NoPro’s Best Immersive Experiences of 2022 (Lists + Podcast)

2022 has been a fascinating year for immersive experiences of all shapes, sizes, and mediums.

No one list could possibly definitely declare what was the BEST, not when there’s a world of possibilities and no two individuals paths through the immersive world will lead to the same pool of experiences.

Which is why instead of making an editorially driven BEST OF list, we ask the members of our Review Crew to list their picks — up to three each — of their top shows & experiences of the year. You’ll find live theatre, puzzle boxes, installation art, and even video games in the collection below.

That said, you’ll find a few things popping up more than once. Draw your own conclusions.

We also ask the team to tell us of their top moment of the year, and that’s right here in this article.

There’s also the PODCAST FORM of both, and you can listen to that right here, right now.

Be warned: some spoilers lie ahead.

Oh, and if you want to participate the fundraising auction for The Telelibrary tickets that we mention on the pod, you can learn more here.

Shelley Snyder — London Curator

The Burnt City — Punchdrunk

It doesn’t seem fair to be asked to judge “Best Show for 2022” in a roster that includes Punchdrunk’s new offering to the gods of immersive. Words about scale, scope, artistry, is like writing about the pyramids at Giza or the Northern Lights: reading about it won’t ever suffice, you have to see it in person, once in your lifetime, to know it properly.

Like Sleep No More or Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station, it is a production which justifies a rating akin to Michelin’s third star: something worthy of traveling internationally to see, and those lucky enough to be based near London now have the opportunity to dip in for day tickets.

Imagine that: a day ticket, to the mythic realm.

Doctor Who: Time Fracture — Immersive Everywhere & BBC Studios

In the interests of fairness, let’s set certain international immersive production companies to one side and take into account the plethora of high-quality productions opened every year in London. Time Fracture is a show that grabbed onto the scene with both hands (and two hearts) and ran away with it, sweeping us into the world of Doctor Who in a giddy waterfall of immersive and interactive delights.

I genuinely can’t recall having so much outright fun at a show, and it’s heartbreaking that the production has come to a close. Fingers, phalanges, and feelers crossed that somewhere in space and time it comes back for us.

Hear Shelley at 6:42 on the pod.

Kevin Gossett — LA Reviews Editor

40 Watts from Nowhere — Mister & Mischief

This “immersive documentary” had a ton of buzz coming out of Without Walls this year, so I was pumped when it made its way to LA last month. 40 Watts from Nowhere is a whole lot of things, but most of all, it’s a fun, joyous look at Sue Carpenter’s time running the pirate radio station KBLT. There’s a playful air to the whole experience, similar to Mister & Mischief’s previous work with Escape from Godot, but also completely different, that feels like a defining characteristic of the pair’s work.

On top of that, this really does feel like something new in immersive theatre in how it captures the essence of a real person’s experiences, and then uses the language and style of immersive theatre to transport the audience into those experiences.

Dragon Show: The Extended Tail — Spy Brunch

Like 40 Watts, Dragon Show: The Extended Tail is wrapped around a sense of joy. It feels like a fairy tale with dragons, fairies, singing, and whimsy, but never leans so hard into those ideas that the joy feels forced. The fact that there’s an undercurrent of darkness to the show also helps to balance it out and allows for some proper catharsis by the end.

Dragon Show is one of those ones that I gravitate towards because it feels so thoughtfully considered, from story to set design to characters (and their portrayals) to how it incorporates immersive elements. In another weird year, this one made me feel good, and I still feel good when I think about it.

The Light in the Mist — PostCurious

The Light in the Mist is so damn cool. It’s a puzzle game in a box, that is definitely not an escape room in a box. Using a gorgeous deck of Tarot cards (with both the Major and Minor Arcana), you have to search for your friend by solving puzzles spread throughout the deck. The main puzzles are part of the Major Arcana, while Minor Arcana cards are cleverly used in multiple puzzles.

As with Dragon Show, there’s a thoughtfulness to how people might experience this. The Tarot deck, the puzzles, and the story elements all carefully play off each other to surface specific feelings based on what’s happening and what you’re learning about your friend. Ever since playing The Light in the Mist in the middle of the year, the careful construction and how well it all works together is something I’ve been thinking about since.

Hear Kevin at 19:06 on the pod.

Patrick B. McLean, Chicago Curator

House of the Exquisite Corpse ’22, Rough House Theater Co.

