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We're still on hiatus, but we recently got a chance to visit the new home of The Willows in LA and talk with Justin Fix and Stephanie Turek of JFI Productions as we toured the new home of one of LA's favorite immersive shows. The show has gotten a glow up in this new production, and fair warning that there are a few audio spoilers of new elements. If you're not deterred by that, come along and explore the new space with us, maybe encounter a real ghost, and get a bonus mansion tour thrown in as part of the bargain.
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We've reached the end.
Of Episode 500 and Season One.
Which means one last word from our host.
See you in Season Two.
(But don't act too surprised when we pop up a few times for some specials between now and then.)
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This one is for the diehards.
On Friday, August 29th, 2025 we held a Launch Party for Episode 500 in the NoPro Discord. We had no idea who would show up.
To our delight Jacob Patterson, who you had a chance to hear in the last part of the marathon, ARGN’s Michael Anderson — who gives us a spoiler-free expectation set on Masquerade, the immersive Phantom currently in previews in New York City, NoPro correspondent Briana Roecks who shares some Spooky Season anticipation for both LA and Las Vegas, and drop-ins from Laura Hall and Cameo Wood as well.
It’s a hangout episode and fair warning: the audio quality is sub-par in the extreme! I’m even on my Airpods because I was so exhausted from editing and being on the Yeti for hours on end that I just jammed the Pods in my ears and forgot how bad they would sound. So if you skip this because it sounds mid, I won’t take offense. This one, as they say, is for the sickos.
But if you do stick around, well: you’re a real one, and all the copious links in the show notes below are going to make sense.
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We start Part 7 off where the show began, way back in Episode ZERO, which we first released on SOUND CLOUD as a pilot for a potential series, with an interview with Annie Saunders of Wilderness, whose The Day Shall Declare It jump started that renaissance era and got the local performing arts world taking things seriously.
Annie and I look back on that, and on the roadblocks that have kept her from making work here at that scale since. And then I talk to some of the other folks who come up in our conversation and those who helped shape the way I thought about and moved through the LA arts scene — like Lauren Ludwig and Monica Miklas of Capital W, and designer Tommy Honton who did so much work on the permitting crisis that hit LA in the wake of tragic events in Northern California in 2016.
And, of course, Jacob Patterson, who ran Think Tank Gallery in DTLA and gave countless projects and artists a home… including this podcast for a while.
One last jaunt through LA for Season One. Because you know we had to.
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And now is the part of the Episode 500 Marathon where we get to some lasts.
In this case, the last Review Crew of Season One.
For this one, which was the last we recorded, and the last thing we officially recorded for Episode 500, LA Reviews Editor Kevin Gossett and Chicago Curator/Remote Editor Patrick McLean join me for a chat that ranges from haunts, to the Golden Age of LA Immersive (appropriate, given where we're going next), and I ask the fellas the questions I've been asking everyone over the course of the marathon: when you first started down this road, did you think it was going to be such a big deal for you?
Plus: Overlook Film Festival's Landon Zakheim takes his turn in this part's Spotlight section.
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Welcome to PART FIVE of the Episode 500 marathon "An Unstructured Conversation About Immersive Theatre," which, really, could also be the title of the whole dang podcast but that might just break the very ontological concept of SEO.
Come to think of it, that might not be a BAD thing.
On this part of the Megasode we touch base with Episode One guests Genevieve Gearhart & Julianne Just of The Speakeasy Society, who are about to launch their new show Family Meal this October, the first new Speakeasy Society show in LA in some time! Plus we're joined by Jay Bushman, who in so many ways, is responsible for us interviewing Gen and Julianne in the first place.
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In Part Four of our celebration of TEN YEARS of NoPro, Noah taps into his alternate-dimensional form as a Morning Zoo radio host, unbeknownst to London curator Shelley Snyder, her London cohort Thomas Jancis, or NYC curator Allie Marotta.
But before that chaos is unleashed, we check in with The Wild Optimists — Ariel Rubin & Juliana Moreno, whose first appearance on the show was way back on episode 38 — and after the Zoo closes its doors for the day, have a quick hangout with Little Cinema’s Jay Rinsky.
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Look: when you do a thirteen or so hour long retrospective on a ten year long project you’re going to wind up with a part that stands out to you as the center of it all, and I knew going into the recording process that the central interview for this part would be that for this run.
