SUMMIT & FESTIVAL PROGRAMMING
The 2020 Summit features talks, workshops, and salons that dive deep into the production, development, and marketing of immersive and experiential work.
Leading voices from immersive theater, mixed reality, experiential marketing, escape rooms, game design, theme parks, and music festivals will be on hand to share their insights and experience as part of the Summit.
Our Pilot Festival will feature spotlight presentations of established work both on and off-site, and original short form work from established immersive creators and up and coming voices in the field.
Leading voices from immersive theater, mixed reality, experiential marketing, escape rooms, game design, theme parks, and music festivals will be on hand to share their insights and experience as part of the Summit.
Our Pilot Festival will feature spotlight presentations of established work both on and off-site, and original short form work from established immersive creators and up and coming voices in the field.
Here now, are the currently announced voices of HERE...
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Summit Speakers & Guests Bruce Vaughn (Dreamscape VR)
Jose Perez III (ILMxLab) Sarah Ellis (The Royal Shakespeare Company) Mikhael Tara Garver (Category 41) Risa Puno (The Privilege of Escape) Kalie Acheson (Stranger Things: Scoops Ahoy, 826 LA)
Melanie Dorey (Madame Lupin) Fri Forjindam (MyCoToo) David Jacobsen (Invisible North) Lawrence Lewis (Stranger Things: Scoops Ahoy, The Alone Experience) Shing Yin Khor (Three Eyed Rat) Vance Garrett (ModelLand, Sleep No More) Nova Han (Electric Forest) Ben Taylor (Stranger Things: Scoops Ahoy, The Alone Experience) David Wally (MyCoToo) Jenny Weinbloom (Meow Wolf) Caitlin Burns (Future Colossal)
Peoplmovr (Geoffrey Jackson Scott & Aaron Cedolia) Shawn Taylor Elise Lemle & Alex Todaro Tommy Honton (Stashhouse LA)
Jonaya Kemper Juliana Patel & Ariel Rubin (The Wild Optimists) Kellian Adams Pletcher (Club Drosselmeyer) Luke and Madison Rhoades (Cross Roads Escape Games) Mike Salyh Rachel Joy Victor Michael Bontatibus (Witness)
Jeff and Andy Crocker (Mister and Mischief) Genevieve Gearhart & Julianne Just (The Speakeasy Society) Lauren Ludwig (Capital W) Charlie Miller (DCPA's Off-Center) Monica Miklas (Capital W) Dave Mortensen (Sackerson) Tara O'Con (Then She Fell) Spencer Williams (Walk The Night) |
Pilot Festival Official Festival Selections
Cages (Woolf and the Wondershow)
Casting (Koryn Ann Wicks) Escape From Godot (Mister and Mischief) The Kansas Collection: The Key (The Speakeasy Society) Like Real People Do - Special Edition (Linked Dance Theatre) Night Fever (JFI Productions) Red Flags (Capital W) Stash House Where the Others Are (E3W Productions) Original Short Form Work Candle House Collective
Christy Casey Keight Leighn Siobhan O'Loughlin Tales By Candlelight Festival Partners The Nest (Scout Expedition Co.)
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KEYNOTE & HORIZON SPEAKERS
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Bruce Vaughn is the CEO of Dreamscape VR, which uses the most advanced VR technologies to create an entirely new form of mainstream location-based entertainment. Vaughn was previously Chief Creative Executive, Walt Disney Imagineering for The Walt Disney Company, for eight years. In this role, he led the integrated creative teams of Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI), Disney’s Creative Entertainment (DCE) and WDI Research and Development to drive excellence in product development and innovation. The scope of Vaughn’s responsibilities included theme park attractions and special effects, innovative theater experiences, and new business opportunities that leverage invented and emerging technologies. Disney’s Avatar land, Star Wars lands and Shanghai Disneyland are among the many projects he creatively oversaw. Prior to joining Walt Disney Imagineering in 1993, Vaughn worked on the technical staff of Bran Ferren’s company, Associates & Ferren, in East Hampton, New York for five years where he contributed to the development and execution of special effects for various media projects and received several screen credits for feature films, including Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and Imposter (2001).
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Jose Perez III is Supervisor, Creative Development and Experience Design at ILMxLAB, where he creates groundbreaking virtual reality projects across a number of world-class intellectual properties. On Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series, he oversaw the Lightsaber Dojo, which deftly mixed cinematic-quality immersive environments with the thrill of wielding a lightsaber and the Force against numerous enemies.
