BoD Episode 14: Mikhael Tara Garver

Mikhael Tara Garver is a pioneering force in immersive storytelling and fandom-driven experience design, shaping how audiences gather, participate, and imagine together at the intersection of live experience, technology, and culture. For over two decades, her work has brought thousands into transformative worlds inside rock clubs and national parks, international theme parks and stadiums, and even a galaxy far, far away.

Mikhael’s work centers on immersive experiences as engines for connection, empathy, and collective possibility. Her career places her at the heart of many of immersive storytelling’s defining moments, including serving as a director on the American Repertory Theater’s initial production of Sleep No More and as Creative Director for the band Great Caesar, where she designed an 18-show immersive journey unfolding over eight days at SXSW. Most recently, Mikhael served as Director of Immersive Experience for the THEA Award–winning Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser, realizing her long-held vision of a two-day, three-night live immersive journey that gently draws participants into epic narrative agency. Though not a Star Wars fan at the outset, she has always believed in immersive storytelling’s power to foster transformation and remains deeply grateful to the fandom whose passion continues to carry that force forward.

Her award-winning body of work spans projects for AMC Television, Amazon, the National Park Service, Bloomberg, BBDO, Hormel, Tentrr, Viacom, Warner Bros., The La River, Smirnoff, IDEO, Facebook, and Virgin. She has delivered keynotes and advisory leadership across the experiential landscape, including at the World Experience Summit, and has served as a Lead Creative Consultant for Walt Disney Imagineering.

A recognized leader in the field, Mikhael is a founding board member of the Immersive Experience Institute, a recipient of the first-ever immersive commissions from The Kennedy Center, Goodman Theatre, the Public Theater, and the National Theatre of Scotland, a multi-year grantee of the Pop Culture Collaborative where she was named a Pop Culture Leader driving culture change, and an International Sacatar Fellow in Bahia, Brazil, where she began writing her book on immersive practice.

She is currently the Founder and CEO of Culture House Immersive, a creative studio dedicated to shaping the future of experiential entertainment where technology, story, and human connection meet.

This monthly gathering invites directors and other theatre makers to come together, share experiences, and seek advice in a supportive community. There is often an isolating nature to directing, and this new space aims to foster connection and collaboration. The Board of Directors is an opportunity to set aside time each month to be alongside members of the Directing community all over the world. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:42

There are some artists you meet at a moment when they're still forming. And even then, you can see exactly where they're headed. Michael Terra Garver has always been that for me. We met at Columbia, and from the very beginning, her instincts were different. I remember seeing her work in Chicago before she moved to New York and realizing that she wasn't just making theater, she was reimagining the relationship between audience and story. Not asking people to sit and watch, but inviting them to step inside, to participate, to complete the experience. Since then, her path has only deepened from her early work with Punch Trunk to her leadership across immersive and experiential storytelling to working at the highest levels with Disney. She's been at the forefront of a form that's defining itself, pushing beyond theater into design, technology, and cultural experience. What I love about this conversation is that it doesn't just sit in the what of immersive work. It really gets into the why. We talk about audience as a collaborator, about relational dramaturgy, about how you design not just a story, but a system of participation. And we talk about leadership, what it means to hold space, to build teams, and to navigate an industry that's still catching up to the work. She's a dear friend, someone I trust deeply, and someone whose thinking continues to shape how I understand audience and experience. This is my conversation with Michael Terragarva. So, Michael, I remember seeing your orange lemon egg canary with your company Uma in Chicago before you moved to New York.

SPEAKER_03 2:29

Wait, how did do I not did I know this?

SPEAKER_01 2:32

I came up for like a weekend. I stayed on your couch. It was just, it was a very brief, like I came in to see.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

Well, we'll talk about why these are things I don't remember because I have a memory. We can we can talk about why I have a massive memory block. But I was just like, you just said that, and I truly, truly don't remember.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

You know, but it was it was 20, I think it was 2010 before we both started. I think it was the summer before you moved to New York. Because it was the last show that you did with Uma. I think.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

Yeah, it was. Yeah. Well, and and it was we had, yeah, because right, we had announced that we were, I mean, that was a whole thing. Right, we had announced, or I had come to the company. It's like one of my favorite moments in my career, like the gift I was given by my from Uma from my theater company. Um, but yeah, we had I had gone to them because I had gotten into Columbia after doing a silly audition with you.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:30

You and I were partners.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

We were.

SPEAKER_03 3:32

And I will never ever forget the man who had the numbers written all over his body. I don't know who that was. I don't remember who it was. But I remember you and I being at Shapiro for the audition for Columbia and me truly being like, there's no way I'm getting in here. All these people are like so arty. And I am not, and I just like stories. So, like, they all are like quoting like all these people they've read. I've just been running a theater company in Chicago. Like, I don't know what, what, what's what. And I don't, and I remember us doing, and then you were my partner, and like we were both like humans, and and everyone else, in my opinion, was like like very creative, arty, like a thing that I just didn't. I was like, there is just no world. There's no world where I'm getting in. And I had a whole life in Chicago. So I was like, oh, okay, I did this thing, I got I got in, and I and I hadn't even planned to audition. Like it was a whole weird story. I hadn't planned to apply. And uh and then that weekend that happened, and then Anne said the word Anne said to me, Well, you have a career in Chicago, but you know, you could give yourself this gift of just being a creative. And I was like, Can I s can I curse on this? Yeah, of course you can. I was like, fuck you, Anne, which is what she always wants us to say to her.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 4:57

Right. I don't actually mean that to her, but like because I think of that moment and it and I realized I hadn't, it's a good reminder always of like what are the gifts you're giving to your creative self when you're a creative producer, when you produce also. Um and yeah, and then there was a guy who for someone else's scene covered his body in numbers with with a permanent marker. And I heard him from upstairs from the basement, you and I are saying each other, and he goes, Wait, it's permanent permanent, wait, it's permanent, and I was like, Oh no, like this is horrible.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Yeah, and he didn't get in.

SPEAKER_03 5:39

He did not get in, which is horrible. And if he listens to this, like, I'm sorry, like you sacrificed so much. And I I'm sorry for that. But you know, we all sacrifice certain things.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

I think it's wild that you thought you had no chance.

SPEAKER_03 5:58

Oh, I know. But Adam, we can talk about this in the journey of this. Like, I think I literally said to one of my team one of my teammates recently, I was like, I think just this year I realized I'm a creative.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

It's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 6:12

That is insane. Like I deeply realized it. Like deeply in my bones, because I'd always been also a person who gets shit done. And my thinking of that in the world of the incredible artists that I'd been around was like there was a permission I felt like they had that they weren't not to say not all of it, but like it didn't feel like the getting it done was where they drove. They drove to like their work they worked hard. That wasn't that, but like I, you know, I'm getting right into it because I know you, like I valued my own work ethic. And I thought that my creativity was a thing I got to do because of my work ethic. And it's taken me a long time to realize that I get to do what I get to do because of my creativity.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:09

And my leadership, right? But that that is that's a daily thing I have to remind myself of.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

I mean, thank you for for saying that because I mean uh I have never not thought of you as a creative. From from the moment I met you, I I thought to myself, when we became partners, I thought, thank God I've got somebody good. Because I mean, I mean, I'm I'm sure the audition is going to change come, you know, in the next couple of years. So I don't think we even can it's a it's a problem to say what happens, but like the directors direct the other directors in pieces. And I got you to direct me.

SPEAKER_03 7:48

Yeah, yeah. My worst night.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Because you are it is simultaneously your competition and also the person that can help you get in.

