Best Immersive Moments of 2021
The NoPro Review Crew shares their highlights from a very weird year
Each year the NoPro Review Crew is given an impossible assignment: narrow down what you’ve experienced in the wide world of immersive in the previous year to a tight list of your top choices from the work that has debuted that year.
Of course, sometimes our best experiences happen in work that we only discovered this year. Perhaps it happened in a show that maybe, on the whole, has some issues but hit you at an angle that was magical. Or maybe you just want to spread the love around. That’s where the Best Immersive Moments category comes in.
The following is a record of the highest highs of Immersive in 2021 for our immersonauts. We encourage you to share yours in the comments wherever you found this!
Up next in the series: Our Favorite Immersive Shows & Experiences of 2021
BEST OF 2021 SERIES
- Best Immersive Moments
- Favorite Shows & Experiences (12.24.21)
- Best of 2021 Podcast (12.24.21)
Asya Gorovits, NYC Correspondent
KNOT: a trilogy, Darkfield Radio
This trio of audio experiences used three locations: a park, a car and the listener’s room. As I was sitting in the passenger seat of my car with my eyes closed and listening to the audio of the raindrops tapping on the roof I found it very difficult to not to open my eyes to check if it started raining for real. Transforming mundane spaces of our dwelling with storytelling became a common theme of the experiences created during the times when theatres became off limits. But that particular moment, simple yet brilliantly executed, really shifted with my perception of reality, and isn’t that a true theatre magic?
Blake Weil, East Coast Curator at Large
Dragonbutter, Brian Sanders JUNK
Returning to in-person immersive brought both excitement and fear; what if the magic was just gone? Where most intimate moments of theatre are literally that, up close to an actor, Brian Sanders JUNK put my worries to rest. The bizarre and visceral thrill of watching a balletic aerial performance, and then being invited to shoot the dancer with a paintball gun is exactly the kind of moment that shakes you out of your comfort zone that keeps me returning to immersive theatre. This moment, although sadly not marking the end of the pandemic, marked a thrilling return to in-person works.
Edward Mylechreest, NYC Correspondent
Hymn to the City, Death of Classical
Taking place in the vast Green-Wood Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark in Brooklyn, Hymn to the City was an immersive musical response to the year that we have all been through. As I stood by the graveside of Leonard Bernstein, listening to five of the finest brass musicians from the New York Philharmonic playing a selection of the composer’s iconic melodies from West Side Story, I looked out past the cemetery, towards the Manhattan skyline in the distance with the sun setting quietly behind it. A stunning moment, one that imprinted upon me, and one that I will never forget.
New York City is still here, still kicking, and proud. And I am proud to be a part of it.
Kevin Gossett, LA Reviews Editor
Blaseball, The Game Band
As Season 24, and the Expansion Era, came to an end, so did Blaseball as we knew it. Everything went to hell, the site changed, and a black hole threatened to consume all of the teams. A simulated game based on baseball became one about turning your accumulated possessions into fuel to help propel your team/spaceship to safety. The lowkey cosmic horror of Blaseball was now grandiose as everyone came together to try to make it out of the capitalism-sparked disaster. It was an experience both strangely touching and perfectly absurd.
Laura Hess, Arts Editor
Divine Immersion: The Experiential Art of Nick Dong, Nick Dong, presented by USC Pacific Asia Museum
I included Divine Immersion: The Experiential Art of Nick Dong in my honorable mentions for the best experiences of 2021. While the entire show was extraordinary, one immersive sculpture captured my heart for 2021’s best moment.
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Similar to Yayoi Kusama’s mirrored infinity rooms, “Heaven” is an enclosed, fully mirrored chamber. A stool in its center, the chamber is circular and lined with narrow panels of mirrored glass (once the door closed, it was easy to forget which frame was the exit). But unlike Kusama’s rooms, there was no time limit once inside. Dong’s invitation for guests was “to bring all of your chaos… imperfections encouraged and included,” and to pause time in “Heaven” for meditative reflection. The result was an out-of-home experience that felt safe, intimate, and otherworldly. It was a wondrous and compassionate respite, a transcendent salve for this singular time.
