The 2020 NoPro Awards
Episode 277 of the Podcast
Welcome to “The Immies.”
The first-ever No Proscenium awards for Outstanding Achievements in Immersive & Experiential Production are hereby unleashed upon the world.
This episode features both our juried awards and the Audience Choice Awards, as presented by members of the NoPro editorial board and staff: Kevin Gossett, Laura Hess, Patrick McLean, Blake Weil, Executive Editor Kathryn Yu, and Publisher Noah Nelson.
The various categories were limited to work that was accessible online, by telephone or post so as to create a somewhat level pool of candidates. Location-based experiences were excluded this year, as they require a regional approach.
This is the third and final part of NoPro’s Year in Review coverage. For more of the highlights of 2020, including location-based work, and immersive adjacent projects see:
Correction: In the podcast, Taylor Feld, recipient of the award for Outstanding Achievement in Individual Performance 2020, was verbally misgendered. Feld uses they/them pronouns. We regret the error.
Outstanding Achievement in Livestreamed Production
The Sleepover
Cricklewood Theater Company in association with KatNip Productions
There are two choices most productions have made when it comes to Zoom: either to lean into the bare fact that you’re all on a Zoom call (so many experiences about “work” calls) or to try and ignore the ignobility of the infernal platform’s massive deficiencies. (I may or may not be traumatized by six years of professional Zoom calls as a remote worker pre-pandemic.)
Yet there is a third way: to lean into the absurdity of it all while delivering a character-driven experience. Which is exactly what Cricklewood Theater Company does with The Sleepover. Based on a live show that was in development, The Sleepover leaned into broad comic performances that made the absurdity of pretending that we were all at a middle school sleepover circa 199X all the more… well, believable isn’t the right term. But for a while, it was possible to ignore the boxes on the screen and just play along with the rest of the gang. What more can we really want? — Noah Nelson
Audience Choice:
Family Skeleton’s Adventure with a Wacky Witchy Bruja
Veronica Rodriguez
Outstanding Achievement in Live Action Gaming
Tales by Candlelight: Session Zerø
Walk the Night
It’s long been a part of human nature for people to huddle closely together around fires telling stories long into the night. Yet over the years we’ve streamlined the process, removing any sense of collaboration and play from the art of storytelling when part of a group. With providing a box of artisan made items, Tales by Candlelight: Session Zerø guides, teaches, and reminds audiences that the art of verbal storytelling is the original game played among friends and strangers to delightfully pass the time. And when your session ends, the box of items remains and is reusable, allowing the game you start to be far from over. — Patrick B. McLean
Audience Choice:
Seize the Show: Saving Wonderland
Seize the Show
Outstanding Achievement in Escape Gaming
The Beast
Emergency Exit Manchester
I have to say this was a difficult decision. There were so many wonderful options out there and it could have gone to so many equally enjoyable experiences, but we obviously had to narrow it down to one. The reason we picked this experience is that it covered all the bases: enjoyable puzzles and great scenic design. What I really appreciated about The Beast is it had a cinematic quality to it that was beyond what I was seeing with other escape rooms and virtual escape games. It really felt like you were living in a horror mystery film. — Cara Mandel
Audience Choice:
Dr. Crumb’s School for Disobedient Pets
Adventure Lab
Outstanding Achievement in Alternate Reality Gaming or Experiences
ARCANA
All Of Them Witches
Produced in the early months of the pandemic that influenced its setting, ARCANA was a rousing success that played out over Instagram, email, and video. This ARX told the story of Jade and her sense of isolation through a series of interactions and puzzles, but it was her relationships with the players that provided an emotional anchor point that helped focus the story. Along the way, the wider world of the show offered fun new avenues to explore (hi, Gareth the demonologist) along with a few twists here and there, but Jade remained at the center of that world. ARCANA managed to create a thematically and emotionally resonant piece of work for a wide audience at a time when people needed it. — Kevin Gossett
Audience Choice:
ARCANA
All Of Them Witches
Special Achievement in Intimate Alternate Reality Experiences
iConfidant
Darren Lynn Bousman