SPEAKER_03 7:55

Well, and also it is the best, it it's actually the smartest audition for what the program ends up being. Because, you know, it's such a testament that program, there are many challenges that I feel looking back. But like, if anything, the thing that you have to do that we did. And I also came from a world of having built an ensemble. And I remember being adamant, like the six of us, yeah, we're gonna have to work together. And if we don't figure out how, yeah, we will not survive this. And I probably, because of who I am, aired too far in that direction, right? Like emphasized that too much for myself, right? I was so but I do think that like it meant that we got to do a lot of great things together. We went to Paris. We did like so. I think there's there's just uh that audition, as much as it's weird, like I'm grateful it was you.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Yeah, same.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

So grateful. And also like I I kid you not, 100% left that audition, called my family, and I was like, Well, this was a cool experiment, like I'm not gonna get in. And then got a phone call like beginning of that next week.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

And I was like, uh I thought, I thought for sure I knew I knew, I knew you were gonna get in. And I thought, I'm lucky I got to work with her. I'm not gonna get in. And I was waitlisted and I didn't find out until very, very late that summer. And that it was like fantastic, great, this is amazing. And then, of course, when I found out that you had gotten in, I was like, Well, of course, that makes total sense.

SPEAKER_03 9:30

It feels like, I mean, because it is one million years ago.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

It's a million years ago, I know. I'm sure the people who are listening to the podcast love hearing stories.

SPEAKER_03 9:38

Yeah, I'm sure the podcast is a very good thing. Suddenly, suddenly we've made your podcast into a like Columbia. Yeah, anyway.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Columbia, call me, call me, set it up. I'd I'd like to get rid of some of the student loan debt.

SPEAKER_03 9:49

Exactly. Yeah. You want debt forever? Come to Columbia.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Oh God.

SPEAKER_03 9:55

Anyway, we've moved on since then. But yeah, no, I I do think it was also a turning point for me, right? Like I uh I to this day, you know, I I think we all I think that I like to have a good balance of like what we do is important and also what we do is one piece of many things. And I think that one of my challenges inside grad school is like for it to work, you kind of have a lot of people like it becomes their whole universe. And I really struggled with that. I got really struggled with it. But I also think it was a good learning for me of like, well, what if this is the only thing you have to do is create things. And I tried to avoid that as much as possible. I like you know, tried to make it harder over and over. What do you think? I mean, it's the same, you know. I think I think that like the giving of my of the gift to myself, I spent a lot of time needing it to to prove to myself that it was worth it. And I spent a lot, and I and I I think this is a thing that I work on still today of like I take these huge leaps. I'm I'm not a person who doesn't take huge leaps. I've taken a lot of huge leaps.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:15

But when I do, I then kind of make myself have to earn it. And I'm just learning more and more as I get into my older middle age that like all that energy is so no, it doesn't help anyone. It's not helping anyone. And it was, it was just not helping anyone. Like all the guilt, all those things, all the things, the guilt and the shame that Brian Kulick taught us about and being different and all that stuff, right? Like it doesn't, it's it's not for, it's not, it doesn't do good for anyone. And I think that has a lot to do with kind of growing up in a household in which I am the eldest, I'm the eldest on both sides, and this sense of kind of responsibility was always really important to me and a responsibility to the people around me, a responsibility to my family, a responsibility to the opportunities I'm given. And that was how I would lead my that's how I kind of drove into the world, was like, this is all a responsibility, as opposed to sometimes a gift is a gift. And that over-indexing on responsibility is what makes sometimes really great directors and really great leaders, but it can also go so far that you're not creating space for other people to step in. And so I think I've been in a process of learning that, which again, for your podcast audience, I hope that this is what they wanted to listen to. Just me jumping in on the psychology. This is perfect.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

No, this is leadership.

SPEAKER_03 12:40

Absolutely, it's a huge psychology of leadership, right? I think there's an art in leadership. And as a director, when I'm directing, when I'm creating, I don't really call what I do directing anymore, but whatever I'm doing when I'm making the thing that I'm making. I am constantly creating structures in which I understand I'm handing other people their own responsibility. I'm creating situations in which they hold they can stand there and be themselves, both the audience and the show. And so I've had to learn to do that. In particular, it's fascinating, right? With immersive, even more so, so which is what I do. So I've had to learn how to continue to let go of that sense of immense over-indexing on responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

So you've broken the seal on the word immersive. So let's let's go in there for a little bit. I brought up Orange Limited at Canary because while it wasn't an immersive piece, there were elements that I was I was kind of seeing then that I can make that like the trajectory from then to now. Like I've only ever had a director like personally walk me and personally walk almost every single audience member to a seat, as it was a considered thought of like, and I realized as I'm sitting there, it's like, well, this seat isn't any different than that seat over there. But there was something about, well, maybe it was, but there was something about the it was a it was a considered thought. It was very considered, and I I've only ever seen Ari Minushkin kind of do a similar thing, so you're in very good company, but that thought of like, well, it matters to her, so now it matters to me. And you were doing this, and you were interested in immersive theater before immersive became this thing. Like you were on the forefront, you were on the you're on the cusp of it, on the pushing it along. So can you tell us the journey into immersive and like how you've gotten from there to here? And when did the quote unquote theater part kind of go on the wayside or not become as much?

SPEAKER_03 14:48

Yeah. So I don't know how much of this is helpful to tell history-wise. So I'll say, you know, I've said this before, right? I've been doing immersive before we had the words for it, but that's because I think, you know, I think as artists, we end up having an obsession that we're constantly that we we continue to be going at over and over and over again. And I don't think I realized how unique the obsession I had with the audience was. I have an obsession with the audience. I have an obsession with the relationship between the audience and a piece of work.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Same.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

And I don't have an obsession with the audience in that I want to fuck with them. I don't have an obsession with the audience in that I want to test them. I am interested in relationally, how do I show up to something and I matter? And how do I matter without having, interestingly, responsibility? So, like, how can I matter even if I sit in the back? How can I matter even when I'm quiet? How can I matter in whatever way I need to show up? How do I matter? And to me, that's not someone telling me I matter. It's not someone asking me to do something. It is a dramaturgy that now when I look back, I've always been exploring all the ways to include audience in the dramaturgy of the work that I'm doing. And so now I talk about, I mean, I think I now have a lot more words of the craft and the technique that I've been building over these years. But if I go all the way back to Uma, I was really considering like, okay, the audience is it, it just it didn't feel particularly like experimental to me that I was like, the audience is here. Like let's just tell the truth. Like, what is you know, the Brian Kulik of like, what is it really? Or what it is really is there's a bunch of people sitting here and they're gonna laugh at the same time. They're gonna breathe together, they're gonna become a group. And we're pretending that they aren't here. And that feels harder to me than understanding that they are. Like it felt like harder work to pretend they weren't there. Now, at the same time, I think the beauty of that for me is like I am actually a very awkward, shy person. Like that's the truth. So, like, I don't want everyone to look at me. When someone comes walking up to me in the audience with no preparation, I truly want to die. I curl up in a ball, I get very concerned and nervous, which is really a hard thing to have as an immersive expert who travels around the world and sees people immersive work and they come in immerse at me, and I'm like, gh, I'm just being super polite. But I I started to realize that all of these are actual cultural, it's we're building culture. What does it mean for people to belong just because they exist? What does it mean for people to belong even if they are more introverted? What does it mean for people to belong? And if I ask them a question and I don't expect an answer, that's on me, right? So, like I also would go see work where like the show would literally look to the audience and ask a question, and then people will be mad when the audience would say words. And I'm like, you just you turned on the lights, you looked them in the eye, and you asked them a question. The rules have now changed. And so all throughout my progression, going from UMA forward, it's been, and for me, it started to be what is this relationship with audience? How do they fit into narrative, not just they're here because they're here? How do I not feel entitled to an audience? How do I feel that I am developing a relationship with audience? And so that work early on, whether I had words for it or not, or the way that I was doing that, turned into a lot of different crafts and tools, depending upon the story world we were in with audience, that then turned into how I've taken paths down designing for fandom and designing for major IP. And because I'm thinking about the audience as a part of the world and them not as a monolith, but as almost like, you know, the citizens of a country. And that also leads into kind of my social, you know, justice belief system that like when we create a theatrical world, we have an opportunity to create the culture we want to see in the world. And that meant like, how do we practice dis, how do we create spaces for disagreement? How do we create space, all those things? And so, yeah, I I did not have words for what I was trying, but I was trying it. And I I've always been really fortunate to have incredible collaborators. And at UMA, which was my theater company in Chicago for seven years, like this is still my, you know, in a lot of ways, one of my artistic families. I go back there, I'm going back there in a week to Chicago, because I just, it's a special place in my heart. And I'm gonna actually see uh Theater of the Mind, which is David Burns' show that I've seen before, but um is happening at the Goodman. Um, Charlie Miller is working on it and is a colleague of mine. And and um, and I'm just and yeah, and I go back to Chicago and and there is a yeah, there's it was an artistic home where I definitely needed to leave at a certain point, was ready to leave. But yeah, I was starting then with some incredible designers. There's a designer, Brian Sidney Bembridge, who was my collaborator. He's an incredible scenic and lighting designer. Um, and we did almost all of our my shows at UMA together. He was just an incredible designer. And he, I tend to like people in the room who are gonna challenge me on whatever. Like, challenge me on design, challenge me on on staging, challenge me on whatever it is. And some of those production, you know, like we cast Audrey Francis, now the artistic director of Steppenwolf, was I was one of the first people to cast her in Chicago. And she was in our shows. You know, like I look back to those collaborators and we were really experimenting with what I would now call environmental theater as opposed to immersive theater. I try to use different words, and I would say the audience was within the environment. They did and they mattered, but we weren't um, they weren't and also sometimes the way they entered the space was uh an intention for them to physically follow the path of the narrative. But yeah, it was environmental for sure.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Aaron Powell So how do you then I'm sure you have a very good definition. How do you define the difference between immersive, environmental, site responsive, site-specific? Like you, you're you're this is your work now. Like this is your day to day.