While a Spooky Season staple, consistently offering delightfully horrific puppetry, this year’s House of the Exquisite Corpse was a game changer. With moving out of the compact basement and into the massive mainstage space at the Chopin Theatre, the additional room allowed the work featured to grow in size and scale. Several pieces utilized depth in a stunning manner, the puppet terrors slowly lurching through shadows, stalking the audience from a far.

Exquisite Corpse is actually an anthology, featuring several different performances, typically each five minutes in length. For this year, several performances “broke the mold,” featuring or exclusively relying on shadow work. One piece in particular used miniatures, projecting captivating and massive imagery against a wall with amazing fluidity. While Exquisite Corpse has always included different forms of puppetry, this year I found myself spending less time comparing performance, as if they were in competition with one another, greatly enjoying all of the work as a whole.

Additionally, last year had the audience peering through peepholes in walls separating the audience and performers during each experience. This time around, several pieces exercised wonderful dramatic license in their wall’s design and functionality. My favorite was a fantastic piece that made the wall appear to be a forest, the audience seemingly watching the experience through the tree trunks.

So, yet again, Spooky Season can’t come around fast enough, as I left desperately waiting and wanting to see more Rough House Theater Co. and their magnificent puppets experiences.

Lonely Hearts: Special Delivery, Birch House Immersive

During the darkest, coldest month, at the height of Chicago’s brutal winters, nothing warms the soul like Birch House Immersive’s yearly experience exploring all facets of love during the Valentine’s Day season. In previous years, Lonely Hearts is an on-rail experience guiding small audience groups through richly deep one-on-one character interactions. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been caught flat footed by a character’s intensely poignant question that leaves me thoughtfully pondering it for days.

While featuring a robust at-home box component in their remote Zoom experience during the height of the pandemic, Birch House this year elected to do a multiple box, self-guided at-home experience. I feared my beloved character questions would be watered down, or worse, lost completely, in shifting between mediums. But not only was I thankfully proven wrong, I was shocked and surprised by the immense depth to the questions I found laced within each package. These questions were changeling, and without anyone else to discuss them with, I was forced to push myself further, to look deeper inside myself, to find any “answers.”

Additionally, the level of quality and detail crafted to every piece of ephemera was amazing. It truly felt as if each package of personal items was one of a kind, being the only verison in existence.

Without having any live performance element, Lonely Hearts: Special Delivery proved to be equally, if not even more at times, moving and engaging as any previous installment.

The Light in the Mist, PostCurious

By now chances are you’ve interacted with an at-home escape room or mystery box package. And regardless of creator or company along with the limitations of the medium, speaking (incredibly) generally the formula of what’s in and how these packages are used is (fairly) standard: you open a box to spend one to four hours sifting through documents that contain clues and puzzles, with going to a website or app to enter solutions.

But within moments of opening The Light in the Mist, I knew it was something completely different and wonderfully original. Basically, all that’s inside the box is a compact booklet and fully functional tarot deck. In the first few pages of the booklet, which also provides worldbuilding and plot details, are the instructions that the Major Arcana cards house a puzzle as certain Minor Arcana cards will help solve said puzzle. Yet there’s an incredibly important and liberating instruction that other than two specific cards, players are welcome to explore the deck in any order.

In the plethora of at-home packages I’ve done, I’ve never encountered one that allows such tremendous agency. I allowed fate to guide me, randomly pulling Major Arcana cards, and wasn’t disappointed. And with keeping the Major Arcana cards facedown, everything, from the contents of the cards, what type of puzzle it was, and the piece of the larger story the solution would unlock was a delightful surprise.

While encountering some puzzle types before in other packages, by leveraging the tarot cards themselves, PostCurious put a fresh spin on these puzzles. But more importantly, several puzzles are highly unique thanks to the tarot cards being the content’s delivery method. I was mesmerized by how each card was utilized, from the depth of detail to each’s multi-usage functionality. Additionally, the robust detailed hint system should be considered the gold standard.

Just when I suspected the medium of at-home packages couldn’t be pushed any further, The Light in the Mist came along to show what heights the medium can still reach.

Hear Patrick at 51:42 on the pod.

Danielle Look, Denver Correspondent

From On High, Odd Knock Productions

“This is what immersive should be.”

That was how I described From On High when I hit all my social channels the day after I saw it for the first time. Before its seven week run concluded earlier this summer, I would see it two more times and still not have the opportunity to consume all of the content offered up on this immersive smorgasbord of a show.

