Immersive Review Rundown: Home Is Where The Art Is
NYC, Toronto, Chicago, and London all represent this week (FIVE REVIEWS)


Now this is what we love to see: theatre, games, and installations — and projects that blur the distinction between them — all over our coverage map.
This week the Crew reports in from NYC, Toronto, Chicago, and London bringing a mix that you won’t find anywhere but No Proscenium.
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Abetare — Petrit Halilaj at The Met: The Roof Garden Commission
Free; New York, NY; Through October 27
In the site-specific installation, Abetare, commissioned for The Met’s Roof Garden, artist Petrit Halilaj recreated a series of children’s doodles as three-dimensional metal sculptures.
The drawings — copied from old school desks in Albania and countries formerly part of Yugoslavia — activate the New York City skyline in larger-than-life representations of the children’s imaginations and preoccupations. Batman hangs upside down from beams. Birds nestle under a security camera. A giant spider looms over Midtown.
(If this doesn’t sound like your childhood desk, rest assured: there are cruder doodles, too.)
Street art, while slightly different, is a helpful medium to think through this installation: Both street art and children’s desk drawings were originally created on nontraditional canvases; both feature a mix of words and icons; and both showcase art in places where art may not always be formally welcomed.
Unlike desk doodles and street art, however, Halilaj’s pieces aren’t flat. There’s dimension to both individual works and to the collection at large, scattered throughout the rooftop. Guests can walk through and around these doodles, offering alternative perspectives and revealing hidden easter eggs depending on where they stand.
From one angle a flower blooms over Central Park, and from another into a piercing blue sky.
It’s playful, ambitious, and part of a long tradition empowering audience members to use perspective to curate their experiences — trompe l’oeil paintings of the Renaissance also explored how a viewer’s position in a space could affect what they see and how they comprehend an artwork.
But Halilaj seems less concerned that guests find the exact spot to unlock the perfect illusionary perspective. After all, doodles, by definition, aren’t precise. In Abetare, every angle unlocks an interesting image or audience experience, activating the city wherever you stand.
There’s something really tender about bringing a children’s imagination to life this way. Only at this scale can the drawings capture the true imaginative power that they seem to hold in the original young artists’ minds. And by seeing them suspended over one of the biggest cities in the world at one of the greatest art museums in the world, Halilaj has enabled all of us to explore their imaginations, too.
— Alec Zbornak, NYC Art Correspondent

Hiker Trash — Linked Dance Theatre
$70; New York City; Through August 29
What do you do when you’re lost? You find a map. So too did Linked Dance’s Marianne in their thoughtful new piece Hiker Trash. The story, revealed pre-show by an in-character blog, is that Marianne is an Appalachian Trail through-hiker from Brooklyn. She’s come home to pick up a care package from her mom, and she’s invited her loyal blog readers to meet up for a chat.
Hiker Trash mixes interactive conversation and solo dance in a discussion of what to try when you don’t know what to do or where to go. If you saw Linked’s excellent Winter’s Walk, this will sound familiar. Indeed, it’s a very similar conceit. Granted, Hiker Trash and Winter’s Walk are not the same show. For example, Marianne sings quite a bit, which is a delightful addition. Maya Gonzalez is a captivating performer, and she shines as Marianne.
Hiker Trash is performed at Outlandish in Brooklyn, an outdoor gear store. This was a brilliant decision, as it blurs the line between the real world and the show’s narrative in a wonderful way. The show bounces back and forth between the solo performances and genuine discussion. The dance and musical pieces are beautiful, enhanced by some subtle prop design I won’t spoil. Linked is so good at mixing reality and artifice to create a dreamy beauty.
The show’s discussion component is worth some more, well, discussion. Immersive theatre is when the audience is asked to play pretend too. Most immersive shows do not require very much pretending. This one requires more — Marianne actually wants to hear your thoughts, and the show doesn’t feel like it can proceed without them.
The discussion feels risky in a way that Winter’s Walk didn’t. That was a one-on-one discussion, and in a four-on-one conversation the risk of the audience feeling self-conscious or not buying in increases dramatically. The performance I saw worked very well in this respect, but I’m curious if that’s the norm. I also wonder how much our answers to her questions changed the show.
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A map can show lots of roads to a destination. The last year of works by Linked Dance all feel like they, and by extension we, are tracing those roads around the feeling of being stuck: physically, philosophically, and artistically. It’s appropriate for the 10th anniversary that Linked is celebrating, and I can’t wait to go down the trail with them.
— Penelope Ray, NYC Correspondent
The Masterclass — A.C.T. Productions
$22.63 CAD; Toronto, Canada; Run Concluded
In The Masterclass, Nathan Bridgets (Kyle Claeys), “renowned” Canadian actor, producer, director, theatre practitioner and author of the best-selling novel “An Actor Does NOT Prepare”, invites the audience to his studio for a unique acting class. The setting is intimate — a small room with around two dozen chairs set up in a semi-circle. An immobile Bridgets is sprawled dramatically on the ground, emerging only once we’re seated in place.
Is this an immersive show, or just an especially weird masterclass? A short disclaimer at the bottom of the event description reveals it as a satirical character piece, but it’s easy to miss it at first read-through — I had to double-check to make sure what I signed up for was actually a theatre piece. Given how silly some of the norms are in an actual masterclass, the lines quickly blur as we engage in a bizarre physical warm-up involving making imaginary soup, and a tongue twister that feels more like an extended Freudian slip.
Like any genuine masterclass, the performance is inherently participatory, though our teacher has the uncanny ability to make everything about himself. Whether we’re learning the nuances of Shakespearean iambic pentameter, or doing a dramatic recitation — of Bridgets’ original autobiographical screenplay, of course — like any properly self-absorbed thespian, Bridgets finds a way to constantly recenter the experience around himself. Stephanie (M Fera), his talented but unappreciated little sister, serves as a foil to the megalomania. She adds an additional layer of humor to the situation, as she multi-tasks her way through her brother’s chaos as the show’s graphic designer, assistant, PR rep, and host, especially as her efforts go largely unnoticed.
As the workshop comes to an end, Bridgets is once again crumpled in a heap on the floor and Stephanie encourages us to sign up for his ongoing acting workshop — a “reasonable” $6000 investment per session. The overall experience is charmingly uncomfortable, and Kyle Claeys’ and M Fera’s dedication to their characters is such that, I hesitate before adding my name to the sign up sheet. I’m still a little nervous about receiving an actual $6k invoice.
— Katrina Lat, Toronto Curator