SPEAKER_03 21:46

So yeah, yeah. I mean, look, here's the way I look at it. Uh my words now, the words I use for what I do now is I have created a craft I call immersive involvement. So I think there are many, I I I've been around this field enough and in how we and and by this field, like the field includes escape rooms, the field includes theme parks, the field includes immersive spaces, the field includes uh um what, like retail, the field includes immersive theater, the field includes um all I mean, it and I've been in all of those rooms, right? And so we have a lot of different words for what we do. And one of the things that I feel strongly about having come up at a period of time where I've Was also speaking in transmedia conferences, which there was a huge movement of that. And transmedia kind of fell apart because everyone was fighting about the word. And I was like, okay, we cannot. And there's a friend of mine, Jay Bushman, who said he's yelled out loud at one of the first immersive design conferences. So nerdy. Not him, us being at this immersive conferences. I remember him yelling out. I think of it, I tell him this all the time him yelling out, like, we cannot let the word immersive go the way of transmedia, which is like, we can't fight about it to make it like to try to be right. And so, and also like, you know, people get so frustrated now. Like, you know, you can watch a commercial and it tells you the toilet is immersive, right? And like, but this car is so immersive, this podcast is so immersive. What I like to do is say, okay, that word to me, and it being used on everything right now, what I think it denotes culturally is people's desire to feel presence. I think that people want to feel present in their lives and they don't know how.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Amen.

SPEAKER_03 23:40

They want to feel alive.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:43

And I don't think that technology is the problem. I don't think anything is the problem. I think it is a cultural moment we are in. I don't like to look at the demon of it. It is, it is where we are, right? So, what I think then is for me, my particular craft is what I call immersive involvement, which is I am interested in leveraging immersive tools to involve an audience with the story, with each other, and in their own lives. That's what I'm making, right? Now, that doesn't mean that sometimes I don't get hired by a client to make something and I'm like, okay, what you really want. And so I spend most of my time working with client when I work with a client or a colleague or a partner or a piece of IP, really drilling in when they say immersive, what do they mean?

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:32

And what I'm really asking is, what is the relationship they want to develop with their audience? And once I can figure out that, then I'm like, okay, then we should use this bucket of tools. But you don't really care about that bucket of tools, right? And where I'm fortunate in my career, because of my curiosity and and good fortune of being in a lot of different rooms, is I've I've worked in this space having to use a million different languages, literally, like internationally different languages, and everything from nonprofits to big Mickey Mouse ears, right? Like, and small, scrappy site specific on a subway, and then like site specific, like through a massive federal park, right? Like there and and the partners you have in all of that require you to find different words to develop these relationships. And so I think the words immersive becomes the path. Like I think it's the gateway drug to what is it you really want. Right. Like that's what I think. I'm like, I'm not gonna resent it, I'm not gonna, but like what do you really want? And yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

When do you do can you recognize like the tipping point for you? Like when it was like there was something that like shifted everything for you, and you've just kind of been on a r on a runaway train ever since. Kind of is there something that sticks out as like, oh yeah, that that piece right there really opened the door fully to me. No, no, not at all. So did this again, I'm just I'm kind of asking just because like we talked about the moment of like when you stop making theater that has immersive experiences inside of it, and then when you're just making not just, I shouldn't even say that, because you're making these um these massive things that are no longer about a play as a centralizing event.

SPEAKER_03 26:31

I guess I would disagree in that I'm always creating a play.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_03 26:36

The plays that I make now have 6,000 pages of script and tracked through spreadsheets and pluralistic storytelling. So I would say that what I do now, I call what I do being an immersive showrunner. I think it's much closer to creating TV shows than it is to creating theater, but it is live and physical. So there is a part of that. And to just say what I do now, there's because maybe it should be said, is like I have a part of my practice and my work where we are developing original IP that are immersive projects. That is me basically saying, look, location-based entertainment, which is basically immersive shows, is the largest growing entertainment sector in the world. It is where money is going. And what is happening is there is not enough content to fulfill the audience desire. People want experiences over things. This has been going on for a while, but they also want depth and they don't just want surface. So just before COVID, this was absolutely escalating. And you could go down a block in New York and every other store storefront was a pop-up, you know, experience this, experience that, the museum of this, the museum of that. And even then we were nearing a tipping point culturally, which was people were going, like all the marketing statistics were saying, like, these all feel the same. People aren't going to pay money for them. And not only that, it's not sticking. And so what makes something sticky is depth. What makes something sticky is dramaturgy. What makes something sticky is when I matter, right? And so I think that the dramaturgy of it for me is really important always. And I liken that back to like, it's just very different dramaturgy than a play. So I still feel like I'm very deeply in a practice that actually has its roots in some like dramaturgy, but it is literally different dramaturgical structures. And the same ones don't work. And so what often happens in immersive is someone who makes movies or someone who makes plays or someone who makes marketing events or whatever it is they do, they make every they may make that immersive experience with an audience the same way they've made these other things. And that's okay. But then they don't have all the tools of that particular dramaturgy and craft with the audience. And so where my nerdy brain has been is obsessive around that dramaturgy, which now matters when I'm making, you know, something for 350 people to go to space or in a galaxy far, far away. Or, you know, we're right now making a project called Club Holmes, which is a multiverse of Sherlock Holmes with a jazz club, which every song the singer sings is a different mystery, and you follow those. Or, you know, completely different things like fornicated, which when you asked what was the tipping point. So it was commissioned by American Repertory Theater um in 20, 2010 is when it happened. 2010, it's when I was there. Um, so I went, we were a third year of Columbia. I was really fortunate in that um through Anne, I was introduced to Punch Drunk and I'd known about their work. But like, I but like again, was such a the magic moment of sleep no more in Boston for me was not like, oh, this show is changing my life. It was actually, I will never forget the first day on site. And they showed me their chart, and I very quickly was like, oh, I get it. Okay, so we need to go up here and do this. And they literally, I will never forget Colin Nightingale and Stephen Dobby looking at me and being like, wait, you understand this? I was like, no, this is the way my brain works. This is what I've been doing. And so it was the first time I actually felt relief as a creative, because I'd always felt like people felt like my vision was too ambitious, but I didn't feel like an ambitious person. It just to me felt like story lived beyond one stage. And so when suddenly I was working with artists who had only lived outside of one stage, I felt actually at ease. And so I was working on Sleep No More. I became the staff director for the first American cast of Sleep No More and was really proud to bring Punch Drunk's work to life when figure out a dramaturgy to train new people. Like that was kind of what I did. And I worked a lot with the designers and Felix Barrett, who's incredible, and Maxine Doyle, whose choreography is like just extraordinary. But I worked a lot with Stephen Dobby, who was the sound designer, still their sound designer and a dear immensely important for those shows.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:23