The only real question was where to put it and what to pair it with.
There were a lot of options, as over the past few weeks I’ve had a lot of great conversations, but at the end of the day I had to follow my heart…
We lead off with what was supposed to be an interview with Kathryn Yu, Anthony Robinson, and Zay Amsbury — three of the folks who have shaped what No Proscenium into what it is. But the technology had other ideas.
Then: another jaunt through the immersive cosmos featuring Afterhours Theatre Company founder Graham Wetterhahn, IKantKoan’s Jessica Creane, and game designer and researcher Nicholas Fortugno, all of whom both Kathryn and myself traveled aboard the Galactic Starcruiser with.
Episode 500: it's about the friends we made along the way, and the ones we talked into joining us for the ride.
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Welcome to PART TWO of No Proscenium’s Episode 500 Celebrating TEN Years of the NoPro Podcast with the first of three REVIEW CREW MIX TAPES… this first one features SF Curator Brian Resler — whose couch is integral to the origin story of an entirely different website that covers immersive things… our associate producer Parker Sela, who also hails from San Francisco, but who like many a Bay Area kid answered the siren call of LA, our Toronto curator Katrina Lat, who I think may be on a plane to Venice right now, or soon, and Scott Gillies, long time friend of the show who did some special assignment work for us this year in Japan.
And then you get some BONUS POD with friend of the show David Spira of Room Escape Artist and Reality Escape Pod with a VERY NoPro After Dark style segment that, honestly, I thought we’d be saving for like HOUR six or seven of the show, but there’s A LOT of moments like this and… well it all makes sense why these go together.
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For the past ten years NoPro has been your guide to Everything Immersive… and this is the first part of the multi-part celebration - slash - victory lap that is EPISODE 500.
Over the course of this weekend, for about TWELVE HOURS, give or take, okay maybe closer to THIRTEEN HOURS we will be checking in with over two dozen of our favorite people to chat about this thing of ours — this immersive, experiential, spatial thing of ours …
It’s a series of conversations that is nostalgic, silly, sometimes profound, often rambling, that covers theatre, technology, theme parks, games, defunct restaurant chains, roadside attractions, margaritas, and puppets.
These are, in fact, the friends we made along the way and more than a few of the friends we dragged along with us for the ride over the course of the TEN YEARS of making this show.
And at the end… well, I guess we’ll both just have to stick around because even I don’t even know yet.
For this first part — entitled a A Quick Jaunt Through The Immersive Cosmos — we take a stream of consciousness trip through experiential hyperspace with 5 interviews.
Actors Siobhán O'Loughlin & Dasha Kittredge, Tender Claws co-founder Samantha Gorman, Producer Scarlett Kim, and director Rory Mitchell.
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This week writer and director Eliza McNitt joins us to talk about Venice Immersive, the annual XR extravaganza inside the Venice International Film Festival, where at this year’s event she is the President of Venice Immersive's International Jury, which will judge the 30 pieces in competition.
SHOW NOTES
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This week we’re joined by Gillian Leitten, CEO of The Lumen Prize because today is that day that the 99 finalists for the Prize are announced (check the Show Notes) and Leitten is here to talk with us about the prize which celebrates artists forging new systems of meaning through technology’s evolving creative frontier.
We give a special focus on the Hybrid and Experiential categories, the later of which is the evolution of last year's Interactive/Immersive category and for the second year in a row features the most finalists of any category, 16 in total.
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This week on the show Franki Chan, founder and chief creative officer of IHEARTCOMIX, the award-winning creative marketing agency who joined us last weekend at The Next Stage Immersive Summit along with the team from #METAFORYOU of Terence Leclere, Dasha Kittredge, and Annie McGrath, to talk about the 2-night overnight horror horror experience at the legendary Stanley Hotel dubbed The Overnightmare is with us today to share the backstory of IHEARTCOMIX — from parties at LA’s Beauty Bar in the Aughts to becoming a record label to just last week where they took over Hurricane Harbor for Bob Odenkirk’s Nobody 2 wherein Bob… well I’ll let Franki tell that one.
We get Franki's view on our world from his vantage point coming from the marketing world as we make our way towards the big episode 500.
