Review Rundown: The One With Dinner, AI Art, and Baby Yoda

This week finds the crew in London, Seattle, and a galaxy far, far away. Okay. Okay. Anaheim. We were in Anaheim.

Want more from the Review Crew? Last week’s rundown is here.

Are you a creator who looks upon these reviews with jealousy? Okay, the positive ones, at least? Then you might want to check out our How To Get Covered By NoPro guide.

Don’t miss a thing by signing up for the NoPro Newsletter, and you can support our efforts by joining our Patreon.

Down the Rabbit Hole — Café Nordo
$95.00-$110.00; Seattle, WA; Through Aug. 13

Down a basement staircase in Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square neighborhood takes you Down the Rabbit Hole, Café Nordo’s self-described “Karaoke Cabaret of Nonsense.”

My friend and I arrive separately, but easily find each other at our table, thanks to the White Rabbit who is already the star of the show. Drinks arrive while others filter in to take their tables in the dining room. Some participants even arrive dressed for the show.

After most folks are settled in with a drink, the show kicks off. The first course and the point of contention? Very delicious tarts. As the plot moves forward, two side rooms are briefly explored with creative food plating presentations like hanging salads. These mini-immersive art installations are creative and instagrammable. The majority of the show is spent table-side, watching Alice and the Queen of Hearts’s drama play out around the main room.

The central core of Down The Rabbit Hole is karaoke. A television screen behind the stage acts as the karaoke screen to encourage us all to sing along with the cast (it works). Familiar songs are mixed in with others more specific to the storyline itself. It’s not quite a musical, but it’s not quite karaoke either (well, until the very end).

My initial reaction to this show was that it felt more dinner theatre (the food is good!) than immersive theatre. While I think that sentiment may hold true for some, the chaotic nature seems to be exactly the point. Lewis Carroll’s original world was seemingly strange, disjointed, time-bending (the show’s runtime is nearly 3 hours) and a part of this world, not apart from it. Café Nordo calls back to those nuances and similar to the Cheshire Cat and it’s ever so curious grin, I can’t quite pin it down.

— Rachel Stoll, Seattle Correspondent

The Evolution of Ent-: QX — Libby Heaney, arebyte Gallery
Free; London, UK; Through Aug. 20

Entering the gallery, a screen declares “WE ARE ACCELERATING THE FUTURE OF QUANTUM TOGETHER.” While I prepare myself for a productive evening, I ignore tentacles extending around the walls.

Previous to The Evolution of Ent, I have encountered accounts such as This Person Doesn’t Exist on social media, an artificial intelligence attempting to create new human faces. Yet, the AI never quite gets it right, adding a worrying angle to the mouth or voids instead of a nose. Libby Heaney’s work in the arebyte Gallery on London City Island gives that impression of a computer trying to present art but making something uncanny.

Get No Proscenium’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

SubscribeSubscribe

Wearing shoe covers to enter the painted white box that is “Ent,” I sit on the floor of a 360 degree projection hearing synthesised music and a whispering voice telling me to “ent-er.”

Heaney, who holds a PhD in Quantum Information Science from the University of Leeds, used self-written quantum code to animate her paintings, referencing Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. Bizarre, bulging towers twist and crumble while beneath the water a pixelated octopus-like creature explodes and reforms.

Exiting the far side of the box (with making sure you avoid falling when removing the shoe covers) there is a final video. While sitting on the floor, wearing headphones, and resting against soft tentacles, a slick marketing video plays containing buzz words, footage of computers and a voice stating “experiences are portals to other dimensions.” This is tempered by the intrusion of tentacles and footage of the Quantum computer being filled with a viscous, oozing substance.

While there are no interactive opportunities and not much in the way of narrative, aside from the feeling of corrupted technology, if you have half an hour the visuals are delightfully disturbing and visually impressive.

— Thomas Jancis, London Correspondent

The Mandalorian Experience — Star Wars Celebration
Included in Celebration tickets: $75/day; $195, 4-Day
Anaheim, CA — Run Concluded

On Thursday morning of Star Wars Celebration guests in attendance were surprised by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, the creators of The Mandalorian, with an offer to go check out a collection of props and set pieces from the two seasons of the show (and one season of The Book of Boba Fett) that had been brought down from the Manhattan Beach studios where the shows are filmed to the Anaheim Convention Center.

Having been to a few of these kinds of prop & costume showings in convention centers and museums alike for everything from Star Wars to Stanley Kubrick I figured it would be kinda neat at best.

Dear Reader, it was far more than that. Not only did they pull out just about every significant prop and costume from the show — including the full sized N-1 starfighter — the producers of this one rigged up a few animatronic surprises including Grogu waving to us from the bubble of said starfighter and a fully rigged up Bantha in the Tusken Raider display.

Moreover the layout of the whole thing was thought through brilliantly. A couple of switchbacks gave the impression that the whole deal was going to be a series of themed corridors with a few key photo ops, only to give way to a large central room that featured enough material to last a couple of hours of close scrutiny.

There’s a real art to museum and gallery design, a language of spatial storytelling that is a foundational pillar of the immersive arts. A mastery of that art was well on display here. So it comes as no surprise that Mycotoo, also tapped as developers on the Stranger Things Experience, were on the credits for this as well.

So why mention it here? Because as far as we’re concerned this is the new standard. Hit this mark of showmanship and placemaking in your fan expo experiences or don’t even bother.

And here I thought I was getting away from the day job over the holiday weekend…

— Noah Nelson, Publisher & Podcast Host

Discover the latest immersive events, festivals, workshops, and more at our new site EVERYTHING IMMERSIVE, new home of NoPro’s show listings.

NoPro is a labor of love made possible by our generous Patreon backers. Join them today!

In addition to the No Proscenium website, our podcast, and our newsletters, you can find NoPro on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, in the Facebook community Everything Immersive, and on our Discord.