And like one of my dear friends and colleagues. He actually worked on my thesis at Columbia. And um, and you know, I and I just spoke the language. I like understood the language. But they weren't, they, they, you know, it was also a great moment having come out of grad school to realize that all immersive is not the same because they didn't really care about story. That's not their interest. That's not a bad thing. That's not their creative interest. Their creative interest at the time, and I think it's continued to evolve in the last couple of years, definitely. But it, it, you know, they came from kind of a music and DJ background. And so their interest was this like awe. They wanted people to feel a sense of awe together, is what I felt. And that's a very, that's very specific and really cool and requires diff particular tools, right? Again, going back to like what are the tools for what this immersive is. And at the time, I was working on my thesis, which was Black Snow, which was an immersive musical that we were creating at Columbia. And then I was living in Boston halftime, and I was like seeing a lot of music, and I grew up a big fan of live music. And so um, I had this idea for a project. And when I was going and seeing live music in Boston, I was seeing all these people my age. So I was in my mid-30s then, mid to early 30s. So my age, who were holding their phone and and in and at the show, and and they and it felt to me similar to how I felt, which was like, okay, that you know, I see myself, it was born in 79. Like, I'm too young to avoid the phone. Like the phone will be a part of my life.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

But you remember a time.

SPEAKER_03 33:13

But I was in college without email. And therefore, I didn't form with this as a part of my being, but it is now about to become a primary part of my being. And how does it impact the way I relate to people? And most of the work I was seeing, and most of the language in theater was like, the end of theater will come by these machines. And I was like, and my way of approaching any of those things is nothing is that. Like the world that that has never gotten us anywhere. I instead was curious. I was like, well, what is the relationship between my phone, me standing in a rock concert, the live music? How is it changing me? And so we, I got together a bunch of playwrights. I asked them to write seven scenes. I said, two of the scenes need to be silent because they're happening while a band is playing. And I was like, and this has to be scenes of someone having a revelation during a rock concert. Like their life changes. I was like, that's all I care about. And so we got back like, I think 300 pages of script and we started pairing it into the thing that became what was originally called Fornicated from the Beatles, and then became a project called Fornicated that changed my relationship to how technology works in my work. And um, a colleague of mine who was a sound designer taught himself how to build a coding platform, Will Pickens. And we, this is back in the days where, like, you know, no AI. So we built a code, we built a platform where so audience members would buy a ticket and um they would, we would text with them. They would pick a fan, not the band, a fan they were following, which was a character we had written. And we were, we were directing invisible performers on this platform to perform these characters. And, you know, one care, and we were testing and learning about like, okay, well, this texts every four seconds, but this character is going to text you back like four sentences, like four words once a week, right? Like, and then we built all of these characters' worlds online in Facebook. We were just experimenting with like, who are we in this and how, if we develop relationships with audience this way, will they show up to a live show differently? And it was game changing. Like everything about it, everything about it taught me so much. And it was, it was definitely a turning point for me. Because then what ended up happening, which was my belief or my thesis, was if you deal with, I'm picking up my phone now, if someone could see me, if you deal with, you know, how we if if theater going back and art is reflecting back to us what it is to be human, what it is to be human now, we all hold this thing in our hand. We are bots now. We have this as a part of our being. Even when we don't use it, it is a part of the way we relate. I am speaking to you through a platform right now that is digital. And to pretend that it is not a part of the way I am humaning requires me to shut things down that sometimes takes more work for our audience members. And so if I could create much like I'm trying to take care of the audience, right, and develop that relationship, if I could develop a relationship with an audience where they understood we were going to deal with the thing in their hand. And slowly, because the story needed them to and us to, all of us two, we would put it away. I watched audience members put their phone away without me ever having to ask. And so this was also me experimenting with like the developing relationship with an audience, that we are much like we develop a relationship on stage of a character, we have to develop the actions and relationship with an audience with the same care. If I saw an actor on stage who had just been told, walk from here to there, stand there, and then sit down, that would be bad staging. I would be like, that is an actor who has no direction. We do that to audiences all the time. And so for me, technology and all of these things just became additional tools. And that show was a real turning point for me. The ecstasy that I saw happen in the crowd during that show. I still have fans from that show from nine years, 10. I guess now it's like 15 years ago. Like I met someone recently who was like, I've been following you since fornicated. I was like, what? You know, you know, we did six shows of it. So yeah, so it it it's it opened up for me, I think that that craft and also me figuring out it we did it with a different band every night. It allowed me to do the thing I love, which was relate to new artists, but also start to think about what is the dramaturgy and immersive architecture that is needed to allow for life to happen.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

How do you I'm gonna get real nerdy for a second because do it. Will I will try and talk to you all day, every day about this because this is where my interest is as well. How do you sell, and I don't like using this word, but how do you sell the idea when this seems like more work for people who are overworked? How do you how do you get this idea across to people who are I'm just talking like either theater, theater owners, people that work in the theater? The the very traditional way the theater has been made for thousands of years, and anybody that comes in to try to disrupt that and have more, how do you how do you how do you get them to buy in to do it?

SPEAKER_03 38:47

Well, I don't always, right? And I also think I opened my aperture. And I think the thing I started that the thing I would say is that rather than approaching it as like theaters don't want to change as a systems brain, I think, well, the institution of theater and people holding on to their jobs is literally built for them to succeed at staying within budget and not disrupting their system. One could say the same thing of operations at Disney, right? Every place is built to sustain. And people have jobs and they have families and they want to go home and they want to do good at their job so they can go home and they can take care of their family and they can have the personal life they want to have. Like that is the human, that is humanity in the US, at least. Let's say.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:35

Right. And so I think much like I would approach someone who's working at a national park, and I go, look, this person's job is to tell me I cannot have people march through this field. That is their job. It is not their fault. It is not because they are coming for me. That they do, I do not deserve them to say yes, right. I approach it going, okay, what are your needs? Let me tell you what I'm trying to do. Right. And what that meant for many, many years, and I'm learning the ramifications of this now, is like I learned to twist and adjust and fit within a lot of structures. And if you could see me now, I'm literally physically twisting and adjusting.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

And yes, yes.

