Experience Design
Bespoke consulting and master classes that bring insights from somatic intelligence into the creation of immersive environments and performance.
What are we doing to our audience and why?
Biology is at play when people are in a room together. In immersive theater our senses are literally immersed in the experience.
Creating a deeper more meaningful experience begins here.
Grounded in an understanding of the nervous system and physiological processing, my work centers around incorporating physical and sensorial perception into the very fabric of an experience in order to achieve your storytelling goals.
Researching how people perceive, process, and act upon sensory experience is fundamental to understanding how an immersive experience works both from an audience/participant perspective, and a performer/director perspective. This unique circumstance requires a different skill-set and creative approach to structuring narrative, writing and delivering text, choreography, staging, and overall approach to performer presence than more conventional theatrical settings typically call for.
These points of entry can lead us to creative choices that will both support your vision and care for your audience.
Photo: Nicholas Caputo / Control Group ProductionsDrawing from methods I have developed over decades of devising, performing, and directing site-specific and immersive theater along with my work as a Body-Mind Centering® practitioner, each offering explores a different set of tools that can be honed to turn immersive experiences into something deeply personal and effective.
Group Workshop Offerings
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Nervous System
How do we perceive, process, and act upon our sensory experience? Through a somatic exploration of the nervous system we investigate how performers and directors in immersive work can attend to the way our nervous systems function to deepen the impact of their work.
Photo: Cade Bradshaw
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Diaphragm
Investigate how to smoothly transition between movement and voice within a guided educational and therapeutic exploration of your own diaphragm, demonstrating the ways in which somatic exploration can become the root of a performance practice, a choreographic exploration, and a director’s toolbox
Photo: Joshua Dutton-Reaver
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Voice
This workshop looks at vocalization from a somatic perspective, looking at breath, sound, and speech through anatomy, physiology and movement in order to find ease, flexibility, and confidence in vocal expression. Participants will explore the different aspects of the voice, and their potential application to an immersive theater practice.
Photo: Joshua Dutton-Reaver
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Status and Relationship
We are sometimes inches away from our audience. Which means understanding how and when to dial up or down our energy inside of audience interactions is essential to an immersive practice. Investigate how the smallest shifts in physicality impact the way our audience responds to and pieces together their relationship to a story and its characters.
Photo: Nicholas Caputo
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Proprioception
Proprioception is the way in which we sense ourselves and our movement. Otherwise known as our inner eye. It’s the way we physically attune our own attention and guide the attention of others. Through an educational and therapeutic exploration, delve into the ways proprioception can support a performance practice, a choreographic exploration, and a director’s toolbox.
Photo: Nicholas Caputo
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Theater Intensive
A comprehensive exploration of methods for working in immersive formats Explore skills and devising techniques that serve to fold audience into a narrative. As well as ways to better attune to, connect with, and cue audience members along their journey. We will practice adapting to a changing audience landscape and being responsive to audience choices through intuitive decision-making.
Photo: Nicholas Caputo
*A dance or theater background is not required, but a willingness to move and explore is a requisite.
Interested in bringing any of these kinds of workshops to your creative community or organization?
BACKGROUND
My experience in immersive theater performance is the result of decades of ongoing work as collaborator, teaching artist and Associate Artistic Director of Third Rail Projects - developing a wide range of site-specific and immersive productions from the ground up for thousands of audience members worldwide and supporting hundreds of artists to hone the skills they need to perform in intimate theatrical environments.