While iConfidant offered an experience for a relatively small number of people, it was certainly one of the most ambitious immersive offerings this year. With more than 30 actors and 28 distinct, but interconnected stories, Darren Lynn Bousman and crew offered something difficult to come by in 2020: connection. The participants forged real connections that grew over three weeks and helped make iConfidant incredibly immersive and impactful while also being dark, funny, shocking, nerve wracking, and moving. — Kevin Gossett
Outstanding Achievement in Special Delivery Experiences
This Great Plague
This Yearning
The level of mastery over both sensory input and ritual elevates This Great Plague to spectacular. Walking you through the history of the bubonic plague via podplay with a self-administered treatment based on traditional remedies, the piece gracefully balanced darkness and rot with an ultimate feeling of health and renewal. For a category that focuses on the physical, the level of care of each component needs to be applauded, from the ways the fragrances balanced and complemented each other, to the way the package was delivered in a muslin sack resembling a body bag. For a genre that specializes in giving its audience the magic of transformation, no other gave me such a sense of touching a version of me from another time and place. — Blake Weil
Audience Choice:
One Day Die
Darren Lynn Bousman
Special Recognition: Sleeper Hit
The Japanese Ghost Painting Introduction
OBAKEN
Of all the immersive experiences I’ve done this year this was the one that really stood out to me. The Japanese Ghost Painting Introduction stayed with me, and it really genuinely creeped us out. I think that the fact that I went in with such low expectations — or no expectations because here was this experience on Airbnb Experiences, a pretty new format — it could have gone either way. Thankfully it was recommended to me by someone whose opinion I trust... The producer brain in me spent days afterward trying to think about what elements were live, was anything prerecorded? Now I realize I don’t care and I don’t want to know. The Japanese Ghost Painting Introduction felt in the moment, terrifying, and urgent. — Cara Mandel
Outstanding Achievement in Virtual Reality Experiences
The Book of Distance
National Film Board of Canada/Randall Okita
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This intimate, personal virtual reality experience brings to life the story of creator Randall Okita’s grandfather as he moves from Japan to Canada just before WWII. Through the magic of VR, we the audience have the ability to participate in Yonezo Okita’s journey as he begins a new life, gets married, and starts a family, only to have it ripped away by war and racism. This story of pain, love, and sacrifice will resonate with anyone who’s ever left home in search of a better life, or with anyone who’s tried to make things better for the generations to follow. — Kathryn Yu
Audience Choice:
BRCvr
BRCvr
Outstanding Achievement in Live Virtual Reality Production
The Under Presents: TEMPEST
Tender Claws
Tender Claws is no stranger to live VR performances. Actors had long dropped into The Under Presents’ hub world to engage with players. In the start, these delightful encounters occurred randomly and quickly, being easily missable flash-in-the-pan performances. Yet Tender Claws continually evolved and expanded their live performances, eventually creating TEMPEST, a one-performer adaption of the Shakespeare classic for small groups of players. Between rotating thought different actors, creating engaging moments of audience interaction, and gorgeous and magical environments, TEMPEST excellently showcases the immersive possibilities of live VR experiences. — Patrick B. McLean
Audience Choice:
The Under Presents: TEMPEST
Tender Claws
Outstanding Achievement in Screenless Experiences
A Call From The Resistance
Capital W
A Call From the Resistance intersected at the crux of personal politics and the public forum of our fraught, national political discourse. A throughline of individual action was deftly interwoven, all led by a deeply empathetic guide. Throughout the call, writer, performer, and co-director Mason Flink honored the duality of individual perspective and the power of collective activism. This verbal co-meditation offered a final act of service: a universal story merging the present political moment with my personal experiences, granting me a profound sense of restoration, camaraderie, and a refueling of my emotional reserves. — Laura Hess
Audience Choice:
The Telelibrary
Yannick Trapman-O’Brien
Special Achievement In Spatial Audio
ETERNAL
DARKFIELD RADIO