SPEAKER_03 40:18

And that's what I did, right? So, but at the same time, what I was doing and imagining and and the financial reality of being a creative has always been uh something I've grappled with. Like I had to figure out how I would financially take care of myself and how I wanted to, if I was going to be a leader, financially take care of others. And so and so I think that also I began to begin. I I don't I think I learned pretty quickly it was heartbreaking, but I had a couple of heartbreaking breakups, I think, with theater. And it was less to say I hate theater. It was more for me to say, this is not the whole world. I cannot be in a inner relationship in which this institution has become my whole world because it's not. And in fact, I don't always feel like plays are made for me. And I go back to thinking how I felt when I went to grad school audition, where I was like, I'm not interesting enough for this. I'm not smart enough for this. And imagine how an audience feels when they go into something and we make something and like we're talking down to them, or like their or their perception, like they're wrong, right? I maybe I was wrong, but like, so I think that for me, it's not like I'm so grateful to so much of what theater at its best is, and I am so aware of its limitations, and I choose not to blame the institutions for that. It's not their fault. I mean, and I know plenty of people in those institutions who are, you know, we have co-producers in our current slate, like Proctor's Collaborative in Schenectady, New York, and the Arsht in Miami and the DCPA in Denver and Lit Immersive in Seattle, and I know I'm forgetting some places, but we have just we have partners who are trying to solve this with us, but they're not our only partners, right? I'm not saying to them it is your job to solve immersive for theater. I'm saying you're a part of that. And then also we're bringing in investors, and then also we're bringing in real estate, and then we're also bringing in other players because it can't be on the institute institutions that are funded the least to make this big change. Mostly because, like, I don't have time. Like I'm getting older while they're getting older, you know?

SPEAKER_01 42:52

You alluded to, and I I'd like to talk as comfortably as you want to talk about it, the accident. Because you talked about finances, you talked about being able to take care of others while also taking care of yourself. And this is something that obviously, you know, we don't talk about. We don't talk about finances, we don't talk about insurance, we don't talk about health. This is it's verbotent to talk about these things um because everything is already so difficult. Why do we want to talk about other difficult things? But I'd really love to hear, um, I'd love for you to be able to share what you can, what you want to, about that experience and how how you managed to get out of that and what it has done long-term for you now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:35

So 2012 was a crazy year. Uh, in 2012, I think I finished my thesis finally, my paper, because I'd been working coming out of grad school in 2010. Fornicated was supposed to per was premiering again. We were doing another iteration of it. And um a wall fell on me and crushed me uh to concrete. It was uh 17-foot uh concrete and wood, uh not concrete, uh metal and wood wall that was structural for a set. Um and I won't go into how it happened and because it's heartbreaking and not really where the the story worth for here. But I so the wall was coming towards me. It was at uh at the Atlantic Theater, a stage two and uh an NYU production, and it was after the show had opened. And um You know, I spent it's funny because when people look at my resume, right? Like I've been working. But the people who are very, very close to me, and I mean like even some people who were very close to me, like my best friend, it was a couple of years ago where we were having a conversation and she looked at me and she was like, You never told me. You weren't telling me what was happening. Because I would basically take a job for three months, and then I would have a surgery and I would be out for four months and I wouldn't tell anyone. And I was living in Brooklyn, and I was just literally, I was in, there's a period of a good four to five years where I had about anywhere from 20 hours to 40 hours a week of doctor's appointments. So the wall, I had permanent brain damage, but it also damaged my nervous system on my whole right side. It um broken my palate and cut my face wide open, but also like damaged nerves that go up to my neck and to my vision. So I couldn't read for four years for longer than like 15 minutes. And you know this, but most people who know me know this. My house is just filled with books. Like that's what I live with. Like I walked into Brian Kuhlig's house and felt at home. Heaven. Heaven. Um, and at the time in Brooklyn, I lived above a used bookstore. And one of the things I would do at night is I would go downstairs because it was open. When it was cl when it was closed, I had access to it. And I would sit in the bookstore. Just sit in books because it made me feel better. Yeah, it was everything that I had believed I was defined by, kind of went out the door. I was used to relying on my brain. And again, I'm fortunate in that I was high functioning. And so I'm still very clearly very high functioning. But that required, for me to function, it required me. I mean, I experienced a lot of aphasia. So I had a couple of, which is um, when you can't put words together. So I would be in rehearsals directing, and I had a couple of designers who are my dear friends to this day who knew and I would look at them and they would know if I was struggling with words and they might step in. You know, I was pretty good at covering it. I think as a I think I had a lot of fears about being a female leader and a female director, that any sort of frailty meant I couldn't get there. Um and yeah, uh, I then worked my butt off to get my strength back and my brain back. And it, and every time I had a surgery, it was kind of I would go back steps. And I had incredible doctors. Um, but like the kind of like poeticness of it, right, that one could tell the story of is that uh so I'd written my thesis on synesthetic symphonies. That's what my thesis was titled. And about two years into this wall, and I'm in, you know, we're trying to find the right visual therapy and why is the visual stuff not working and whatever. I meet this guy who's a specialist, Dr. Alan Cohen. He's incredible. I think he might be retired now, but at CUNY. And he mostly works with veterans and football players. And he was like, Look, you're having what these episodes you have, you're having synesthetic seizures, which basically means that your sensory functioning is shutting down because your body, anytime there's any sort of pain and your sensory functioning is now fundamentally different. It is the thing that was different than before the wall. And I looked at him and I remember weeping because I had felt crazy. I'd felt like a crazy person because I could code really well. And everyone, like, my face was, you know, I could, I could hide things and whatever. But it literally felt like I was a different person living in the world. I was a different human. And I didn't know how to explain that to anyone. And I kept trying to, and I just felt crazier. And he was like, no, this is why veterans, this is what veterans have, the football players have, because your body is reconnecting the synesthetic response. And so I would have times where I'd have these seizures and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So literally, this way that like I'd written my thesis. No one told me to write my thesis on synesthetic symphonies prior to this happening. This particular way that my brain worked was the thing that was impacted. And I think now, like, I do not think, and I hate the words everything happens for a reason. Cause fuck that.

SPEAKER_00 49:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:12

I think there's reason you get to make. If you can find reason and you can make reason out of these things that happen. And I think that there have been phases, and I think I still have to consider how I take care of myself very differently. But ultimately, what it required me to do is I'd always had an inclination and a thoughtfulness around different ways of processing experiences. But now from day to day, the literal way I felt in the world was different. And so maybe it's what helps me design experiences for a variety of cognition. And, you know, I am, I have been included in and a part of different disabled communities and considered, and and, you know, am considered disabled, but also realize my privilege in the way I function. And yet also like, you know, there have been phases where it's been, it was really hard. And so I'd always been adamant about how we took care of the people I work with and have really had to reckon with how much when you want to do that, you have to build those systems because they don't exist. Like I cannot express enough how much time I spend with my business partners looking at contracts to figure out how we can create space where we're taking care of people and also take care of ourselves. And the systems of this country, let alone entertainment, across the board, are not built that way. And I and I don't even know that it's intentional. It's just anymore. It just is, right? And so when you're re so, like I've had to now, I think of it all the way to how we build our contracts, how we built this first slate we've built, which has a creative pool involved, how a shared creative pool for our creators. I mean, all those things, but like it's still not enough. Like I never will feel like it's enough. And yeah, it's it's it's I think it was part of my also transition in realizing how much theaters could be there for me or for whomever.

unknown 51:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:37

Reminded of the conversation I had with Perone where she was talking about how she has to negotiate into her contracts child care. 100% that that isn't taken from her already small pay. And so her running the organization that she runs now, lead leading the organization that she runs now, of saying, like, no, we have to make this happen for all.

SPEAKER_03 51:59

We And so what is it?

SPEAKER_01 52:00

What does that mean that we can't have great, we don't get to have that because we get to have the person.

