COMING SOON: The Last Days of Eden Creek

Birch House Immersive has been holding the torch for immersive theatre in Chicago since before most people had any idea what immersive theatre was. In that time they’ve seven full shows and three at-home works.

With their eighth full show, The Last Days of Eden Creek, the company explores playwright Janie Killips’ creation Eden Creek, in a musical co-written by Killips and director Lauren N. Fields.

We checked in with Fields, about the new show which starts on Oct. 17th and runs through Nov. 2nd.

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NO PROSCENIUM: Tell us a little bit about your experience! What’s it about? What makes it immersive?

Lauren N. Fields: The Last Days of Eden Creek is a new immersive musical from Birch House Immersive that explores the death of a small midwestern town through the form of a eulogy. Audience members are invited to share in the exploration of grief and to celebrate the life of this beloved place and its people alongside the remaining descendants of the town’s founding families.

NP: What was the inspiration for your upcoming experience?

LF: About ten years ago, when Janie and I were writing alongside (but not yet with) each other, they created the world of Eden Creek with the prequel to this play (titled The Blood & the Pines). I had the opportunity to watch that world grow, and over the years Janie has continued to play within the bounds of our favorite fabricated midwestern hometown. As the world started to open back up after the pandemic and we started imagining our next big show, I suggested we take a stroll through Eden Creek together to see what we could find. Janie was generous enough to invite me into the world they created, and over the past two years (and several wildly different drafts) we’ve explored the next chapter of the town’s story together. The play is largely inspired by our families — Janie’s hometown, they and their family’s midwestern roots, and my experience mourning my father’s death. Stylistically the show is heavily influenced by folk music and memory plays — from Bon Iver to Our Town and Noah Gunderson to A Christmas Carol (the Muppet version of course).

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

LF: Music has always been an important element in our experiences, and that has only become more true since we’ve started experimenting with immersive musicals. In approaching this process a question we regularly returned to was “how do we immerse with music”? The result is that we have found some very fun and engaging ways to bring the audience into the music that I hope will surprise and delight them. This play also explores the shared human experience of grief, and throughout the experience we invite the audience to directly share in our mourning as well as our joy.

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

LF: Because Immersive is so rife with opportunity for detail and discovery it sometimes feels like we have to take a maximalist approach to creating our worlds. However, what we’ve found with Eden Creek is that we are able to get at the heart of this world best through simplicity. Of all the worlds Birch House has created, Eden Creek definitely feels the closest to the real one we all inhabit and therefore the most easily accessible, but we’ve still found opportunities within it for magic and transformation.

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

LF: Those of us in the northern hemisphere are entering the dark time of year, a time in which we remember those we’ve lost and consider what lies ahead. Bring those reflections into Eden Creek. We want to explore them with you. Come to the experience dressed for a funeral, but prepared for a party.

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