NoPro’s 10 Most Anticipated New Works of 2023 (Part II)

2023 has become a year of dynamic change across the immersive experience spectrum. Yet even as old favorites and ambitious projects take their final bows one thing remains constant: new, daring work that challenges our notion of what is possible is always on the horizon.

As we did at the start of the year, the NoPro Review Crew stuck our heads together and pulled together a set of experiences that we’re looking forward to arriving on our various territories this year.

Once again we’ve limited ourselves to just ten picks. Don’t fret if you don’t see what you’re excited about… but do tell us via whatever social media channel led you here. We want to hear it all.

A quick guide to this guide: we’re treating this like a travel guide, starting in the western United States and sweeping eastward all the way to London. Here’s where we’re going this time:

• Southern California
• Las Vegas
• Denver
• Dallas-Fort Worth
• Chicago
• Philadelphia
• England

To keep up to date with all you need to know about these events, or to find out what we thought about them once they’ve opened, subscribe to the No Proscenium newsletter or follow us on your social media platform of choice. To help us keep our coverage going, support the No Proscenium Patreon. As little as $2 a month makes all the difference, and with enough support we can keep access open to everyone.

Contributors: Leah Davis, Laura Hess, Danielle Look, Patrick McLean, Noah Nelson, Blake Weil. Final assembly by Noah Nelson.

See editorial disclosures at the end of the article.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Aki’s Market — Glenn Kaino at Japanese National History Museum
June 30 - Jan 28, 2024, Los Angeles

Artist Glenn Kaino’s A Forest for the Trees created quite the buzz in LA last year and his next installation is doing much the same already.

“Through a virtual reality recreation of the store and an installation of a contemporary store with the same name, Glenn Kaino: Aki’s Market is an exhibition about collective memory where the archival bleeds into the imaginary and where the most advanced technology serves the most personal past.”

Kaino excels at telling details in dynamically spatialized contexts. This recreation of his grandfather’s East Los Angeles store aims to “explore the transgenerational trauma from the World War II Japanese American incarceration experience” as Kaino pieces together family stories about the man whose name he carries, but never met, into the vision of a life interrupted and a legacy that endures.

Spooky Season Shenanigans — Various
September — Early Nov, All Around LA

Okay, this is cheating. But between Knotts Scary Farm in Buena Park, Universal Horror Nights in LA, the home haunt scene in Burbank and other ‘burbs, there really is no place like SoCal at Halloween.

Will there be big, daring, immersive theatre-infused experiences this year? Maybe! Will there be lots of inventive little pop-ups and strange one-offs to delight and disturb the haunters and the norms alike?

TRY TO STOP US.

We’ll be keeping an eye on what gets hinted at during the season’s kickoff at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach at the end of July. There’s no better place to find out just what will be sending chills up spines this fall.

LAS VEGAS

Sphere — Sphere Entertainment Group/MSG
Opens Late September, Las Vegas

Easily the most ambitious project on this list, the Madison Square Garden company has been working for years now on this brand-new venue concept in Las Vegas. Opening with a double bill of a “first-of-its-kind production” from Darren Aronofsky — Postcard from Earth — which will take advantage of the multi-sensory immersive effects capable within the sphere, and U2 — yes, THAT U2 — playing their first Vegas residency with Achtung Baby Live. What will the kings of arena shows do with the world’s most technologically advanced immersive event venue? We’re desperate to find out.

DENVER

Cabinet of Curiosities & Impossibilities — Lonnie Hanzon
Summer 2023, Marjorie Park, Denver

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The original Cabinet from Denver area artist Lonnie Hanzon was part of a group show in 2009 at the former headquarters of the Museum of Outdoor Arts (ironically in an indoor gallery). The MOA moved their HQ to Marjorie Park in Denver and closed up their indoor gallery, but the Cabinet is getting a new lease on life as a permanent outdoor installation.

Denver area artist Hanzon is a fixture of the city’s cultural landscape. Civic and seasonal installations are part of his extensive body of work, from the iconic The Evolution of the Ball sculpture to the popular Camp Christmas event. The return of the Cabinet represents the essence of Hanzon’s voice at its most whimsical and distinctly Lonnie’s.

Casa Bonita — Casa Bonita
Currently Soft Open, Lakewood

If you’re of a certain age anywhere in the United States you know Casa Bonita, at least by reputation, thanks to an early episode of South Park, which helped the show itself become popular through its audacity. If you grew up in Denver, you have memories of actually going there — some of which might revolve around legendarily bad food, save for the sopaipillas. But you didn’t come for the appetizers, you came for the indoor cliff diving show, and the “What if Disney Imagineers were left unsupervised on Tom Sawyer Island?” vibes.

