchase, like front-row seating for up-close actor engagement and an interactive goodie bag. Perched on a stool in the second row, I enjoyed watching those guests scurry to toss handfuls of “snow” (paper confetti) every time a Ghost of Christmas appeared, or to ring their bells whenever Marley’s ghost appeared.
The brewery’s concrete floor and walls, paired with the actors’ over-the-top accents and general chaos of their performance, made it rather difficult to follow the dialog. Lucky for most of us, it’s a story we all know all too well; the lines themselves aren’t nearly as crucial as the performers’ facial expressions and physical acting — both of which are on full and fantastic display for the show’s duration.
And, of course, you’ll also want to arrive with a bit of a buzz yourself, so come early and support the local breweries that are supporting the local artists.
— Danielle Look, Denver Correspondent
Saturnalia — By Night Studios & Reverie Studios
$400-$1,000, New Orleans, LA; Run Concluded
Vampire settings are the oldest of the live-action roleplaying (LARP) settings, and New Orleans is as vampire a city as you get, with Saturnalia starting with a great premise. A full night LARP (with an additional VIP pre-event) in which you play vampires coming from all around the World of Darkness setting for a ritual of self-invention, Saturnalia largely delivers on the concept with one key issue.
The build-up for the LARP was professional and elegant. A great character creator and a robust Discord server allowed players to build solid characters. The organizers did a good job building groups of players and giving them time at the LARP’s start to coordinate. I felt like I had connections and some plot from the start. The game itself was organized into three acts; players began in different settings around the French Quarter and could wander and mingle. Everyone merged a second time later, following a band through the streets to the final venue, where the game continued with all players until a final ritual closed the LARP.
The first act didn’t really work as the different settings could be 25 minutes away on foot, so you spent too much time walking around trying to find a place with other players that wasn’t crowded with tourists. The second act was neat to do, but it wasn’t really a LARP — it’s a parade in New Orleans in costume. The LARP landed well in the final act. Having all the players in a beautiful historic mansion meant you could have random encounters and stumble into lots of interesting plots, a testament to good setup by the organizers. It wasn’t hard to find a good scene with new players, but since you had a group, you could be more passive, getting dragged into interesting moments as well. The evening was paced well so that you had time to get things done before the final ritual, which was solid and wrapped things up nicely.
Overall, the game would have been served better by cutting the different locations and just throwing us in the final venue together, but that aside, the game did a good job giving experienced players opportunities and new players support. It’s a good LARP for the price, and I would happily check out another game by this team if it were a bit less ambitious in production.
– Nicholas Fortugno, New York Correspondent
Section 230 — Jared Mezzocchi & HERE
$10-$50; Remote (Zoom); Live Run Concluded, Recording Availible
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (1996)
Some 25 years after this act came into being, running on the bespoke video platform URHERE, developed by NYC’s HERE, Jared Mezzocchi explores the impact of these 26 words on what has become the single most significant technological change in human history — the internet.
It’s a fun romp through early internet culture, with many memes and memories being brought to the fore as a millennial who grew up with the internet as it was working out what it was. 90’s style visuals and early 00’s viral sensations come and go quickly. The titular Section 230 in many ways shaped this growth, as “ownership” and “responsibility” became nebulous concepts in the wild west of the internet. The two child actors involved are a fascinating reflection of this, at times being sweetly naive before switching deftly to hard-attacking cynicism. The fact they weren’t even alive to have seen some of these internet relics when originally posted hits a little closer to home than I’d like.
There are a few Zoom issues, but through clever screen manipulation by Mezzocchi, who is acting as a live editor, the evening stays on track and can be visually impressive at times. The short moment of interaction that is featured is witty, but there was very little else interactive or immersive in the piece as a whole. I enjoyed this 30-minute stroll down meme-ry lane but was waiting for that dark twist to really solidify the importance of discussions around this world wide web.
— Edward Mylechreest, New York City Correspondent
Triumph — Chris Bergstresser, Hilary Sklar, Ashley Perryman, Alexandra Beck, Matija Mihoković
270€ — 470€; Marija Bistrica, Croatia; Run Concluded
Two weeks ago, players from all over the world took on the roles of mentors, socialites, citizens of the Eternal City, and tributes — I mean, triumphs — to tell a story based on The Hunger Games. I’d been looking forward to Triumph since casting was first announced in 2019. After a pandemic, two cancellations, and some rescheduling, I finally had the chance to play out my dystopian power fantasies just outside Croatia’s capital city.
Nordic blockbuster LARPs like this are my favorite kind of games because they’re so perfectly immersive. Triumph, though, was different. Designer Chris Bergstresser wanted to make something inclusive, so actually surviving a wilderness murder-gauntlet was out. Instead, we played through three days in the Eternal City: a grand banquet where Triumphs (players chosen to become fighters) were announced, a day of politicking and team building, and then the Triumph Games.
Player’s experiences were largely tied to the kind of characters they chose. As mentor Silence Silver, I spent most of my first day trying to give the two Triumphs from my canton enough advice to turn one of them into a winner. Things went sideways; Silver ended her game supporting a coup and marrying a dictator to become Empress, but that’s another story.
When Triumphs did get to compete, it wasn’t a violent free-for-all. The Triumph Games were more like live-action table-top role playing, with out-of-game (OOG) space for players to negotiate skirmish winners and mechanics in place to randomly choose a winner if necessary. These negotiations were done OOG, then skirmishes were broadcast on televisions throughout the hotel. In other Nordic LARPs, players might stay in-game (IG) the entire time, relying on predetermined hand signals for safety and out-of-character negotiation until the LARP is over. Triumph had me bouncing between IG and OOG worlds multiple times a day, mostly because media was a huge component of the gameplay.
I was initially worried that this was going to block the kind of organic in-world relationship-building I crave. But well-written characters made switching modes smoother than expected, jaw-dropping videography and photography drove home themes of reality vs. spectacle on personal and social levels, and generous players made the game an absolute delight. I will note that I enjoyed this game more because I opened a few narrative doors for myself that were not strictly outlined in my character blurb. Sometimes you have to make sure the odds are ever in your own favor.
— Leah Davis, New England Correspondent
Discover the latest immersive events, festivals, workshops, and more at our new site EVERYTHING IMMERSIVE, new home of NoPro’s show listings.
NoPro is a labor of love made possible by our generous Patreon backers. Join them today!
In addition to the No Proscenium website, our podcast, and our newsletters, you can find NoPro on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, in the Facebook community Everything Immersive, and on our Discord.