We Smashed Around While Waiting for ‘Twisted Metal’ Season 2 (Gizmodo)
The Next Stage Immersive Summit
Escape rooms to theme parks: immersive entertainment is booming | The Excerpt (USA Today Video Podcast w/Noah)
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Zach Morris of Third Rail Projects and Charlie Miller of The Denver Center for the Performing Arts’ Off-Center join host Noah Nelson to talk about the upcoming Sweet & Lucky: Echo — a companion story of the 2016 hit Sweet & Lucky –– which helped put Denver’s immersive scene on the map.
SHOW NOTES
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This week Parker Sela takes over the show to talk about Pompeii, no not the ancient Roman city that was destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD, but the Fosse-tacular immersive by Detour Productions that is coming to San Francisco at the end of this month.
Billed as “part Fosse fantasy, part queer cabaret, part end-of-the-world dance party,” Parker checks in with returning guest, Detour co-founder and Pompeii director Eric Garcia along with performer Mudd The Two Spirt who plays the M.C. in Pompeii.
And if you haven’t clocked it by now, yes, this show is a mash-up of movies from what Detour calls the “Fosse cinematic universe.”
SHOW NOTES
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This summer a spectacle has bloomed at Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station in Denver and Omega Mart in Las Vegas, bringing a new interactive performance layer that unfolds on a continuous loop and new characters from uncharted corners of the multiverse in the form of dancers, puppets, and shimmering creatures called Flickerwermz.
It’s called Phenomenomaly and it’s running now through August 9th, and the event is inspired by the world — our world — of immersive theatre and dance. Joining us this week to talk about the event are Alexandra Renzo Contracted Creative Director of Phenomenomaly & Brie Lipari General Manger of Meow Wolf Denver.
SHOW NOTES
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This week on the show it’s a hangout show as members of the NoPro Review Crew — namely Toronto curator Katrina Lat, New York correspondent Nicholas Fortugno, our associate producer Parker Sela, and catching up part way through NYC curator Allie Marotta as we chat about a whole lot of things including the brisk sales on Masquerade — that’s the immersive Phantom of the Opera that goes into previews next month, Tribeca Immersive, Voidspace Live, and whatever else tickles our fancy.
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This week on the show we’re joined by long time friend of the show Brent Bushnell — co-founder of Two Bit Circus, scion of the famed Bushnell family, and one of the earliest subscribers to the No Proscenium newsletter — who is here to talk about a new venture he is a co-founder of along with Aidan Wolf and Kevin Habich — DeamPark which turns mixed reality headsets into a configurable virtual theme park — transforming public spaces into ticketed playgrounds filled with dynamic virtual characters and which recently raised over a million in seed funding.
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This week on the show we’ve got another double header.
First up, Jake Pinholster the Dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Creative Producer & Director Scarlett Kim — the producers of Worlds in Play, join us to talk about the upcoming gathering of play practitioners—game and theatre artists alike— which is coming to Monticello, Illinois this August.
Then joining us is Prescott Gadd, creator of Spies Among Us, a mystery adventure that takes place on weekends in DTLA’s Little Tokyo neighborhood — and for that interview we’ll be joined by No Pro’s own Kathryn Yu.
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This week on the show we’ve got an extra-long double header with some real clarity of purpose as we take a look at IMMERSIVE inside Theme Parks.
First up, Mike Ostrom, Manager of Entertainment and Events for Six Flags Magic Mountain and WOW! Entertainment Inc’s Mark Brymer join me to spill the details on DC Heroes & Villains Festival - an immersive theatrical takeover of and Six Flags Magic Mountain and Six Flags Great Adventure this summer which kicks off at Magic Mountain in Southern California later this month, with a Grand Opening on June 21st and will hold its grand opening at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, NJ on Aug 8th.
Then we have an all-star AFTER DARK with CNET’s Scott Stein, Overlook Film Festival’s Landon Zakheim, and NoPro’s Kathryn Yu and Parker Sela as we gather together to talk about Scott & Landon’s time at Universal’s Epic Universe, Kathryn, Parker, Landon, and Noah's time at Universal Fan Fest Nights, and the state of immersive — especially LIVE PERFORMER DRIVEN IMMERSIVE — in theme parks in 2025.
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