But entropy comes for all things and the pandemic dealt Casa Bonita a blow… which is why its a storybook ending as South Park creators Matt Stone & Trey Parker bought Casa Bonita, renovated it, and brought in heavy hitters to run the food program. Now, locals and tourists alike are set to enjoy it all (and not regret their choices in the morning). The early buzz from the soft opening is incredible and anyone who was putting off going to Convergence Station no longer has an excuse. Denver is the destination. (And the sopaipillas are still there!)

DALLAS-FORT WORTH

Meow Wolf: The Real Unreal — Meow Wolf
Opens July 14th, Grapevine

The fourth location in Meow Wolf’s expanding multiverse of mind-twisting exhibitions hits Grapevine Mills this summer and promises to upend what locals and tourists alike think is possible. For Meow Wolf fans, heading to the newest permanent edition is a no-brainer. But what we’re most excited about is how the arrival of Santa Fe’s wayward children will do to the region. Nor are they done with their designs on Texas, with a Houston location on the horizon.

The weird cannot be contained.

CHICAGO

Port of Entry — Albany Park Theatre Project & Third Rail Projects
Fall/Winter Dates To Be Added, Chicago

Having been announced sometime ago, dates have finally been posted for Port of Entry, the massive sandbox experience from Third Rail Projects and Albany Park Theater Project set in a three-story building. While Third Rail Projects and their work is well known in the immersive community (and part of the reason why NoPro even exists!), we’re thrilled they’re working with Albany Park Theater Project. APTP actively uplifts and features youth and teen artists and the result is elevating voices and messages of social change that are not regularly featured in the arts. So not only is this a win for diversity in the immersive arts, but also for the Windy City itself.

Chicago is home to many active, yet underappreciated companies in our field. There’s never been a long-running, tentpole engagement experience to serve as a sustaining lighting rod for audiences new and old. Port of Entry is already teasing there will be performances in 2024, so hopefully this is the start of a renaissance era for immersive work in Chicago.

PHILADELPHIA

Otherworld — Otherworld
Opening TBA; Philadelphia

Coming just around the corner is Otherworld’s new Philadelphia location. For those who aren’t familiar, Otherworld produces large-scale installations that tell the story of strange worlds (think Meow Wolf, but shift the flavor from alien surrealism to cyberpunk dystopia).

While we would be excited enough just to see narrative-driven installation art expanding to the East Coast, Otherworld promises to be something spectacular. A quick hard hat tour of the space in progress shows gargantuan installations by local artists, ranging from the grotesque to the sublime. The addition of puzzle and game elements providing multiple narrative tracks, live events, and rotating exhibits feels like a promising way to keep local fans coming back again and again.

ENGLAND

Boomtown Chapter 2: The Twin Trail — Boomtown Fair
August 9–13, Winchester, Hampshire

Yes, Boomtown is a five day music festival. It also bills itself as a parallel world “that lives for just five days and nights to confront society as we know it and inspire a better reality.” What does that look like exactly? Pop-up parties, secret rooms, huge art installations and unlockable hidden experiences woven together by a narrative-driven game.

Boomtown is part of a trend in music festivals — Electric Forrest is the equivalent here in the States — that takes lessons from immersive gaming, Burning Man, and amusement parks, and whips them all together into something that has the potential to transcend those genres.

Suffice it to say, we’d love to fall through a crack in the universe and wind up there somehow. Let us know how it goes if you do.

Free Your Mind — Factory International
Oct. 13 — Nov. 5, Manchester

What it is: a mass-performance-dance-adaptation of The Matrix, produced with the blessings of Warner Bros, and designed to show off Factory International’s new space in Manchester.

“Combining hip-hop choreography with the latest immersive design, Free Your Mind will take audiences on a thrilling journey through The Matrix and into a new realm of possibilities.”

This is a massive swing and while the “mass performance” aspect of this maybe nudges it out of our wheelhouse, the “immersive design” part nudges it back in. Plus: what is The Matrix if not a giant cyberpunk dance fight sequence with shades of esoteric philosophy? Even spectacle can be elevated to the level of immersive when it scales up big enough. Is a show that “stretch(es) across the building’s ultra-flexible spaces” enough to do that?

We can hope.

Disclosures: Lonnie Hanzon is a sustaining backer of No Proscenium. Meow Wolf was a sponsor of The Next Stage Immersive Summit, a production of our parent organization. The presence of both in this article were not conditions of their sponsorships nor were they discussed in advance.

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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