No Proscenium: The Guide To Everything Immersive: The Basement first premiered in 2013 and has continued to evolve. This year, we’re incorporating more competitive interactions into the experience so that a pair of guests might be be tasked with working together for a reward (such as assisting a priest with an exorcism or helping each other navigate through darkness without upsetting the murder clown) or actively working against each other to avoid being punished by foul smells or uncomfortable interactions. Our goal is to offer guests multiple choices within scenes that lead to very real consequences.
5 comments:
The Scream District sounds exciting and terrifying. Now that I’m thinking about it, haunted houses, escape rooms and other similar types of horror games are indeed large interactive sets. However, The Scream District seems to push our traditional concept of these games even further, making them even more interactive and immersive. They say that The Basement is expanding on more extensive and detailed sets. I wonder what they mean by that and want to see what impact it has on the participants of the game. Speaking from experience, the quality of the set really does impact your experience. The escape room I went to wasn’t very realistic and I wasn't completely immersed in the game. Moreover, I wonder how they use technology to enhance the experience. I’m personally not very fond of haunted houses because I don’t like being scared (that’s right) but I’m super interested to experience these games when they open. They sound legitimately horrifying...
As someone who is a huge fan of haunted houses and an even bigger fan of Halloween, The Scream District sounds like the perfect activity to do this October. Not only do I believe that it would be a great bonding experience for the fellow Design/Production students and me, but it would also be a great place to collect artistic inspiration for projects. In a way, a haunted house is a mini theatre production that requires commintented actors and a realistic design to effectively pull off its performance for those who walk in. Attending the Scare District as a class would give us a chance to observe our surroundings and see the materials that were used to pull off the scares. This event is perfect for adults and children alike to enjoy during the Halloween season and perfect for CMU Drama students to go on their own fun field trip.
Though I'm not sure I would be a fan of actually going to one of these experiences because I don't enjoy being frightened, I think that events such as these show how Pittsburgh's artistic culture is pushing the envelope with experiential theatrical works. Groups such as Bricolage and Quantum Theater are known for their experiential work and are actively expanding these realms of their programming, but events like the ones at ScareHouse probably do even more to introduce experiential theater to the Pittsburgh community. While it can be hard to convince people who are not deeply involved in theater to go to non traditional works, events like the ones done by ScareHouse seem less like theater and will draw in a wide audience going into Fall as a kind of advanced haunted house experience. I think that if people are able to see how much fun these events are, they will be more interested in expanding their involvement into the rest of experiential theater.
I am not a fan of anything scary but I have always been so interested in the behind the scenes production of scary experiences. What I think is pretty cool about The Scream District is it's more immersive and interactive nature than a typical haunted house. I think something to consider is the limits and boundaries to which the environment will interact with participants. I would be interested to see if the creation team has a list of hard limits for interactions with guests and whether actors are able to tailor experiences to the individual guest. The element of escape room to this is also very fascinating. I loved the fact that they included a mobility advisory! Something i run into often is that scary or mysterious experiences don't like to give anything away, so they don't go into detail of what the experience is, but sometimes it is necessary to know the extents of physicality so I don't get into a situation I hurt myself. I thought it was nice that they included that as a mention.
I know for a fact I would not enjoy being in one of these interactive games, not even one bit. Working on scripting and producing them, however, is an entirely different story. Events in the Scream District seem like a much more engaging experience than a typical haunted house or scare ride, so everything from the set design to the props to the script to the costumes would have to be more versatile, realistic, and durable. Not to mention the puzzles that the participants have to solve—someone has to write them, add options, et cetera. Even if I never get to work on something like this, I would still like to see behind the scenes footage of the designers, actors, managers, and their collaborative process in bringing an interactive live horror game to life.
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