The One About Neil Patrick Harris’ Magically Immersive Birthday Adventure

NPH gets a birthday present to die for with the help of the guys behind ‘The Tension Experience’

The dream goes something like this:

You wake up on your birthday, and something is just a little off. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but there’s a tiny little thread that catches your eye and you pull on it.

And pull, and pull, and suddenly you’ve unraveled your reality and found yourself swimming in something much bigger than the world you thought you knew.

Or something like that, anyway, is the dream of just about every immersive fan and creator. This past week one of the best known immersive fans and creators — Neil Patrick Harris — got to live the dream thanks to his friends and family and the mastermind skills of The Experiences’ Darren Lynn Bousman, Gordon Bijelonic, and Clint Sears.

The three are in planning mode for their new show in Las Vegas, but late in the week it was clear something was up when from Harris’ Instagram account.

With the smoke cleared and the mirrors packed away, we checked in with The Experiences’ crew to see what mischief they were up to this time, and how the timing of this delivery couldn’t have been more complicated.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

No Proscenium: So, you got commissioned to make a game for Neil Patrick Harris’ birthday — how’d that come about?

The Experiences Team: There was a relationship forged from mutual respect for each other’s work and Neil has been gracious enough to help us out a few times with The Experiences. So when his family and friends reached out the timing was perfect. We had already been planning a completely personalized immersive experience as a possible high dollar tier for Las Vegas, one that would start from the moment you get off the plane, and wondering about offering it to anyone who could afford it in the meantime as a way of keeping us fresh and exploring new ideas…

BUT it was also horrible timing because Darren was literally in the middle of his second kid being born. There was a lot of directing that happened not only on the other side of the country but from a hospital room as well.

Everyone pitched in to make it perfect… we had a small effective crew hustling the entire time that consisted of Neil’s husband, assistant and friends who all worked tirelessly to help execute the madness and workshop possibilities that we could pull off. The McKittrick Hotel, (Sleep No More) came in and rolled up their sleeves and helped us execute some of the madness. We relied on a lot of our east coast connections in the immersive world including costume designers, actors and magicians that all helped create this weird new reality for Neil. There were countless other venues and people that helped pull this off because everyone saw the magic in creating an exciting, new reality for him and wanted to help make it happen.

NP: What did you do for him? Was this basically “The Game?”

TEC: Short answer, yes it was.

The longer answer is that we wouldn’t want to betray any of the details that made it a unique experience for him but we can say that we took his interests and tried to create an exciting journey that we hoped he would have no choice but to respond to. It started from the moment he woke up until an intimate gathering late in the evening to decompress and there were countless interactions, celebrity cameos, puzzles and venues in between.

NP: Was he freaking out the entire time?

TEC: That’s a question for Neil but we tried to make him terrified, paranoid, confused, elated, loved and reflective with a couple of laughs thrown into the mix as well. The key is to put a road map on these emotions so that they all pay off in very cathartic way in the end.

NP: How much work goes into something like that?

TEC: We’d like a few months but this was boiled down to a few weeks and a new baby. You do what you can but thankfully we can now take something from idea to execution in minutes because of our years of experience with the ARGs.

We’ve also complied a tight nit team who we can entrust various aspects of what we do… Example, we knew we needed amazing puzzles and cyphers… So of course we called Morgan Rooms, etc…

NP: Is this a one-off, an elaborate gift for a friend, or are you guys in a new line of business here?

TEC: As we said it’s something we had been hovering around already and this was entirely too much fun not to repeat in some capacity. It will depend on the opportunities that are available but we certainly wouldn’t hesitate having a conversation with anyone that reached out to us in the meantime.

NP: Darren, your family just expanded this past week — how you pull this off at the same time?

Darren Lynn Bousman: UGH… It was horrific. Our child came a week early… Neil’s Birthday was days after she was born. I was literally in the room with my wife as she was in labor feveriously sending off emails, and fielding phone calls, as the nurses were weighing the baby, and measuring her.

Most my role took place glued to a computer in the delivery room, whilst FaceTiming with Clint, and sending hundreds of text messages to Gordon. Luckily my wife is awesome and didn’t divorce me after.

Three cheers to the real hero of this story: Laura Bousman.

And happy belated birthday NPH: even though every person who is reading this is now enflamed with jealousy of you, you’ve earned this for everything you’ve done for the popularization of immersive. Uh, the gift. Not the jealousy. Obviously!

Here’s to more immersive dreams for us all.

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