SPEAKER_03 52:04

And you have to make those decisions, right? I mean, I think that's the hard part as a leader is I would, you know, I think I have let definitely experienced the moments of like, it doesn't mean suddenly you have twice the money to do twice the things, right? So the structures aren't built that way. So you you are always making choices. And um it's one of the reasons, you know, I have three business partners, all women, two of whom have families. And like part of the reason in building the business that I have now, the way I did, and partnering with them was like, these are people who value being human. And like, okay, your kids are the kids are part of your life and you need the week off because this is what's happening. Okay, we still get shit done. And like, we still are leav there, the three of them are premiering as we speak, premiering a film at South by, right? Like, you know, like I I think, you know, it was an interesting time. I was teaching at the um Playwrights Horizons later on at NYU, especially during the election 2016 and kind of me too leading up to that. And um I I had been very like the way I'm talking about the wall now, like that I I mean, you I never talked to you guys about it. I didn't want anyone to know. I thought it was a dirty secret. I thought I would be, I would, I would, no one would want to work with me. I thought like all of these horrible things. And like, I didn't think that because my own brain, I'd I'd watched it happen. I mean, it there are people who walked away from me during that time out of fear that it would be catching, you know, like that's kind of what but that's just that's humanity. It's it's some people can and some people can't, right? And um, but I watched these students I had and their incredible bravery. And I and I had come up in a time as a female director where and I remember saying to them, I was sitting in a class and I can think of the students. And I remember saying, you know, I just realized today how fast things are changing. I came up in a time where I never thought that I could ever acknowledge that this that I always thought I was gonna have to train young female directors to like play in a boys' club. I came up in Chicago, right? I thought that was gonna be a like, you know, not you should, you should never take abuse, but like you got to get yourself out of that situation in all those ways I'd been formed. And similarly, to hide any frailty, don't, don't let them see it. Right. And I was sitting there with them and I said, like, I'm the first person here to say to you, like, own that vulnerability and own that, those needs. And I realized I'm not doing that myself. I said, You, you are, it's why when teaching is good, it's really good. Of like, I'm realizing I didn't think that that was for me and that it's going to ultimately, it has ultimately made me a better artist and a better leader. But it was a very scary thing and has only happened in phases that I started to share it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 55:19

Thank you for for being able to do that. I appreciate that. I'm sure everybody else appreciates as well because the stigma of God, I mean, I can't believe it, but I I also can believe that, yeah, people don't know how to deal with it. So they just kind of bail.

SPEAKER_03 55:36

But I think it's how people, you know, I think people don't know how to deal with grief. And I think so much of the work I'm making or I make now is how do we live in discomfort? How do we live in disagreement? How do we live in joy? I think we're just as afraid of joy as we are of fear and of anger. Like I know most people right now, the minute they feel joy, they are prepared for the floor to crash at, you know, like so. How do we that that's why I think immersive is what we crave. We crave ways to practice behavior in a safe way and in a way that doesn't shine a spotlight on me and make me show people that, you know? And so I now feel so deeply that this is my way. And I, and I also found that yeah, I I I think I don't, again, I I think it's easy to blame and I just and sure, I'm not, I'm not perfect. Like I've been there are plenty of people I've been angry at in my life and felt frustrated with for their small thinking. But like in this instance, I think most of the time people are doing the best they can. You know?

SPEAKER_01 56:49

I I have undergraduate directors in this program that I'm teaching at and date or female identifying.

unknown 56:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01 56:56

And it's I'm so happy because as is the case with this podcast of trying to find women directors and women of color directors, it is hard because it is a it's still, even though the change is happening and very gladly it is, it's still a boys' club. It's still a white man's club out there. So I mean, you've you have your own company. You you formed your own company. And going in and I don't know if you're pitching or if they're pitching to you, or like, what does it mean to be in these spaces? You know, I'm just I'm just thinking, I'm just thinking of my students and thinking like, God, they need to come and like, you know, meet you and and talk with you.

SPEAKER_03 57:37

Well, I I first should say, right, like I don't I I function in a lot of different rooms. I have benefited from being the special guest star in a lot of rooms. I'm like the special immersive guest star. And that being said, I think that I have started to realize at the age I am at, the rooms I want to be in, and I am more selective about where I want to put my energy. And I think there is, you know, if I think of the last 15 years, the last 20 years of being a create, a working creative or working creative producer.

SPEAKER_01 58:18

Creative. You're a creative.

SPEAKER_03 58:19

Sure, sure. Yeah. No, I mean I am. Like I literally I know I literally am. I get hired for it. I get I this is what I do, right? We can talk, maybe it's artist is the tricky word for me, but I think that it's a complicated. I also find generationally like it is a whole complicated thing because I run a company that is for female leaders who are um black, brown female-owned company are very adamant around where and how money moves to women and in particular women of color or non-binary people and non-binary people of color. And so, you know, I think one of the things that I will say is that I do think that it is not easier, but there's more of it. And I don't live in a primarily theater context, right? And so I think that I live in a lot of different contexts. And that's neither good nor bad. It just is. I work with a lot of men, I work with a lot of women, I work with binary non-binary, I work with a lot of different people. The beauty of immersive, the way I create it or narrative immersive, is it's pluralistic storytelling, which means there's not a hierarchy of storytelling, which means that there are multiple stories happening simultaneously. And that means that there is more abundance of narrative. Um, and one would argue that that is that kind of non-hig hierarchical storytelling structures are have tended to be more feminine storytelling tools. But that doesn't mean, you know, but then like I'll say, like that work and how it impacted building Star Wars work was incredibly empowering to realize the strength of that and to realize, I mean, and that team was primarily led by women. Like my my incredible leadership. Yeah, Scott Trowbridge was a leader, but Sarah Thatcher, Anne Morrow Johnson, Anisha Deshmani, like these women were leading that project for years, Wendy McClellan Anderson before I was on it and continued. Oh, yeah. Like that was a women-led project. But Disney, of course, is, you know, it was Disney and also, but like I was fortunate to come on at the end and carry a football to the end line. And the teams that built that, I mean, it's just so expansive and some of the best experiences of my life. But yeah, that was led by women. And I think that interestingly or uninterestingly, there's a lot of women leading incredibly great work in some of these larger spaces who are more comfortable with the positions that they're not always going to get credit. And so I think the thing that is happening still is a lot of is men are sometimes more comfortable getting credit. That's not a negative to it's just structurally that's, you know, that's happened more often.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:22

Why you have a problem saying you're an artist?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:25

Maybe. Maybe that's part of it. But I I I think I think part of it is just I just felt so normal compared to like all these crazy brilliant people I know.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:38

You know, waking up every morning and feeling an artist. I'm just gonna put on my own. I know it's dumb.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:43

And I know it's not actually true, but like I think of these incredible artists I know, and and I think I'm a facilitator, and I'm a and I and I definitely have visions and I vision of the work I create. Like I'm well aware, but I do think and it and I think it's generational. I think there's something around like I look like Paula Mendoza is this activist artist I know. And I just look at her and I'm like, she just like is an artist at her. Issa Davis. Like they are artists at their core. Like I adore them, I love them, I think they're brilliant. I look at what they do, and I and obviously they're creative producers, like they make work. But I, you know, and so it's taken me a long time to figure out what that how to respect that in myself, how to honor that. Probably will keep to working on that, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:36

I'm still waiting on the death of a salesman with the four different families in a in a house. So no four houses.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:44

You need four houses. Yeah, you gotta go between the houses. Look, when we were in grad school, I was cooking up all sorts of things, and they were ambitious things, and I've made things of that scale now.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:55

And like, you know, there's gonna be a big death of a salesman, it's just gonna happen on Broadway. Not with me. It's happening right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:02

Well, I mean, the anniversary will be coming up in 15, 20 years. So there we go.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:08

Yeah, you know, I what we're getting to do, what's been really interesting right now in my work is there's the original work we're doing, and then I get so then another part of my practice is I get hired by like major IP to build experiences for their world, which is really cool. Like, you know, whole narrative worlds, and then go, okay, what is the experience that is going to be fully narrative? Not just like themed and not just an pop-up, but like a real genuine space for humaning. And then also I'm starting to have opportunities to revisit theater and look at which plays or musicals I think have the opportunity for the dramaturgy of an audience and basically pitch and say, Hey, I I this is the production of this I could see that could still honor what this play is. I'm not trying to change the play, but also narratively, I can see how the audience matters. And here's how we could do this. And so I've definitely right now been revisiting. I mean, it's not dead of a salesman, but revisiting some of those titles that like I felt like it's just funny, right? Like a decade ago, I was trying to have some of those conversations, and theaters and theater makers weren't ready. And now they are. And, you know, and I have, I think that I been as invested in the craft of immersive dramaturgy as some of these incredible experts are in the craft of musical dramaturgy or play dramaturgy. So like I can really speak to what a partnership looks like as we start to make that work. Um, but it's been interesting to like be back in some of those conversations that are more traditionally theater again and remember those structures that I just haven't been around as much.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:12