From On High not only made guests a part of the show in amazingly authentic ways, but also gave them full agency over what they saw. As I noted in my recap, “Sequences do not loop, but press onward through the ever evolving fictional week. It’s the old trope about choosing your own adventure… except you actually get to do that.”

Choosing your own adventure is especially fun when your choices pay off. In From On High, there was so much going on everywhere all at once, just about every choice I made resulted in that magical feeling of experiencing something private and exclusive. The audience came together in the beginning, middle, and end, but we were otherwise scattered with actors throughout the set for the duration of the performance.

The design and format worked brilliantly and formed the backbone of the production, but it was the breathtaking set design and flawless acting that really brought the place to life. In my recap, I also credited a lengthy and layered onboarding sequence, as well as an uncomplicated narrative, that helped me make a successful transition into this strange, new world.

From On High is the only show I’ve ever seen with true rewatchability, and I’ve never felt more naturally intertwined with a set and its characters. It was easily the best thing I saw in 2022.

Salt Mother — Leah Cardenas (Director) & Monte D. Monteleagre (Writer)

A $10 ticket to this unique show (part of the 2022 Denver Fringe Festival) bought attendees a 15-minute experience built for an audience of one. As I detailed in my recap in June, a lot happens in just a quarter of an hour, but the room’s six actor’s still managed to take me on a roller coaster of feelings in that short amount of time.

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What was so fascinating and impressive about this show was the way it allowed me to experience — for a brief, fleeting moment — how easy it can be to get swept away by age-old tactics of cult mind control like love-bombing, pressure to conform, promised rewards, and phobia indoctrination. It was a shockingly simple, yet artfully dramatic, performance that allowed the characters to quickly develop a relationship with me, then leverage influence over me in subtle but effective ways.

Maybe all that was in my head, or maybe it wasn’t. But the Salt Mother did come, and she was beautiful and intoxicating. But then my one-time trip to this bizarre support group was over and I was shooed away, leaving me forever wondering if that was the night I almost unknowingly joined a cult.

Hear Danielle at 59:56 on the pod.

Blake Weil, East Coast Curator at Large

The Burnt City — Punchdrunk

Frankly, The Burnt City comes to this list with an unfair advantage. A Greek mythology obsessive since my wee years, and a long time lover of cyberpunk, I came into this show primed to adore it. Still, it somehow managed to exceed my expectations.

However much thought I’ve given Sleep No More, and however much I’ve previously recommended and praised it, I have to acknowledge its ultimate frivolity. Sleep No More is a mystery thriller. Its thematics are not what anyone leaves it discussing. The Burnt City keeps the fun, agency, and mystery, and adds to it a series of moving takes on history, conflict, legacy, and love. There’s a profound melancholy to the piece; like any of Punchdrunk’s looping shows, there’s a sense of being trapped, but now many characters act as if they deserve it.

The joyous highs are quite high though. The cyberpunk sets, delirious, giddy villain tracks, and spectacular dance numbers are as satisfying as ever. The sets feel more detailed to me, too, allowing for a grander sense of world-building.

Still, I left Troy with a melancholy smile. I know the story will continue, even without me, looping onward. I know it’s all our obsession that will keep it looping, and I thank the gods for that.

Chatterton Cabinet of Curiosities — Sands Point Preserve Conservancy

This year’s absurdly fun show for the list has to be Chatterton Cabinet of Curiosities. A show that feels equal parts Mountain Dew and caviar, Chatterton’s Lynchian kiddie-ride is a delight from minute one.

The show manages to shock and titillate at every turn. It feels like the full realization of the Grand Guignol aesthetics so much immersive horror promises. Typically, either comedy or horror takes precedence, but the constant discomfort, occasional eruptions of violence, and bizarre, incestuous family mystery kept the whole evening a tight, consistent package.

Special highlight has to go to the end of the show, which somehow makes a live vivisection feel inevitable yet shocking, clinical yet occult. These are the tightropes of madness the team at Sands Point Conservancy manage to walk year after year, that keep me coming back.

Undersigned — Yannick Trapman-O’Brien

Yannick Trapman-O’Brien is a genius at making economics viscerally engaging. What is normally a dry, miserable subject best left to long-forgotten General Ed requirements becomes an emotional rollercoaster of anger, desperation, and horror.

