COMING SOON: People In The Dark: An Immersive Ghost Story

Emerging onto LA’s immersive scene last year with Limos, a haunting tale that worked for both Halloween and Earth Day, DrownedOut Productions returns with an even more ambitious project that already has big buzz. Early word out of the preview offered at Midsummer Scream has those in the loop anticipating something special from the company’s sophomore effort People In The Dark.

Framed as a Hollywood ghost tour gone wrong, People In The Dark unspools forgotten tales from LA’s Gilded Age into a horror story “blending elements of immersive theater and haunted houses.”

Our curiosity piqued, we checked in with director Jackson Mancuso and producer Josiah Evaristo about the new show which starts Oct. 10th and runs right up through Halloween. Pre-sale is active now, and tickets go on sale to the general public Sep. 17th.

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NP: Tell us a little bit about your experience! What’s it about? What makes it immersive?

Jackson Mancuso: People in the Dark is an all new interactive pulsed experience debuting this October in Downtown Los Angeles. This is a ghost tour gone real! You won’t just hear about ghost stories, you’ll be thrown into the middle of one.

Josiah Evaristo: With an old Hollywood twist! We love a good ghost story, and Hollywood has them in abundance. While this show definitely leans into the spectacle of immersive theater, the ghost tour premise adds just as much to the show by both grounding the experience and paying homage to the real Hollywood tragedies that inspired our themes.

NP: What was the inspiration for your upcoming experience?

JM: The location really created the narrative. Downtown Los Angeles is full of all these great stories of golden-era Hollywood stars that are slowly being forgotten. The history and aesthetics of the venue and surrounding area were a gold mine of inspiration to pull from; everything came very naturally. This a prime opportunity not only for us to highlight these old legends, but to then build an environment where our visitors get to physically experience these stories unfold around them in a captivating and horrifying way.

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JE: Agreed, we really were fortunate with our location! What made this show click for me was finding our premise of “Ghost tour where something actually happens.” Real Ghost Tours bore me because they always fail to deliver on the promise of the premise. Stop with the history lesson; I wanna see a ghost!! With this show, we get to have our cake and eat it too by both highlighting several real and tragic stories around DTLA while still delivering on the “ghost” part of the ghost tour.

NP: What do you think fans of immersive will find most interesting about this latest experience?

JM: I think people can expect a level of storytelling and visuals rarely found in horror experiences. We are really crafting an emotional arch we want all of our visitors to feel. The nostalgic environments, the ghostly characters, even the perfume smells; everything comes together to create a cohesive experience. We’re in a renaissance of elevated horror films and it’s our goal to bring that storytelling and artistry here.

JE: Jackson and I both come from a music background and music theory terminology gets thrown around a lot in our design discussions (to the chagrin of our team). The creation of our audio tracks is purposefully early in our design process so that we can weave it into every aspect of our show. We also use an intricate cueing setup to allow for flexibility in the audio design and to punctuate specific moments in our actors’ performances.

NP: Once you started designing and testing what did you discover about this experience that was unexpected?

JM: We debuted one of our lead characters, a haunting starlet, at a convention recently. The way people were drawn to her movements was really fascinating. She was definitely able to captivate people the way we wanted her to. She led people to a 1:1 experience where we were able to test some key narrative moments. The way people reacted really made us excited to continue her story.

JE: Exactly, it was proof we could make something professional and polished on our own! For context: Jackson and I both have day jobs in theme park design that gave us experience in delivering polished products, but these projects typically come with impossibly large resources. The challenge with DrownedOut is to find how we can deliver that same level of polish without any of that budget — and the feedback we received from the 1:1 experience was incredibly validating.

NP: What can fans who are coming to this, or thinking about coming to this, do to get into the mood of the experience?

JM: To help set the mood and appease the spirits we encourage everyone to arrive in their best Hollywood vintage look. We recommend bringing your friends, this is not an experience you want to venture into alone!

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