And they haven't necessarily changed either.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:14

They haven't, but they also have. The parts that have are like if 10 years ago, five years ago, I tried to have a conversation with a major licensor of plays about what I was trying to do. I don't care how much cred I have. They would have been like, nope, you're gonna break it.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:31

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:31

And that's not because of them. Again, it's not a fault thing. It's because a lot of creatives have broken plays. They've been like, well, I don't care about the dramaturgy. I'm just gonna like put it on a spaceship. And it's like, well, that's not the point. Right. That's that's not immersive, right? That's just what you want to do. And that's okay, but that's not this. And so I think that they are ready for that conversation. Um, and uh is really special. And we have partners now, you know. I've I have some colleagues now who like have been in theater while I haven't as much and have been living in like the spaces in between, um, who are helping to translate that and helping to work with us to translate that. And they're, you know, things like Masquerade, which is running right now, which is a, I call it like an incredible gateway drug for people to really see a step forward in the way traditional project traditional theatrical work. works can start to live in the world.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:38

So when are you writing your book?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:40

Well you know that do you know this story which is that I have 300 pages of a book. I bet you that I that I and I had written it just before the wall and then I'd started writing it just before the wall wall happened. And then one of our then I dictated because I couldn't read or write I dictated chapters to someone and they wrote them. And then I put them in a vault and I just because of the trauma of all of it just couldn't look back at it. And so I've taken it out multiple times to like revisit it. And the problem is is like my thinking just keeps evolving. It's not like that stuff doesn't matter anymore. I even went on a fellowship to Brazil and a Sakata fellowship to like work on it. And then I got there and it was 2016 and all I was doing instead was like writing briefs on stories for culture change. You know, it was like a much more important uh urgency. Um so yeah so I I have it I think my goal is right now I'm really my time we've we you know my the the the gift we have just earned is um you know we in 2016 I got a fund from a small fund from an organization called Pop Culture Collaborative where I was like hey this immersive industry is an actual entertainment industry and it's it's about to bring in billions upon billions of dollars. And I would what if rather than it being led by the same people who lead in entertainment, it could be led by women, people of color, differently like how do we do that? How do we get ahead on the business side of it as creatives? And so did a bunch of research and and built out business models and learned about business modeling and proformas and all that stuff. Not because I was like now I want to do this, but I think business is not limiting. It's generative if you look at it as a creative. And I was like, you know, we do this all the time we say you have a stage and it's this size and you need to make it and you get five performers and that's the limitation. Well why wouldn't we then start making a project and understand some of the financial limitations or the structures or what the best way to do that is. So what what I learned and in doing all the research was that the way to crack open this field, if we were launching a new field, was we needed to raise money around a slate as opposed to one project. And as I started to do research, you know, when you look at the film industry when it launched or even even plays like a playwright would get kind of a commissioned or taken under by a theater and many projects among other things like a season at a theater in a way is a slate, all this way of thinking where we realized where organizations realized if we don't every time have to like capitalize one project and make it everything, then the work then more of the work can get forward. And that we hadn't done that in immersive put this proposal together and back in 2017 like took myself and started getting introduced to investors and going around everyone was like this is great. You're too early and I was like I'm so tired of hearing that you know like okay and then when I you know we didn't talk about it here but I moved out to LA I I had run my own studio in New York and I moved out to LA for I got kind of um myself and my staff we were acquired to launch an entertainment studio out here in 2019. And then by by June 2020 for a variety of reasons we all understand it had it had shuttered and um I did some work out here and then literally got a phone call of like hey can you be in Orlando in three weeks and I was fortunate that that team invited me to be a part of making a galaxy far, far away. And after that when I knew I was doing work for Disney and consulting for them in Imagineering, which was never where I thought it would be like I'd never not in a negative way I'd never worked in theme parks incredible. And so I was consulting I was a creative consultant in imagineering that word creative again. And I knew it was I was going to leave when I started to talk to my now business partners I was like look I can build a client facing business again. You know, I didn't have that but like we could do that part. But like I the that being a primary thing is not going to actually move the field forward or move the needle forward. What's going to move the needle forward is a slate of projects. And even then like they were so it was such a different experience of having these incredibly supportive business partners all of who'd worked in like politics, TV and film being like, are you sure? And I was like and here's why and they were like you are sure and they weren't and it was hard what I was saying we were going to try to do. I was like we're not going to go just make one show. We're gonna go pitch to people that we're gonna come up with six shows and we're gonna make them financially viable and we're gonna vet them for business and we're gonna do all these things and make them creative. And they said yes. And so we in our business partnership myself and one of my business partners Nicole Golofsky we focused mostly on the merch who she's runs both sides, but the media side and the immersive side with me and we went out to raise money and we have successfully closed you know several million dollars around developing original IP for this slate. And it's been harder than I could have ever imagined but my job right now this goes back to is to build those projects. My job right now is to write them to build them to build the immersive dramaturgy to lead the writer's rooms which are creators' rooms is what we call them like very much like a showrunner to do the early development on a bunch of those projects and that's and you know and not do all the operational and producing things and once again I'm in this moment of a gift I've earned but that is my response that I that I need to take and how to how to really invest in that. So the book will have to come after that.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:44

Okay, fine. Um a question I always ask it toward the end of the podcast given to me by my wonderful student Emma Hart who cornered me in the hallway one day and dropped this bomb that has just been a great thing to think about ever since. She didn't realize how deep the question was can you think of a show not that you've done but that you've seen that you were you were an audience member in that changed the way that you thought of yourself or thought of yourself in theater meaning there was Michael before this performance and then there was a Michael after this performance and it changed something.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:27

There are two okay great I prepped ah I knew it there are two and I don't think they changed how I think of myself in theater I think I I I'll just say for me the world of theater is like all the I know it's all the things. So one is project called Internal by Enter Gund, like this Belgian company that I saw in 2009 I got a fellowship from the National Theatre of Scotland to go to Edinburgh and see all the immersive shows. It was the worst two weeks of my life the worst wow I was abused for two weeks I was like thrown on pillow you know it was just it was like everything about immersive immersive oh okay not not that Scotland was bad just immersive theater no no no no no Scotland National Theater Scotland was amazing. I was such a huge fan no it was um it was just being immersed at sure good lesson in that but then this show which I'm not going to go into was like my first lesson in the most immense depth of craft in an experience where normally I would be deeply uncomfortable and angry and I came out changed and I've still thought about it to this day. So there's that and it was so it was my that was my lesson in craft. When I describe it it's it sounds you know it's basically you go on a you get like asked out on a date and it sounds like my worst nightmare not the asking on a date part but like that being in a show but everything about it was so craftful and real. There's so much I know people who went through it who like ended their relationship. It like it was really but the craft of it was so significant. So there's that then I saw there's a project Albany Park Theater project and Third Rail collaborated on a project called Learning Curve. They have a show right now called Port of Entry that's also exceptional but Learning Curve I still remember it's an immersive project that they did in school with students with high school students and I still remember this scene in a bathroom having done many scenes in bathrooms myself truly and there was a teenager and she was having a conversation with herself but with me in the reflection of a mirror and she drew on her face on the reflection of the mirror and then learned everything about I I I had felt one of my barriers with immersive was I often felt that there wasn't space to have catharsis because you're feeling so alert that everything that you're on the spot that you're like I can't let go enough to have catharsis. And I realized there were some behavioral things and just craft there that let me really feel that and I was changed. And then the third one changed everything for me was Rise of the Resistance is an attraction in um Galaxy's Edge and I had been brought down to Orlando to work on Starcruiser. I was like hadn't watched all of the Star Wars and I was suddenly I was like in boot camp right I'm like watching all of Star Wars and I'm like whatever and they take us for three days of like okay we're gonna go through the parks and we're and they're like throwing all this at me and we get on that attraction I go on it anytime I can like anytime I'm in the parks and I'm visiting friends and able to go and it was a story. It's theatrical it's theater fundamentally it is exceptional exceptional theater and I was like okay like one can say I don't do theater anymore. I just am I absolutely do theater. You work in all different forms there's revelation of space there's like all the nerdy things we were taught the the tempo the pacing the everything about it and it was extraordinary. And I was like now I I went on that attraction and I had been like boot camping Star Wars and I was like now I care about Star Wars like after that journey. So yeah and I think it's those changed me all in different phases. They're all craft and they're all like very different forms.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:28