Much of Trampan-O’Brien’s work explores what it means to be a person living in a competitive economic system. What elevates Undersigned though is the literary theatricality that finally liberates his work from the didacticism that occasionally mars his writing.

Exploring the theme of a Faustian bargain, the show itself is deeply emotional, where you feel each consideration of power and pleasure sharply as it’s brought to mind. The ritual design is also superb, the show peppered with elegant misdirections. Where the show really shines is afterwards though. No matter how much you regret the slice of your soul you sold, you have to consider; have I ever gotten a better deal under capitalism?

Hear Blake Weil 1:10:25 on the pod.

Laura Hess, Arts Editor

A Forest for the Trees — Glenn Kaino (with The Atlantic, Superblue, and Mastercard)

Helmed by artist Glenn Kaino and buttressed by “a conspiracy of support” (as described by Kaino), A Forest for the Trees was a singular collaboration by The Atlantic, Superblue, and Mastercard. The production was a fusion of culture, science, and advocacy by way of embodied, immersive storytelling. Social impact was baked into its DNA from its inception and Kaino rooted the project’s development in ethical, inclusive, and sustainable practices.

It’s a superb example of holistic immersive and sets a new bar for experiential productions. Most specifically, it serves a beacon for museum exhibitions where there is often a “membrane” that separates audiences from the art. That separation can generate a sensation of being “talked at.” A Forest for the Trees fostered genuine conversation by bringing audiences into the story. It was dynamic, visceral, and created emotional connection.

Stranger Things: The Experience — Netflix & Fever

David Copperfield has competition.

No, it’s not a new Vegas residency by an upcoming illusionist. This is about Stranger Things: The Experience and the production’s exceptional hybrid design. Combining best-in-class methodologies from theme parks, immersive theatre, and escape rooms, the integration is so seamless and cohesive that the production’s framework disappears and audiences are left in a wondrous, Hawkins-infused miasma.

The experience is two parts: an initial, secret “sleep study” inside the Hawkins Lab that drops audiences into the narrative heart of Stranger Things. Following that is an open exploration of the show’s universe. The production team delivers on scalable personalization, audience engagement that feels amplified, expert show flow, and sleek interplay between pre-recorded performances, live actors, and participants.

If you’ve not yet read the full review by Leah Davis, journey into the Upside Down and don’t miss Stranger Things: The Experience in your city (currently in Los Angeles, London, and Atlanta).

40 Watts from Nowhere — Mister & Mischief

There’s a different quality, a kind of tactile resonance, to being immersed in a story that’s rooted in truth. Described as “part memoir and part playable theatre,” 40 Watts From Nowhere is the true story of Sue Carpenter, a pirate radio DJ. In 1995 she started KBLT, a music station she ran from her closet in Los Angeles. Nonfiction narratives that center audiences are less common than their fictionalized counterparts. Rarely are audiences afforded the opportunity to step into a person’s shoes like Andy and Jeff Crocker (the wildly creative duo Mister & Mischief) have done with Sue Carpenter. 40 Watts From Nowhere is electric, powerful, and utterly joyful.

A special mention to I Agree To The Terms, by The Builders Association and in collaboration with a community of Amazon’s MTurk workers (presented by NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts). This was another live and interactive docu-immersive production, but produced online. Outstanding remote work is not to be forgotten in our “Best Of” recaps for 2022.

Hear Laura at 1:20:49 on the pod.

Leah Davis, Senior Editor/New England Correspondent

The Burnt City — Punchdrunk

After two years of innovation on the remote immersive front, we’re finally seeing a return to in-person experiences across the board. A few gems remain in play — I’m thinking of The Telelibrary, Candle House Collective’s Lennox Mutual, and a handful of smaller one-off productions — but many of the standout pieces we saw grow out of the wreckage of 2020 have faded away or transitioned into hybrid or wholly-offline experiences. Honestly? I’m grieving. I miss being able to plug into a vibrant worldwide community of immersive seekers. But change brings opportunity, and 2022 brought us one of the most highly anticipated immersive events of the decade: Punchdrunk’s London-based future-noir retelling of the fall of Troy, The Burnt City.

