The Magic Of Fighting Monsters

In advance of the opening of E3W Productions’ latest show, Where The Others Are, we’ve got a guest column from Deborah Robinson, partner of LA correspondent Anthony Robinson.

Below, Deb recounts her experience with a previous show of E3W’s: In Another Room.

I didn’t really want to go.

I’d had a bad week, the traffic was terrible, and the immersive show my husband and I were attending started way past my usual bedtime.

Apart from humoring my immersive-loving husband, I couldn’t imagine what good could come from attending this show. As such, I grumbled en route.

I grumbled a lot — while driving, while parking, and while walking to the show. Why were we even here?

When the show began, my husband and I were stuck in a small, newspaper-covered room with another couple. My claustrophobia might have gotten the better of me, had I not already encountered the delivering actor in my first — and only prior — immersive theatre experience. Because I’d already encountered him in my one and only immersive theatre experience to date, I kept breathing and endured being stuck in a tiny, windowless, doorless room as best I could.

Sticking with it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. If that sounds like too-high praise, it’s not. It’s a reflection of a very particular personal history.

My mother loved horror movies. From the time I was little, I loved sneak-watching horror movies with her. She’d catch me hiding behind some piece of furniture and banish me from the living room, only to later find I’d discovered another piece of furniture behind which I could hide.

My mom died in 2010, almost a decade before I experienced E3W’s second iteration of In Another Room with my husband. And yet, in one particular scene of the show, I felt as if my mom and my still-tiny younger sister (and fellow behind-furniture-hider) were both present.

I enjoyed every bit of In Another Room, but one piece of the show brought my mom and still-young sister to life with me.

With another couple, my husband and I were ushered into a bedroom tent with a little girl. That little girl, intent on fighting a monster who’d been assailing her nightly for many nights, assigned each person in the tent a particular monster-fighting role. I seized my particular role with vigor, feeling very much that I would play a crucial role in banishing — or, if unsuccessful, not banishing — the monster.

While I was captivated by the entire show after my first claustrophobic encounter with it, I’d never before experienced anything like I did in that bedroom tent.

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Every sense of horror and hope I’d ever experienced while watching frightful movies with my mother was there. This time, though, I wasn’t just watching the show; I was living it. I was battling monsters. My littler self was there with my littler sister and my much-younger, still-alive mother, fighting off monsters as I had only ever done in nighttime dreams others would mistakenly call nightmares.

When my husband and I exited the show that evening, I felt more alive than I’d felt in decades.

I’d fought monsters, and survived! My mom had been there with me; I’d connected with her as if she were still alive, and still fighting.

I’d begun the evening grumbling. Why was I awake so late? Was the traffic really worth it? Why did my husband enjoy this immersive theatre stuff so much, anyway?

I didn’t understand any of this en route to the show, but I sure understood as we walked away from the show.

Thanks to immersive theatre, I’d had a chance to touch the presence of my younger, still-breathing mother.

I’d had a chance to battle monsters, and to do so in excellent company, present and past.

It’s been more than a year since I battled monsters in that bedroom tent, but the feelings of it continue to beat strong in my heart.

I was there. I didn’t just see it, I lived it.

That’s not the kind of thing a gal forgets.

It is, indeed, the kind of experience a gal holds close to her heart for ages, until the moment she exults that the production company behind the experience is releasing a new show…on the ten-year anniversary of her mom’s death.

Maybe that gal won’t get to fight monsters in this new show, Where the Others Are. But maybe, just maybe, it won’t matter whether or not she does, because her life will have been shaped by the chance to have fought monsters that one time, and she’ll be glad for the opportunity to remember — even for a moment — just how very irreplaceably magical that monster-fighting was.

—Deborah Robinson

Where the Others Are is currently sold out. Learn more about E3W Productions.

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