The Peculiar Portal — Hidden Wonders Immersive
PWYC — $60; Chicago, IL; Through Sept. 1st
In their debut experience, Hidden Wonders Immersive’s The Peculiar Portal is a hybrid escape game and storyworld narrative experience. Audiences attend the closing of The Peculiar Portal, a family-owned antique shop located on Chicago’s Northside. Yet Elias, the owner’s son, doesn’t want to close because of the shop’s connection to his long-missing sister, Sarah. As Elias hypothesizes Sarah might be living in her childhood imagined land, the audience finds themselves on a mystical quest to find her.
Without a doubt, the first half of Peculiar Portal is a charmingly inventive experience with well-designed puzzles and poignant themes on imagination and family. The initial puzzles are original and rooted within the experience’s narrative. Piecing together clues to create a portal to Sarah’s imagined land is legitimately magical. I was giddy with excitement as my group walked through the portal, my imagination running wild in ways it hasn’t since childhood. Furthermore, Peculiar Portal’s initial character interactions and puzzles symbolize the importance of compassion and connection. These elements are a wonderful reminder of how time and distance are no match against hearts and minds.
Additionally fueling the experience is its delightful cast. In particular, Lilly Bolduc as Sarah and Nikos Konstans as Cornflake, her imaginary friend, are incredibly witty and utterly endearing. Also a big shout out to the crew as I truly believed I’d wandered into an actual antique shop with Sarah’s imagined land being a perfect encapsulation of a child’s crayon drawings come to life.
Unfortunately, the second half of this experience is not as captivating. The puzzle design slides into creating busywork. There are two padlock puzzles, one of which is in Sarah’s imagined land that feels incredibly out of place. There’s also a “puzzle” where my group arranges a seating chart for a party. But the information of who is to sit where is told to us directly, essentially spelling out the solution step-by-step.
Furthermore, the dramatic themes fall to the wayside. The second half is about keeping Sarah happy but without addressing why she left home and if she wants to return. And when briefly returning to the antique shop, Elias is nowhere to be found with our time spent on another puzzle. There’s less to sustain audiences emotionally or dramatically, so when the finale occurs there’s no forward momentum, making it lackluster. For my group, Peculiar Portal’s ultimate resolution had no noteworthy change in circumstance with no substantial character growth occurring. In an experience whose beginning messaging is about the importance of family and imagination, I was saddened to see those elements not prominently featured in the finale.
With a dramatically slower second half filled with busywork, The Peculiar Portal’s playful passion and thoughtful messaging sadly becomes overshadowed. Hopefully Hidden Wonders Immersive notes the lessons learned as I look forward to what boldly magical experience they come up with next.
– Patrick B. McLean, Chicago Curator & Remote Experiences Editor

Rooms Through Time — Museum of the Home
Free; London UK; ongoing
In the largest major development to the Museum of the Home since 1998, the Rooms Through Time exhibit now boasts 6 entirely redesigned spaces, and they are absolutely gorgeous.
The Museum of the Home is an oft-overlooked gem of a collection, passed over by tourists for prioritized targets like the British Museum and the V&A. But those with more time to spare and the desire to wander the halls of British life find the museum to be a welcoming and cozy space, typically free of crowds and painstakingly detailed in its mission of placing visitors within the intimate context of home life throughout time. Spanning 12 instances from the years 1640 to 2049, visitors can step directly into rooms which showcase a wide scope of living arrangements as if the tenants had only just stepped out.
I’m a sucker for good scenic design and have held a keen reverence for the museum since I first relished the lived-in quality of the dining halls and parlors of days gone past. But these new rooms practically throw emotional whiplash as soon as we cross the thresholds of each space: the 1913 tenement isn’t too far removed from current-day bedsits, the 2005 flat sports a boxy computer running Internet Explorer that throws a few other visitors into long-dormant verbal invectives at the sound of the dial-up modem. Even the visionary 2049 apartment with its theories of mushroom-based heat/sound insulation and affordable protein-block instant meals feels a little too close to the bone.
These new rooms are so detailed (down to the ingredient-overloaded shelves of the 2024 Vietnamese kitchen) that it’s easy to forget you’re not attending a real open house, particularly when each display has multiple please-touch points to further ground visitors in the space. From a Victorian parlor armchair inviting guests to sit and page through a fabric pattern-book, to a window-box in a garden with “plantable” vegetables, to seats at the Shabbos dinner table, every room has made a place for visitors to participate in one of the little rituals of the house.
Rooms Through Time continues to be a beautifully executed example of immersive/experiential art, permanently installed in an industry which often needs to prioritize turnover for income. Let’s just cross our fingers that we won’t need to wait another 26 years for an update, lest the futuristic apartment prove itself wrong (or perhaps worse, right)…
— Shelley Snyder, London Curator
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