This week on the show, Stefanie Frey the Director of Organizing & Mobilization for Actor’s Equity Association — joins us to talk about how Equity — the union for actors and stage managers — has been expanding its membership into places like escape rooms and themed restaurants that touch upon our world of immersive experiences.

SHOW NOTES

• Actor's Equity Association

Get bonus content on Patreon

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on the show, the Review Crew – in the form of NYC curator Allie Marotta, East Coast Editor at Large Blake Weil, Exec. Editor Emeritus Kathryn Yu, NYC correspondent Penelope Ray, and host Noah Nelson – gather to talk about the end of Sleep No More’s era defining run in New York City and the last run of shows and parties at the McKittrick Hotel, the show’s venue in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood which now recedes into history. Get bonus content on Patreon

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The original plan for this week was for us to have no episode while The Next Stage Immersive Summit was on.

Because of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in LA brought about by the wildfires The Next Stage is postponed.

We'll have more on the plans for that at a later date. In the meantime check the show notes for how to help those in LA.

Show Notes

• LA Fires: How You Can Help (compiled by Kathryn Yu)
• GoFundMe for immersive actor Brandon Bales’ family to find a new place to live
• GoFundMe for 2023 Next Stage Immersive Summit speaker Wendy McClellan Anderson
• GoFundMe for 2025 Next Stage Immersive Summit speaker Suzanne Down of Cirque Berzerk
• LA Immersive Industry Mixer at Squirrelor's Tavern

Get bonus content on Patreon

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A quick check in from LA as the fire situation evolves, including updates on The Next Stage Immersive Summit, which at present is still on at the Pasadena Playhouse Jan 17-19.

We will check in next week.

SHOW NOTES

• GoFundMe for Suzanne Down to recover from the Eaton Fire

Get bonus content on Patreon

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on the show, Parker Sela takes up the host duties to interview Nicole Orabona and Nathan Leigh of CirqueSaw about their remote repertory season consisting of Void Main, a revival of POV: You Are an AI Achieving Consciousness and workshop dates for labRats and just why an online theatre company is going to all the trouble of coding its own platform. 

SHOW NOTES

• CirqueSaw @ WellAttended (ticketing site)
• CirqueSaw Instagram
• Next Stage Immersive Summit: Program Guide

Get bonus content on Patreon

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we wrap our End of the Year podcasts with our annual gathering of the NoPro Crew to look back at the year that was in immersive and look forward to what might be.

Joining us for the chat are NoPro Toronto Curator Katrina Lat, New York Correspondent Nicholas Fortugno, correspondent-at-large Martin Gimenez, and Senior LA Reviewer Kathryn Yu.

SHOW NOTES

• In the Matter of the Death of ‘Tamara’: A Post-Mortem – LA Times, 1993
• The Next Stage Immersive Summit

Get bonus content on Patreon

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At the end of every year we pull together a roundtable of journalists covering immersive to look back on what was and this year we’re talking with our colleagues in London, starting with NoPro curator Shelley Snyder, the Voidspace’s Katy Naylor, Immersive Rumors' Graham Fitzgerald, and Franco Milazzo stage critic for Broadway World UK.

SHOW NOTES

• Voidspace
• Immersive Rumors
• Franco Milazzo, Broadway World
• The Next Stage Immersive Summit
• NoPro's Best of 2024: Immersive Moments

Get bonus content on Patreon

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Ilana Gilovich, Chief Storyteller for Emursive Productions, joins me for our first-ever conversation and yes, we get into just what the Chief Storyteller for the production company behind Life And Trust and the McKittrick Hotel – home of Sleep No More in NYC — does and nerd out as only two theatre kids meeting for the first time can do.

Happy Holidays: it’s one of THOSE No Pro episodes and a good one at that.

Plus: the latest updates on The Next Stage Immersive Summit including HASBRO & DISNEY LIVE ENTERTAINMENT. –Noah

SHOW NOTES

• Life And Trust
• Sleep No More
• Speakeasy Magick
• Emursive
• The Next Stage Immersive Summit
• Contact Noah about that thing he mentioned.

Get bonus content on Patreon

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Shawn Kittelsen SVP Creative at Skydance Interactive, the creators of the just released Skydance’s Behemoth (available now on PSVR2, Steam VR, and Meta Quest) joins us to talk about the game which puts players into the role of Wren, a lone hunter who sets off for the Forsaken Lands to lift a terrible curse. The only way to do so is by saying the towering gods known as Behemoths.

In this talk we get into storytelling in VR, the way dynamic, spatial games systems lead players to embody characters, and a whole lot more. It’s another very fun conversation about VR at the precise moment when the medium is hitting a stride on narrative focused experiences that rival the best traditional video games can offer.

SHOW NOTES

• Skydance’s Behemoth
• Ann Morrow Johnson, of Gensler, Joins Board of The Immersive Experience Institute
• The Next Stage Immersive Summit: Speakers & Guests
• The Next Stage Immersive Summit
• The Next Stage Immersive Summit: Badges
• No Proscenium Gift Subscriptions

Get bonus content on Patreon

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we have a delightful doubleheader. 

First up we have Ryan Payton, director of Batman: Arkham Shadow. I’ve been following Ryan’s career since he founded his studio Camouflaj back in 2011 back when I was doing stories about the rise of crowdfunding and here we are on the cusp of 2025 talking about the greatest game to be released on the Meta Quest platform so far.

In this conversation we get deep into the storytelling that drives the action of Batman: Arkham Shadow, which is some of the best I’ve encountered in any video game in years. With that in mind, we avoid spoilers for almost half the conversation. Spoilers start at 19:23 of the pod and end at 37:20. We get into some of the big character beats. So consider yourself forewarned.

Then we settle in for a long chat about the state of XR with friend of the show Alex Coulombe — chatting it up about everything from the Unreal Engine classes he’s teaching to folks who are working with the Apple Vision Pro to the recreation of the Halcyon — aka the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser — an open source project in Unreal that he’s been helping to lead pretty much since he got back from visiting the ship.

SHOW NOTES

• Batman: Arkham Shadow
• Camouflaj
• République
• Get Cast In A Dream Role In ‘Batman: Arkham Shadow’ (The NoPro Review)
• A Christmas Carol VR
• GitHub - AgileLens/HalcyonVR
• Alex Coulombe (@ibrews.bsky.social) — Bluesky
• Alex Coulombe Presents Unreal Engine Training
• The (Unofficial) Unreal Engine Podcast - YouTube
• The Weeknd’s ‘Open Hearts’ Drops On Apple Vision Pro
• The Next Stage Immersive Summit

Get bonus content on Patreon

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we have a doubleheader as first we are joined by Third Rail Project’s Co-Artistic Director Jennine Willlet and musician Coyle Girelli to talk about their new collaboration True Love Forever, which has just opened in NYC.

Then Immersive Experience Institute co-founder Kathryn Yu joins me as we break down just how next year’s Next Stage Immersive Summit — coming up Jan 17-19 in Pasadena, CA — is going to work as the event evolves some new forms and formats.

SHOW NOTES

• True Love Forever
• Third Rail Projects
• Coyle Girelli
• Love Kills
• The Next Stage Immersive Summit
• The Next Stage Immersive Summit F.A.Q.

Get bonus content on Patreon

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.