For the location-based experience Ralph Breaks VR, Perez drove the overall creative direction of the project from ideation, story contribution, voice-over direction, and interactive mechanics from prototype to finished product. He leads with the philosophy that “awesome interactive experiences require a truly collaborative spirit,” and has a twenty-year, multi-disciplinary background as a game designer, creative director, writer, and animator within both the film and interactive game industries. Perez has spearheaded many innovative projects using real-time technologies with iconic entertainment companies such as Lucasfilm, Industrial Light & Magic, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, Walt Disney Imagineering, Blizzard Entertainment, Capcom, SquareEnix, Microsoft, NCsoft, and the indie record label Kill Rock Stars. |
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Sarah Ellis is an award-winning producer currently working as Director of Digital Development for the Royal Shakespeare Company to explore new artistic initiatives and partnerships.
The latest partnership for the RSC is the Audience of the Future Live Performance Demonstrator funded by Innovate UK - a consortium consisting of arts organisations, research partners and technology companies to explore the future of performances and real-time immersive experiences. In 2017, she became a fellow of the University of Worcester for her work in the arts and technology. In 2016 she was awarded The Hospital Club & Creatives Industries award for cross industry collaboration for her work on the RSC’s The Tempest in collaboration with Intel and in association with The Imaginarium Studios. |
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In 2013 she was listed in the top 100 most influential people working in Gaming and Technology by The Hospital Club and Guardian Culture Professionals. In partnership with Google, she produced Midsummer Night’s Dreaming winning two Lovie Awards for Innovation and Experimentation.
In 2012, she produced myShakespeare an online commissioning platform for the World Shakespeare Festival. In 2011, she produced Adelaide Road for the RSC, which mixed live performance with an app and website map.
As a spoken word producer, she has worked with the Old Vic Tunnels, Battersea Arts Centre, Birmingham REP, Contact, Improbable, Southbank Centre, Soho Theatre, and Shunt. She has been Head of Creative Programmes at the Albany Theatre and Programme Manager for Apples & Snakes.
She is a regular speaker and commentator on digital arts practice, as well as an Industry Champion for the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, which helps inform academic research on the creative industries to lead to better policies for the sector. She has been appointed Chair of digital agency, The Space, established by Arts Council England and the BBC to help promote digital engagement across the arts.
In 2012, she produced myShakespeare an online commissioning platform for the World Shakespeare Festival. In 2011, she produced Adelaide Road for the RSC, which mixed live performance with an app and website map.
As a spoken word producer, she has worked with the Old Vic Tunnels, Battersea Arts Centre, Birmingham REP, Contact, Improbable, Southbank Centre, Soho Theatre, and Shunt. She has been Head of Creative Programmes at the Albany Theatre and Programme Manager for Apples & Snakes.
She is a regular speaker and commentator on digital arts practice, as well as an Industry Champion for the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, which helps inform academic research on the creative industries to lead to better policies for the sector. She has been appointed Chair of digital agency, The Space, established by Arts Council England and the BBC to help promote digital engagement across the arts.
Mikhael Tara Garver has been a pioneer for the past 20 years in defining the experiential field at the intersection of pop culture, fandom, immersive design, digital storytelling, and original storytelling. She has been the experiential architect of over 100 projects ranging from larger than life pop-up text-to-rock shows to culture-change installations around international drug policy. Mikhael has recently joined CATEGORY41 as the Head of Experiential Entertainment. CATEGORY41 is a global experience company that creates, incubates and syndicates location based experiences.