This would be my pick for show of the year based on scenic design alone. The spaces are simultaneously fully realized and impressionistically suggestive. You can peel back the surface of each room; the details hold up. Unfocus your eyes and another layer of meaning takes over; light and sound paint emotional pictures on empty spaces, leading you further down another hallway, behind another parachute, up a set of wrought-iron stairs. The space is a story unto itself! This is a show that could be complete without a single actor, and yet…

I’m not calling The Burnt City show of the year just because it’s beautifully built. The cast and crew bring Troy and Mycenae to life every time the record starts to spin, and while the characters remain the same, different combination of swing players (actors who take on one of a few different parts depending on the night) change the show’s chemical makeup daily. Fred Gehrig’s Kampe is viscerally sad, daring the audience to pity their faded power. Miranda Mac Letten’s Watchman has a sly smile that belies her dogged adherence to duty. Come back another night and Kampe is the acerbic Fania Grigoriou; the Watchman a tired young Ferghas Clavey. This mixing and matching is a signature move for Punchdrunk — one that keeps fans coming back over and over, ready to live in a world where the end is always predictable and the journey remains a beautiful mystery.

Personally, I love The Burnt City because it does two things that I find extremely satisfying in immersive: it builds a fully-realized world (complete with new cultural norms and expectations) and it allows me — me, specifically — to exist. The audience is not held apart from the universe of a Punchdrunk show. Our eyes shape the story because players have autonomy to react to our presence within the confines of their loop and, when we are very lucky, we become seen as well. I don’t mean to sound mystical, but The Burnt City is a spiritual experience. It asks us to be present; to witness. It honors the audience as much as it honors the story and the actors and the space. That’s something I’m glad to see taking center stage in 2022.

Hear Leah at 1:28:28 on the pod.

Noah Nelson, Publisher and Host

Particle Ink: Speed of Dark — The LightPoets, presented by Kaleidoco

Every so often immersive work can make you believe in the impossible. Even if it’s only for a moment.

That’s what happened for me at the north end of Las Vegas’s Arts District with Particle Ink’s incredible amalgamation of performance and technology. Inside a warehouse filled with shipping containers and DIY aesthetic sets some of the most skilled cirque performers in the world did close up work in tandem with animated characters who were projected into their performances.

The seamless interplay between the two, a feat carried off by the performers, made it possible to lose oneself in the “2.5D” mythology the LightPoets had crafted.

While the show has closed in Vegas after a six month run, it’s my fondest wish that Paritcle Ink’s light will shine again.

Immortality — Half Mermaid

Video game impresario Sam Barlow has been resurrecting the Full Motion Video game format for years now, but Immortality just might be his masterpiece.

The game asks the simple question “Whatever happened to Marissa Marcel?” With just that as the prompt, and a novel user interface that puts you into the role of a video editor turned sleuth diving through the footage of three unreleased movies made decades apart, a shocking — and shockingly complex — tale emerges.

In so many ways Immortality feels like a self contained Alternate Reality Game. While you never leave the interface, you will find the layers of the narrative and the ways in which you interact with the material transforming over time. Hidden truths reveal themselves and no two players pathways through the work is the same. Some might take hours to (REDACTED) while others might stumble upon it far sooner.

The films within the game feel like artifacts pulled from an alternate dimension, and the whole affair has a whiff of the uncanny about it. All in all, Immortality hits that fine point that all immersive work should: it spins up a world that feels plausible on its own terms and makes space for you in it, even if that space is just the one who knows all the secrets.

40 Watts from Nowhere — Mister & Mischief

The work of Jeff & Andy Crocker, the married duo who work under the name Mister & Mischief, has long been a favorite of us here at NoPro. The pair have a way of looking at the various pieces of the immersive toolbox and combining them into novel experiences.

In 40 Watts the pair create an experiential documentary that puts audience members into the role of Sue Carpenter, who really did run a pirate radio station out of her Silver Lake apartment in the 90’s.

They accomplish this by having us run the pirate station for a while, picking out songs and doing the on-air segues between them. All while a parallel track plays that unfolds the beats of the story. Of course, there’s more to it than that, but in ways where the details matter most of all.

This isn’t a show where you’re the protagonist in a narrative sense, but instead one where you’re following in the footsteps of someone as they once were. A fascinating branch of the art form that if approached properly — the pair had the active participation of Carpenter, for starters — can be a powerful tool going forward.

Hear Noah’s picks at 1:43:25 on the pod.

In addition you can hear Katrina Lat, Toronto Correspondent [23:23], and Nicholas Fortugno, New York Correspondent [36:25] discuss their moments and shows on the podcast.

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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