The No Proscenium Podcast

Steve Boyle, the CEO of the SF Bay Area's Epic Immersive stops by to talk about their work in immersive theatre and VR... and about their new show The Infernal Motel. Plus: A bit about the Future of Immersive Leisure conference this September in Las Vegas A call for submissions in next weeks OPEN FORUM episode An op-ed from Noah about some of the issues popping up in the SoCal immersive scene All...

Lauren Ludwig of Capital W stops by to take a deep dive into the process behind her latest, the much talked about Red Flags . Which means we dive deep down the acting and process rabbit hole. What does that have to do with Jon Hamm?  You'll see. You'll see. Plus: "live events locksmith" Simon Rust Lamb jumps in to answer YOUR questions about getting a new production company off the ground. Hosted...

John Bucher of Sideshow Media Group joins us to talk about his upcoming book Storytelling For Virtual Reality , and in the process gets Noah to go way, way off script. (Warning: content advisory.) Plus the creator of the augmented reality/immersive theatre piece Transmission , which will be making its debut at the Edinburgh Fringe stops by.   Brought to you by our Patreon backers, including sustai...

Vinny DePonto is an amazing mentalist based out of New York City who knows a thing or twelve about immersive theatre: he's been working for the past few years with Third Rail Projects on shows like Sweet & Lucky and the recently opened Ghost Light .  While on tour in LA, Vinny stopped by NoPro headquarters to talk with Noah about how magic is the original immersive theatre and his own background i...

"When in doubt, LARP it out." That, thanks to Andrew Hoepfner is one of our unofficial mottos here at NoPro. So it is with great exuberance that we introduce today's guest: Jason Carl of By Night Studios.  By Night Studios are the folks who publish the Mind's Eye Theatre series of LARP games-- live action versions of the classic RPGs Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse . These are...

This week on the show, the co-director of The Overlook Film Festival--Landon Zakheim--joins host Noah Nelson for a lively discussion. We also check in with Mike and Russell of My Haunt Life to see how the Hollywood Fringe is going. Plus we tease OUR panel at the Hollywood Fringe: The Fringe of the Fringe! This Saturday June 10th at 11AM! For even more news: check out NoProscenium.com Hosted on Aca...

Welcome to the all-new No Proscenium Podcast. The format has changed!  But we've still got an amazing guest for you: contemporary artist Simon Birch, the creator of The 14th Factory, which has been turning heads in Los Angeles since it opened. The 14th Factory is three acres of art--much of it immersive--and all of it designed to create a sense of awe and wonder. It's a can't miss spot in LA this...

Two years. One hundred episodes. Guiding you through everything immersive. This very special episode of NoPro features the voices of some of our friends--all looking forward to the future of immersive entertainment. (It's also super short, as these things go!) We'll see you back here next week, for the ALL NEW No Proscenium. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our man in NYC -- Zay Amsbury -- and Bryan Bishop (Senior Reporter for The Verge) join master of ceremonies Noah Nelson for a wide-ranging talk about how we talk about this immersive thing of ours. Oh, yeah, it's one of THOSE episodes. The "I-word," ARX vs. ARG, virtual reality and more come up as three dudes try and figure out which part of the elephant they are holding. All part of the lead up t...

The proprietors of LA's most deliciously strange haunt--Creep LA--invite you to meet the family: The Willows family, that is. Planned as a year-round production, The Willows is the Creep take on the classic murder mystery dinner. If 'Clue' were staged by The Addams Family and viewed through a disturbed gothic indie horror lens.  Naturally, we love it. We dig deep into what makes the show possible...

The LA immersive renaissance is really heating up, and choreographer Sophia Stoller is bringing some stunning dance chops to the table this month with her piece 'The Other Side,' which uses some infamous experiments in social control as her inspiration. We dive into the inspiration for the show and Stoller's craft... and you get a nice dose of news, notes, and an old fashioned Noah rant after the...

This is a first: an After Dark episode with someone who isn't on the No Pro team.  Here's another first: talking to a member of The Speakeasy Society solo... well, mostly solo. Maybe there are special guests. Maybe not all of the are human. Maybe you'll have to listen to find out what we mean by that. This is one of those lovely philosophical discussions about the form where we really get our hand...