Garver founded Chicago Immersive company Uma Productions and 13Exp, the first original content experiential studio for with social impact in its DNA. She was the artistic director of New York’s Woodshed Collective and led the advanced program in Making, Directing, and Leadership for NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Garver was recently awarded the International Sacatar Fellowship and the Pop Culture Collaborative Grant for her leadership in 13Exp and her writing on the future of original Experiential. She founded MTG, an experiential studio creating innovative moving experiences for artists, brands, and social impact. She has built award-winning experiences for AMC Television, The National Park Service, Bloomberg, Serino/Coyne, BBDO, Hormel, Tentrr Smirnoff, IDEO, Facebook, and Virgin. Garver was a director on Sleep No More at A.R.T. and has received multiple immersive commissions for her work (American Repertory Theater, The Kennedy Center, The Goodman Theater, Montclair New Work Initiative, and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston). She has spoken and taught on Arts and Democracy at North Carolina School of the Arts, Yale, Columbia University, Harvard, DePaul, Montclair State, as well as other universities. Her speaking and thought leadership regarding Experiential Content - where digital and live platforms work in concert - has been a keynote at the Immersive Design Summit, Switchpoint, and the International Festival of Arts and Ideas. www.mikhaeltaragarver.com
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Risa Puno is an NYC-based sculpture and installation artist who uses interactivity and play to understand how we relate to one another. She has exhibited at national and international venues, including: The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, El Museo del Barrio, NURTUREart, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, SPACES in Cleveland, OH, Galerie Stefan Röpke in Cologne, Germany, and MMX Open Art Venue in Berlin, Germany.
Puno is the recipient of multiple awards and residencies, and she has been commissioned to make public art by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation and the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston. Most recently, she was selected by Creative Time to create their inaugural Open Call project. Puno’s work has been featured across radio and print, including The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, ProPublica, and The Boston Globe. She currently serves on the NYC DOT Art Advisory Committee. Puno grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and she studied art and medicine at Brown University and earned her MFA from New York University. |
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ACTIVATIONS & INSTALLATIONS
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Kalie Acheson is a Los Angeles based designer, creative producer, art gallery producer, and CEO of design studio ART MAFIA.
She began her career as a production designer on films, commercials, and events in 2010. She created her first company, ANIMI, in August 2016, which produced art films; including the award winning pieces Thistles and Thorns and Color of Reality. Launching ART MAFIA in January 2019, as her second company, she began specializing in experiential design and exhibits. Under her leadership, Art Mafia has amassed an impressive CV of commercial projects. Working with brands ranging from Sephora to Spotify, she has time-and-time-again proven herself to go above and beyond at any opportunity. Some notable projects include the overhaul of the Original Johnny Rockets for Benefit’s "Roller Liner Diner", as well as, designing and managing the installation of the award winning Baskin Robbins X Netflix Scoops Ahoy for Stranger Things. Also using her skills for philanthropy, she supervised the renovation of 826LA’s Mar Vista Time Travel Mart. Garnering accolades for both herself and her company, her creativity and dedication have been praised by BuzzFeed, Huffpost, Forbes, and PAPER. Acheson continues to create an exciting body of work and strives to expand the way we think of immersive experiences. |
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Melanie Dorey is the founder of Madame Lupin - House of Experiential Design. She is a director, writer and producer based in Paris, France. Her company has created immersive experiences since 2015, from art installations in the catacombs to dashing theatrical parties in historic locations.
Firm believer in co-creation and co-learning, she started international hackathons like the Immersive Creation Challenge and the Experience Design Challenge between Paris, Berlin and NYC. She is also a founding member of AFAI, the first French association of immersive artists. She is a correspondent for No Proscenium, and is the editor-in-chief of the first French media dedicated to immersive experiences, theatre-immersif.com. Melanie’s work as a director is at the intersection of different genres of immersive arts, with a focus on interaction and agency for the participants. Her new show The Lost Generation, set in the Parisian Roaring Twenties, mixes elements of immersive theatre, a Parisian soirée and Larp. Through Madame Lupin, Melanie is balancing her work between independent creations and tailored experiences for high-end clients. |
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Fri Forjindam leads global business development, branding and communications for Mycotoo, Inc., an experience design, production and “top media” company by Inc. 500. Voted “Top 50 Theme Park Influencer” by Blooloop Magazine, Fri has created distinctive guest experiences in film, theatre, publishing and special events. She has worked as a creative director for Bollywood Parks, as project manager, Executive Creative lead for Prince's Paisley Park Experience and Producer for Los Angeles Downtown Latin Museum Gala Opening and T-Mobile HTC’s corporate tours. As a Cameroonian-born, MFA graduate of Columbia University in NYC, Forjindam brings her rich, diverse background in content development and experiential marketing to facilitate development strategies for regional, national and international tourism. Forjindam has been featured on Huffington Post, Essence Magazine, KTLA, and sits on the board for the Ryman Arts Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to transforming the lives of young artists through visual arts education.
