The Onward Odyssey of OddKnock Productions (Feature)
One of Denver’s newest immersive theatre companies recounts their origin story
It’s summer in Denver and I’ve just followed half a dozen people into a poorly-lit warehouse. A man dressed in shorts and a cape is screaming at people who seem to be ducking behind furniture with purpose. “Jail!” he yells, pointing at someone as clueless as I am. “You’re going to jail!” He leads his prisoner towards a haphazardly gated area and tells him to stay put before running away. Moments later, the prisoner exits his “jail” and runs off to hide.
This is just the beginning of Test Kitchen 5, the conclusion to a five-part series of performances produced by OddKnock Productions in 2021. After an hour spent exploring the playful and scandalous aspects of child regression, I was left feeling fortunate to have experienced such boundary-pushing art alongside such a small audience. And I wasn’t alone. Word had been spreading around town about the new immersive group that was staging shows in under two weeks, performing them for one weekend only, then tearing it all down to do it again. I had to know more.
From NYC to Denver: the Inception of OddKnock Productions
OddKnock Productions is Brendan Duggan, Parker Murphy, and Zach Martens — three professional actors who met in New York while working on Third Rail’s The Grand Paradise in 2015. They reconnected while putting in their time as residents at Sleep No More, where Murphy planted a seed for what would eventually become OddKnock Productions.
Murphy hosted a brunch for their creative friend group to talk about current projects and inspiration. This served as the platform for him to announce that he wanted to — eventually, at some point — make an immersive show. Martens remembers Murphy telling the group that, as a Denver native, he “felt really strongly about getting back there” and that there was “a lot of stuff going on” in The Mile High City.
This was spring of 2016, right as Third Rail’s Sweet & Lucky landed in Denver and local immersive theater was really starting to heat up. At this point in their careers, the trio had all been living and working in New York City— a large theater town where it can be hard to get attention, space, and money to perform — for more than ten years, so everyone was open to the idea of relocation in service of “the dream.”
For the next three years, Martens says the idea continued to grow in a slow burn style until the group finally took a trip to Denver in the spring of 2019. On that trip, they looked at neighborhoods and spoke with members and supporters of the arts community. One of those people was Alye Sharp, Community Outreach Director (now Deputy Director) of The RiNo Art District. They pitched her on their “pie in the sky” vision and she was hooked.
But then Covid happened. “One of the silver linings of the pandemic,” Martens tells me, “was that there were a lot of wildly gifted people with a lot of time on their hands who were very happy to spend time with us on Zoom and educate us about all sorts of things that we had never known or tried to do.” The group decided to use this downtime to push forward and keep digging into the business side of theater production.
A Quiet Unveiling in Denver
Fast forward to spring 2021. Sharp contacted the group about an available location in the RiNo Art District, but there was a catch: the building she was offering was going to get demolished at the end of the summer. That meant OddKnock Productions couldn’t invest too much time or money into world-building. And since they were expected to move in quickly (with just a couple weeks of notice) there was no time for auditions.
Faced with this unique set of creative limitations, the group decided they would spend two weeks writing, building, and rehearsing each production. Whatever they had at the end of two weeks is what they would show for one weekend only. Then they would start the process all over again for the next one.
Martens says that the goal for the Test Kitchen series was twofold. First and foremost, they wanted to create a safe space for performers to have fun and to make things. But they also had a need, as a business, to introduce themselves to the community.
The guiding force behind the first two Test Kitchen performances was simply “to make” — to get artists in and give them free reign. But by the time they moved into production on the third installment they began asking, “Can we tell a cohesive story?”
That turned out to be a crystalizing moment for the team. They began to see that the artists could generate their own art, while Duggan, Murphy, and Martens shaped the overarching narrative. That was also when they started asking, “can immersive be fun for the creators and actors?”
“Coming from other types of experiences,” Martens explains, “sometimes we take ourselves very seriously, or try to be so dark and moody. And I think that those are really valuable things, but when you’re always living in that dark or hard or serious place, it can be really draining.”
What made Test Kitchen 3 so magical, according to Martens, was that they wanted it to be fun, weird, exciting, and bizarre — for both the actors and the audience — but to do it in a way that treated those emotions seriously.
“So the audience is experiencing something that’s silly and offbeat, but also deep, moving, full of heart and terrifying all at the same time.”
Full Steam Ahead: From On High
By the end of summer, the group was feeling accomplished but exhausted. They were finally letting their collective foot off the gas for the first time in four months when the RiNo Art District approached them to collaborate on whatever was coming next.
Martens says that Sharp and her team were a shining beacon in that moment, because it would have been too easy to put it all away and take a break. Reflecting back, Martens recognizes that they could have lost the momentum they had spent all summer building up, and that the RiNo Art District helped keep it going.
“If it wasn’t for them taking a chance on us and introducing live performance into a community that has historically been very visually based, we wouldn’t be here now; From On High wouldn’t be happening. We are nothing without the kindness and openness of other people saying, ‘Yeah, let’s try it.’ Sometimes it’s overwhelming to think about how generous people have been. Especially here in Denver; people are so generous with their time and space and taking risks with art.”
When it came time to decide the creative direction for their next project, From On High, OddKnock Productions kept coming back to that crystalizing moment from Test Kitchen 3 when everything clicked and they truly started having fun. So they took the concepts and setting of that show (a satirical riff on corporate culture) and started building on it. What they ended up with was a 9,000 square-foot office space that allows audience members to roam through freely as they orient themselves during their first week as new employees at BANR.
This time around, some things (like moving into a building that will eventually be torn down) felt familiar while others were new.
“Last summer we did everything; we mopped the floors, built the sets, sold the beer, checked the tickets, ran the light board during the show,” Martens tells me before asking, “Have you ever seen the movie Three Men and a Baby? That was us, running around just trying to keep the baby alive, and Test Kitchen was the baby.”
This summer, they managed to hold auditions and hire a real production team.
Martens continued. “We have designers, we have a stage management team, and just more resources in general. Of the six roles in the show [From On High], five are filled by Denver performers, and almost everyone (except for a couple of people) on our team of 18 is local. Somewhere around 70–80% of the budget is to pay people, because one of the things that we’re really determined to do is to provide artists and creators and makers with the ability to appreciate and sustain themselves on their art.”
When asked how they’re doing that, and how they differ from other performance groups in terms of financial support for the artists, Martens says it’s all about being transparent and discussing money up front with everyone involved in any capacity.
“We’re trying to be fearless when talking about money. On every call, in every meeting, we rip the band aid off and say, ‘This is the budget, here’s what it costs, here’s what we have earmarked for payment — do you think that’s possible?’ Everyone who is on the weekly pay schedule — stage management, performers, Oddknock admin — is getting paid the exact same amount.”
The irony is not lost on Martens that the content of the show is the exact dichotomy that they’re attempting to shatter.
“There’s this weird, funny thing about corporate culture where they’re like, ‘We’re family here!’ but it’s a front. Meanwhile they’re in the back doing deals under the table and the COO is banking tons of money, lining their pockets and writing it off on their taxes.”
If you happened to catch Test Kitchen 3 last summer, Martens says you’ll notice some familiar themes and scenes in From On High, but you’ll be in a space that’s twice as large and full of FOMO as you decide where to spend your time during the free-roaming performance.
If last summer’s productions were any indicator of what to expect, this summer is going to be wild, eccentric, hilarious, and disturbing — bringing Denver the exact infusion of novelty and excitement it needs in 2022.
OddKnock Productions latest show From On High runs through July 3rd. Tickets are $45.00.
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