Everything Immersive This Week (11/09/2019)
Settling in for the season…
The post-Spooky Season chill time is here, the time of year when we traditionally take stock of what’s been accomplished and start gearing up for the new year.
For my part, we’re DEEP into planning mode on the HERE Summit, which is coming at the end of March and whose tickets will go on sale next month. More on that in the week to come.
That’s not to say there isn’t work going on. Far from it. The podcast this week puts the spotlight on LA’s Safehouse ’82, Krampus is coming back to Vegas, Club Drosselmeyer’s doors are opening up soon in Boston, and The Under Presents will soon be blurring the lines between VR and immersive theatre courtesy of the Oculus Quest.
So even as we settle in, there’s no real time to settle. Let’s catch up on Everything Immersive This Week.
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ON THE PODCAST THIS WEEK
Nick Rheinwald-Jones & Katelyn Schiller are the co-writers of Safehouse ‘82, a spy thriller that follows up on Rheinwald-Jones’ Safehouse ‘77 which featured the two as actors.
Since that show Schiller has become co-artistic director of the company Rheinwald-Jones founded, with the pair collaborating on this summer’s The Pod at the Hollywood Fringe Festival.
We talked with the co-writers on the eve of the opening of the new show, at the safe house itself in an undisclosed location in the shadow of Griffith Park.
Note: there be cursing ahead.
Plus: a note about how tickets to next year’s HERE Summit are going to work.
FROM THE WIRE: SHOWS, EVENTS, & EXPERIENCES
Boston: Club Drosselmeyer 1942
NYC: The Oddly Satisfying Spa (Remount), TRAUMNOVELLE, The Enigmatist (Remount),
Washington DC: The Arctic Refuge Experience
Orlando: Orlando’s Eve
Miami: Candytopia
Las Vegas: Krampus
San Francisco: The Arctic Refuge Experience
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REVIEWS
From No Proscenium:
‘The Raven’ Struggles to Take Flight in NYC (NoPro Notes)The collaboration between immersive creators Lance Weiler and Ava Lee Scott keeps audiences in the darknoproscenium.comLost Memories Return in ‘Relics of the Hypnotist War’ (Review)A bubble of an alternate reality pops-up in LAnoproscenium.comRecovering Haunters Have A Safe Space with ‘Afterlife Anonymous’ (Review)Addiction to haunting is a serious problem in this seriocomic one-act from LA’s Shinbonenoproscenium.comWhat’s On ‘The Other Side’ Reveals Itself As Ordinary (The NoPro Review)The “psychological seance” fails to hide the man behind the curtainnoproscenium.comSpectacle and Message Clash at ‘The Illuminati Ball’ (Review)Speakeasy Dollhouse’s swanky, sexy dinner party splices together a volatile mix of hedonism and activismnoproscenium.com
From David & Lisa Spira of Room Escape Artist:
Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire was a technological step up for THE VOID and we loved a lot of what was going on in it. We highly recommend it to Star Wars fans. The big catch with THE VOID was the price point.
The Conjuror at Q The Live Escape Experience in Loveland, CO, was an actor-enhanced escape room. We recommend this puzzle game with a theatrical bent.
STORIES
From NoProscenium.com and our Twitter feed:
Picks of the Week (11/7–11/13/19)Get yer immerse onnoproscenium.comFable Studio Shares Lessons From ‘Wolves In the Walls’ (Feature)The third chapter of the episodic VR story hits the Rift todaynoproscenium.com
From Kathryn Yu of No Proscenium:
The Verge tackles the arms race between immersive art experiences and what it means for the “experience economy.”
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“Beyond expanding into new locations, the experience ecosystem means companies are branding merch — Museum of Ice Cream sells ice cream at Target — and generally trying to get bigger and better. Meow Wolf is spending $60 million on a flagship location in Denver, along with locations in Las Vegas and Santa Fe; 29Rooms is now touring the country in cities like Los Angeles, DC, and New York; and Candytopia’s in Miami, Philadelphia, and Phoenix.”
“The one thing they can all guarantee: a relentless pursuit to conquer the experience economy. They’ll keep designing ever-bigger confetti cannons, deeper ball pits, and neon as bright as the sun in an attempt to out-experience each other. And they won’t play nice, either. They’ll poach the competition, talk a lot of smack, and raise gobs and gobs of money to further fund an escalating experience arms race. But that’s the petty drama you won’t see on Instagram.”
From David & Lisa Spira of Room Escape Artist:
In this blog post, we explore, the good, bad, and potentially dangerous ways to design crawl spaces in immersive entertainment.
From Kent Bye of the Voices of VR podcast:
I published 13 interviews on XR ethics & privacy including my 30-minute XR Ethics Manifesto talk, which synthesizes the landscape of moral dilemmas and lays out an ethical framework for experiential design. It’s fairly specific to XR, but I imagine this will have lots of overlap to all immersive designers. I’d be curious to hear any feedback for what specific considerations are missing from an immersive theater perspective given the long-term convergence with XR.
THE DISCOURSE
Discussions and posts from Everything Immersive & Twitter:
^^^Trailhead for this year’s Westworld ARX.^^^
NOW FUNDING
The Ladder: A Choice-Driven, Fully Replayable Escape Room
From the creators of Lab Rat, LA’s #1 escape room. Claw your way up the corporate ladder at a corrupt vitamin company from 1949–1999.
Zombie Bus London® — Immersive VR & Live Actor Experience
Horror, tension and dead good fun! Be the first in London to try this truly terrifying and cutting edge experience. Will you survive?
UP CLOSE Festival
Inspired by JANE JACOBS, top NYC theater artists join forces to reimagine Greenwich Village history as IMMERSIVE, all-ages storytelling
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