There are few masters of the art of scaring the stuffing out of you with words alone like Darkfield. Eternal, the latest in their series of at-home experiences under the DARKFIELD RADIO umbrella, is so good that we had to recognize it with a Special Achievement In Spatial Audio. Darkfield’s mastery of the technical form of spatial audio is so good that, once experienced, it becomes hard to go back to simple stereophonic sound in other forms of entertainment. I pray that a thousand imitators rise up in their long shadow and revolutionize the way that stories unfold between our ears. Hopefully not all of them will be as terrifying as ETERNAL. — Noah Nelson
Outstanding Achievement in an Individual Performance
Taylor Feld
each and every
Candle House Collective
One of the most generous performances of 2020, Taylor Feld created an otherworldly space for joyful exchange and intimate catharsis through our connection to music, both as a personal gesture and as an act of humanity. Feld and Evan Neiden (along with directorial support from John Ertman), crafted a show that danced between fiction and autobiography, from the personal to the universal — for both participant and performer. As brilliantly written as the show was, it was Feld’s performance through this shared dance that transformed a single phone call into an indelible exchange. — Laura Hess
Audience Choice:
Siobhan O’Loughlin
Please Don’t Touch the Artist Siobhan O’Loughlin
Special Recognition For Community Impact
The Lost Halloween
The Lost Halloween Team
While we cover every form of immersive and experiential art we can get our hands on, our first love at No Proscenium will always be immersive theatre. It is the form that inspired us to start this publication in the first place, and the craft that shapes our understanding of the field as a whole. The “theatre” part of immersive theatre has been hit hard this year, and it has taken some real resilience on the part of creators and patrons alike to make it through months of not being able to make or experience the kinds of work that not only bring light into our lives, but for creators keep roofs over their heads, student loans paid, and food on the table.
Which is why we wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the work of the team behind The Lost Halloween — a group of immersive theatre professionals and patrons who raised over $45,000 for members of the creative community in New York via their production this past October.
We know that the road ahead remains difficult, but for many the load will be lighter because of the work this creative team poured into the most valuable resource of all: their colleagues. — Noah Nelson
Outstanding Achievement in Ensemble Performances
Like Real People Do: Long Distance Relationships Division
Linked Dance Theatre
For theatre teams working entirely remotely, creating a cohesive ensemble of performers presents a unique set of challenges from casting, rehearsing, directing, and more. Which is why it’s impressive that the cast of Like Real People Do: Long Distance Relationships Division brought to life such a rich tapestry of memorable characters, from the hilarious headless head of HR, W. P. Harperworth, who speaks only in corporate banalities to struggling lovers of Luke and Leo and the emotional rollercoaster of their relationship; the story’s heart, though, belongs to the philosophically opposed former coworkers Daphne and Cornelia and the chasm that lies between them. — Kathryn Yu
(Disclaimer: NoPro NYC correspondents Edward Mylechreest and Leah Ableson were cast members in this production.)
Audience Choice:
The Sleepover
The Cricklewood Theater Company in association with KatNip Productions
Outstanding Achievement in Immersive & Experiential Production
The Telelibrary
Yannick Trapman-O’Brien
Sometimes all it takes is one person and a telephone to remind us all how connected we are, even when we are forced to be apart.
This is a year when we were all forced apart. When coming together was a risk that carried deadly consequences. And yet the human need for connection is so great the instinct cannot be denied for long. Though many turned to the latest technology to bring audiences into their world, one piece exemplified the principle that a performer — equipped with their wit, compassion, and an eagerness to join an audience member on a journey into a shared imaginal space is the most powerful vessel for an immersive experience.
Yannick Trapman-O’Brien’s The Telelibrary reminded us of the power of shared storytelling, by taking us for a little while to a place where gentle curiosity is the governing force. While it’s impossible to imagine that one performer could fill the demand of an entire world in need of their services, by granting the Outstanding Achievement in Immersive & Experiential Production to The Telelibrary we hope that others look to Trapman-O’Brien’s work as a North Star by which they can chart their own creative courses. — Noah Nelson
Audience Choice:
The Telelibrary
Yannick Trapman-O’Brien
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