Story time: months ago, while driving Interstate 5 in California, I listened to Kent Bye's interview with Jessica Brillhart of Google. In that episode of his " Voices of VR " podcast Kent offered up an "elemental theory of presence," mapping the classical elements onto the different building blocks of immersive experiences. It was like a door opened up in my head. Luckily, I didn't drive off the r...

What can we say about Dasha and Keight, Keight and Dasha? If you're a fan on the LA immersive scene you've probably encountered their work with Annie Lesser ( Getting To Know You , Covell ), or seen Dasha in  Delusion or had the most disturbing one-on-one possible with Keight in Lesser's A(partment 8)--which is getting a reprise this year at the Hollywood Fringe and is appearing at the Overlook Fi...

This week Noah is joined by Jon Lawrence Rivera, founder and artistic director of LA's Playwright's Arena to talk about their 25th-anniversary show "The Hotel Play," a site-specific piece that unfolds in a series of hotel rooms at the Radisson by USC. We get into their writing process behind telling a mosaic story with a writer's room of playwrights. (Apologies for the slightly off sound quality....

Marissa Nielsen-Pincus, Associate Artistic Director of Third Rail Projects, joins us to talk about the a of immersive performance. Marissa has had a major role in crafting and keeping up Third Rail's most famous shows, and we get into the spirit of the craft and her approach. All that plus the usual News & Notes, brought to you by Patreon backers just like *you*.   Note: the News & Notes section i...

I first met Ben Hill in 2011, on the eve of the second Hollywood Fringe Festival. We became fast friends. In the years since the Hollywood Fringe has become an important incubator for the immersive arts here in LA. Capital W, Annie Lesser, and Shine On Collective all got their start at the Fringe. This year is poised to be the most important year for immersive at the Fringe yet: for reasons we del...

This week: we travel up to the Presidio in San Francisco to talk with Vicki Dobbs Beck, the executive in charge of ILM's xLab. That's the part of Lucasfilm--yes, that Lucasfilm--whose mandate is to explore the immersive frontier. They're working on a whole range of immersive, virtual reality powered projects, and host Noah Nelson talks with Beck about how she views the world of immersive entertain...

It's always a big deal when an internationally known theatre company like Rimini Protokoll hits Los Angeles. It's an even bigger deal for our team when they hit LA with an immersive, headphone driven show like Remote X. And it's a really big deal that they're doing it under the auspices of Center Theatre Group, the biggest theatrical producer in LA. So naturally we just nerd out with director Jörg...

We've wanted David Mack, the strategic director for Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre and a consultant and producer in his own right, on the show for ages. David is a fellow traveler in the LA arts scene and knows more than almost anybody here about what's what.  So naturally we start talking about the Big Picture: how the real estate market and the demographics of LA impact and influence the art that i...

Live from the ThinkTank Studio... well, virtually live anyway: we talk with VR Scout editor-at-large and immersonaut extraordinaire Jesse Damiani about his exploration of Sundance's New Frontier, his development of scripting tools for digital and live immersive experiences, and a whole lot more. PLUS: so many notes you will run out of sticks to shake at them. Including details on our first unoffic...

Jeff Leinenveber and Jarrett Lantz have been around the immersive scene in LA for a minute. The two Imagineers (you know what this is, right?) have worked on Delusion and helped out Third Rail Projects when they popped into town. Now they are turning their theme park sharpened skills on their own immersive work with the newly announced The Nest, coming this April: and we're here to tell you all ab...

Rubber Ducky Optional! Thrills! Zay-our man in NYC-sits down with Siobhan O'Loughlin, creator of Broken Bone Bathtub, the globe-trotting solo show that takes place in bathtubs.  Chills! Noah butchers some names, as usual! News! Notes! Surprises! Stick around for the end credits: there's one!   ALL BROUGHT TO YOU BY WONDERFUL PEOPLE JUST LIKE YOU!   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more i...

Friend of the show Abel Horwitz‬ stops by to talk about the month-long residency of his Serial Killer Speed Dating at The Bunker Experience escape room in Pasadena. It's been a while since Abel and Noah have had a face-to-face chat so, naturally, things get weird.   Also: in the News & Notes section this week a little tale of community and connection from our MC. All this is brought to you by our...

They call themselves THE ORGANIZERS and they're looking for a man named Jake. You know him. That Jake. Welcome to another great episode of the No Pro podcast as we get wonky with two members of the creative team from the immersive event series Have You Seen Jake? which involves a search for a missing man through a surreal mindscape. We're protecting the creator's identities, since there's a whole...