You know can I give you my definition of theater yeah the live in-person human experience witnessed by others of phenomena that intentionally create temporary alternate realities.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:47

I love that I'm gonna need you to write it down though because I didn't remember it. Do you want to know the definition of theater that my like I think she was an eight year old niece my she's my cousin's daughter I went to tea to give a talk at her like kindergarten school and she was like it's the human performance of myth of our mythologies and I was like yes I was like okay could you come teach my college students like it was so it is how we perform she said something like it's how we perform and affirm our mythologies.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:23

Beautiful what yes but I like yours no but yours but that's an academic one. That's a that's a much better that's a she was eight like no she she got it right she got it right but no but I think yours is right I think yours is good. I'm into it you're still doing theater you're a theater director you're absolutely doing theater every day.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:43

But I think that word creates boundaries for people I stopped using that word. I I hate that it does yeah but there are words that that create perception words mean things just like immersive does. I mean for many people when I say immersive they're like please no thank you right I think theater unfortunately that word has not stayed in the popular culture.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:07

Yeah it's not stayed relevant.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:09

In the became so hierarchical and so closed door and so limiting that there is such a perception that it is not for me. Yeah I I hate that that's true, but I don't not use it because I'm not proud of being a theater kid or coming up as a dancer in the theater and like all those things. Like that's that's not that it's that I don't use it because I don't want people to be afraid. I want people to feel that the things that we're creating are for them. And if the word we're using makes them feel that limitation, I'm not sure sure that that's my cross to bear that that's what I'm trying to solve. Like I I don't know that I can solve that for theater. I can make things theatrically and so when you so like I don't say it out of shame. I don't say it out of like but I do think we have to acknowledge when there are certain words that for good reason create bias. And that is and and that just happens to not be the landscape I sit in and that word in my landscape has been limiting to audience members. I don't care actually about how people think about me. It's that if it limits going back to my obsession with audience if it limits people thinking that this work could be for them then that's where I became curious about what words were were doing that, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:41

But I think I don't think you're wrong. I think I think you're absolutely right in the term that because when we say theater, people think oh I've got to dress up and go to the museum.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:52

Or they think or they think like I it feel it can feel like homework or they think it's not stories about them or they think it's esoteric or they think it's silly but not silly with them. It's silly at them like all the things yeah all the things that actually can be the great parts of theater and like funny that like those same people what I learned is those same people thousands upon thousands of them go to theme parks and have so much fun when theater happens.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:27

Yeah. They'll uh they'll go and watch whatever is playing by whomever is playing the basketball, the football the soccer they'll they'll go to that and they'll paint their faces and they'll yell and scream and get angry at something and then they'll go home and have had an amazing experience.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:45

Because permission was because there was a permission and now sports has its own limiting permissions right like there's biases around that but like all of these have those limitations certainly so like theme parks have their limitations sports has their limitations but like there is a broader reach in which I would say in sports there was an understanding that the fan matters in theme parks the guest matters in either you could be there or not be there. Yeah I think not for every artist not for every organization but like when you look at the actual dramaturgy of how a play is written very few plays like Our Town there are certain plays that that played with that relationship with audience in a dramaturgical way. Yeah we'll call it in the US theater right but there's a reason why internationally immersive is moving forward much faster has moved forward much faster. Yeah you know like I go speak in the London Experience week in a couple of weeks at the World Experience Conference and like it's just a different level of conversation because the form I think people because we did that you don't have to get past the like fear around all these words in the same way.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:04

I'm serious. I talked to you all day about this and I do want to talk to you about this a lot more. So I know you have some names you did your homework and knew what I was going to ask so I'm gonna ask now it's not about the best work or the or the things that but it's who who deserves more attention? Who who do you think if you could if you could just introduce some people to all of us today that we could all look into who would who would those names be and ultimately I'll try to I'm gonna do something I'm gonna do two things.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:31

One that like you should know Lee Sachwitz her company was called Flora and Fauna now it's called the Storytelling Company but she's an incredible leader in immersive projection work and artistry that I think is incredible based out of Berlin and just an incredible leader and artist. And so I think there's Lee I also think honestly the people that when I wrote down the names they're all imagineers who people won't know about or they were imagineers some of them one in particular I mean I've mentioned some of them you know Anne Morrow Johnson who is now Gensler Sarah Thatcher who's a creative director and is brilliant uh Anisha Dishmany who I got to partner with in creating so much of what Starcruiser was but she was a leader in what that was and then other creators like Owen Knight is this incredible sound designer I got to work with um and then after Starcruiser creators I got to work with like Billy Allman who's an imagineer who's just brilliant he's an I'm gonna say it wrong aestro future biologist something like brilliant just like and then Joseph Lemoyne who's a story writer I I think these are all people who you know one of the extraordinary experiences of I'm fortunate again like I've been the special guest star which has its painful points and it's and it's really lovely points and so many people for good reason imagineering is a dream in their lives. I got the opportunity to work you know when I showed up to do Star Cruiser I'd not worked with one person on that team before not one. Suddenly I was working with hundreds upon hundreds of people very quickly I should also mention two creators making really great immersive work in Orlando right now Kieran O'Connor and Sage Starkey who I worked with on Starcruiser and are now making their own work. They're directors you should be looking out for I think it was an incredible experience and also to realize these were all creatives who are brilliant. I mean I there are so many I can't even name right like that I got to work with and and it was just the most exceptional experience and hey we be you know uh and when I look back now at other projects coming out of that place and the teams I know and watching what they do, it's just starting that they get to be a part of the story. And that's not part of the deal you go inside Disney and you're you're a part of a large something larger than yourself, but they are visionaries. I mean Anne Morrow and Sarah and Wendy McClellan Anderson and Scott Trowbridge and Anisha like I get to go out and talk about this project I made amongst other things and they were the visionaries who among so many others who brought that to life and who carried that football for so long, you know? And it's their visionaries. And we in all of the fields will benefit because of them. We will benefit because our audiences were challenged to experience things in a different way because of these creatives. And so then now they approach all other work with a different experience. I think it's really special.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:47

So those are the people well you're a visionary as well I'm so glad to have gotten you on here and speak with you for longer than we'd planned on sorry um but I really appreciate it and I'm serious I do want to talk to you more and more um about this because I've I've been working on this path as well Michael thank you so much thank you Adam this episode gave you any insight inspiration or even just made you smile please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts for more conversations like this. If you're looking for guidance with a creative challenge or want to advance a dream of your own we'd love to help visit boardofdirectors.org Board of Directors is a global constellation of theater directors dedicated to building community sharing knowledge and transforming the role of the director in the 21st century we convene and curate a fellowship that fosters mentorship artistic inquiry and collective care transcending borders and institutions and traditions until then take care of yourself and take care of each other