Sign up. Sign in. No Proscenium. Based out of Washington DC, TBD Tradition Be Damned Immersive believes in creating art that blurs the line between audience and performer, where the audience is safe to explore and challenged to step outside their comfort zone. Strother Gaines SG : Such a big question to start off with. We aim to have some type of portal into the world for all our shows sometimes this is more successful than others and I think that transition is important.
Why or why not? SG : Yup! Since the audience does have some sway over their evening and what parts they engage with, I feel like that brings us squarely into the immersive world. Passivity is not rewarded in a TBD show but there is space for even a passive observer to enjoy in their own way. Our venues are also always mega important and they have had feelings of otherworldliness to them too: a de-sanctified church, four stories of an old row house in downtown DC, abandoned underground trolley tunnels in Dupont Circle, etc.
The venue being a character in itself influences all of our choices for the story and the character arcs. The closer we can get to an open world-vibe the better. So we obviously have to find the places we want to put boundaries or guidelines. NoPro: What works — be they creative works, non-fiction, or other inspirations — have shaped your current work? The irony that our next show is taking place in an underground tunnel is not lost on me.
And it blew my little theatre major mind wide open. I had never seen anything like that before and I was so excited by that style of work that directly engaged me as an audience member. The next time I was blown away like that was Sleep No More which re-ignighted my excitement for immersive work.
I took a bit of a break from theatre for a few years and did some stuff like working at the spy museum, as a segway tour guide, became a massage therapist, worked in tech sales, a stint in healthcare…I was a bit of a hummingbird. I think I also get a lot of my aesthetic and sensibility from sideshow, variety, burlesque, and specifically drag.