Leah Davis, New England Correspondent
The Fleecing, Almanac Dance Circus Theatre
The Fleecing mastered something that I haven’t seen done anywhere else: it created a remote theatre experience that felt fully immersive, deeply textured, and completely open. Casual observers might have called it a night of circus acts performed over Zoom. But those who dug deeper found a rich world that celebrated the beauty of the absurd, while making it clear that everything is absurd — and therefore beautiful. Accordingly, the moment I cherish isn’t one of The Fleecing’s insanely raw interpretive dances or my one-on-one tarot reading. It’s Yannick Trapman-O’Brien’s exasperated Abacus Bearer panicking after telling people to answer a question by typing “F” into chat. “Great, now you’re effing up all over the place.” We sure are, friend! And isn’t that beautiful?
Patrick B. McLean, Chicago Curator
Traitor, The Deadbolt Mystery Society
After having done Conspiracy with Kevin Gossett and loving it, it was only a matter of time before I tried out another one of The Deadbolt Mystery Society’s escape room mystery boxes. I picked up Traitor soon after, receiving feedback it was engrossing and clever along with having a robust and engaging narrative.
But none of that is why this was my best moment for the year.
As all of The Deadbolt Mystery Society’s boxes are smaller, I decided to take Traitor with me back home for Thanksgiving. Between my surgeon father, my lawyer brother, and my accountant sister-in-law, none of them had done anything too terribly immersive beyond a random VR game. No escape rooms. No live performances.
Barely a fourth of the way through Traitor, I became ill (food related and a story for a Review Crew) but felt worse for having to abandon them. I feared that they would give up, that the experience would prove too much for the uninitiated.
Yet not only did they finish it, they loved it.
This excites me because it shows how far everything immersive has truly come, even during the pandemic. I think we should all be hard pressed to consider this a niche artform, one where the general public must be invited in and guided through an experience by an expert.
The age of immersive is upon us, and everyone, including those without any prior experience of immersive work, is ready for it.
Noah Nelson, Publisher
MONTEGELATO, Davide Rapp
It is September 4th, 2021 and I am sitting on the hardwood floor of my apartment, staring through a rectangle and into the black and white image of a gentle waterfall 6,325 miles away and some 50 years into the past. Lithe bodies splash about, the camera panning to track their uninhibited play for a brief moment before it freezes into place and another image, yellow in tone in the way that old color film transferred to video long ago gets, blossoms next to it.
The sound of horse hoofs herald the appearance of a cowboy, whose mount races into frame and carries us across part of the first image, revealing more of the scene. The process repeats, with different film stock and formats. Through a kaleidoscope of cinematic genres, assembling into a 360 panorama of Rome’s Cascate di Monte Gelato, which has served as the backdrop of scenes from seemingly countless movies.
Davide Rapp’s 360 video transcends the usual fare of the medium by embracing its alieness. Instead of just plopping down a 360 camera at the waterfalls and showing us the place, he assembles a montage collage that unveils the space through time. It is a work of cinematic alchemy, and left me feeling transported across multiple dimensions. The closest, I suppose, I’ll ever come to the disorientation that must come with time travel.
Shelley Snyder, London Curator
We Still Fax, ANTS Theatre
With the haze (both metaphorical and actual) of We Still Fax floating around my living room and hanging in the air, so was I suspended in the giddy fog billowing out from an at-home performance which actually made a lasting impression.
Some shows stay with you, but I’m used to those shows being ones which build a world to which you need to physically travel. After a year of Zoom shows that never quite broke through the barrier of my screen or phone, We Still Fax moved into my home and hands and heart, and stayed there.
Kathryn Yu, Executive Editor
Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, Disneyland Resort
(Minor spoilers ahead.)
Rise of the Resistance is perhaps the most immersive and theatrical “ride” I’ve ever been on, complete with casting the audience as new Resistance recruits and using a single plot line that is carried throughout the experience; the conceit of the ride is that this is all happening specifically to you. In real time. The boundary between when the queue portion ends and where the ride itself even begins is made blurry on purpose. There’s even a complex on-rails traversal filled with multiple reveals across what feels like three separate sets and vehicles.
You’ll also find cast members here who scold you in character should you step out of line, with just the right amount of sharpness as to not scare off the kids. I’ll never forget the shocked expressions of the two young children I was standing near as a First Order officer chided them for not following orders. The adult guests nearby smirked and tried to hide their reactions as their mother reminded the boys that they were now prisoners and to do as they were asked. And, of course, one of the adults then got in trouble for snickering.
Perhaps this sounds prosaic on paper, but I’d put good money on that family remembering that specific moment for years to come.
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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