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Former Grey executive and head of production for Giant Spoon, New York, David Jacobsen serves as Director and Invisible North's head of production. He oversees the production team with a strategy-first lens that guides creative decision making every step of the way. Drawing from vital experience as Executive Producer of activations like SXSWestworld and the Bleed for the Throne Game of Thrones experience at SXSW, David continues to embody leadership in the experiential space. Most recently, he oversaw production for a Little Italy immersive takeover in anticipation of The Irishman in NYC.
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Commercial and film producer, and co-creator of The ALONE Experience, Lawrence T. Lewis started his career in producing at the age of 5 when his parents let him use their Super 8mm camera. His other early hobbies included making blood squibs, perfecting the art of falling down a flight of stairs, and watching interviews with Rick Baker and Tom Savini. After studying film at California State University of Fullerton, Lawrence landed into producing roles after navigating through a path of a variety of positions in independent feature films, major studio films, commercial advertising, and new media.
Once he created the immersive experience ALONE with his long time friend and musical collaborator, Devon Paulson [re: Skamper on Spotify] he started to see a change in the advertising landscape. Commercials were bending towards the hot new buzzword “Experiential”, and his exploration of experimental theater combined with his seasoned career of commercial filmmaking opened up the opportunity to partner with some of the top production companies in the country on exciting new immersive projects. With a virtuosic flair for the operational side of things, Lawrence spends his days translating conceptual ideas into reality. Partnering with the top Directors, Creatives, Brands and Advertising Agencies has given him the ability to turn the most abstract ideas into compelling experiences. |
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Shing Yin Khor is an immersive installation artist, responsible for The Last Outpost and The Last Apothecary at Burning Man 2014 and 2016, the production design for Hamlet-Mobile, and a bevy of divination projects, including the Space Hobo Bottlecap Board, The Gentle Oraclebird(Indiecade 2019) and other casual divination systems in various formats, such as twitterbots and capsule machines. They founded the immersive installation art collective, Three Eyed Rat.
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Vance Garrett is a creative producer at the convergence of art, culture, technology, commerce, and community and is committed to developing pioneering theatrical projects that capture the zeitgeist and advance what is possible in live experiential entertainment and art. He most recently collaborated with Tyra Banks on her upcoming location-based entertainment destination ModelLand as the SVP, Experience and Marketing producing, strategizing and developing her legacy project inclusive of environmental theatrical storytelling, immersive tech, food, fashion, and retail.
Prior to that, Vance was the Vice President, Experiential, Global Entertainment for Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (with its international portfolio of 100+ shopping, convention, and mixed use properties) where he identified creative content and partners and produced and presented unique experiences that foster enriched human engagement. Vance has also run his own creative experiential production agency VGP - producing and launching such projects as the original Museum of Ice Cream, Refinery29’s 29Rooms, and the Hall of Magic (Clio Award) - specializing in the creative direction, treatment writing, and production of theatrical events, social experiences, and original concepts. He launched Punchdrunk’s boundary-breaking immersive theatre production Sleep No More in New York as Supervising Producer. He employs this insider understanding of theatrical storytelling to create new multi-sensory productions that invite the audience into the narrative to reciprocally participate with the environment, creating safe shared space for experiences that drive cultural conversations and are a catalyst for building community. He is a graduate of Northwestern University. |
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Nova Han (Electric Forest) is one of the nation's lead visionaries and producers in the immersive marketing and live entertainment, Nova is the Creative Director for Madison House’s world-class Electric Forest Festival. Her works have also been featured at the Official Grammy’s Celebration, the Emmy’s, Coachella, Firefly Festival, and festivals world wide. She has provided works and entertainment for artists such as the Black Eyed Peas, Deadmau5, Bassnectar and Shpongle and has been the Creative Director for The String Cheese Incident since 2010. Nova has been recognized globally by XLIVE for Best Production Design in 2017 and 2018 for her works at Electric Forest.
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Ben Taylor is an immersive theater and experiential entertainment Design Consultant and Stage Manager who solves the creative and logistical challenges that interactivity and participant choice introduces into works. Since 2013 he has worked with The Alone Experience on over a dozen projects taking place in a variety of environments and configurations. Ben has also worked with Screenshot Productions and other immersive companies in Los Angeles, as well as on designs for interactive experiences in theme parks and escape rooms. In 2019 he made use of his longtime love and appreciation for Alternate Reality Games by acting as the Community Manager for the Stranger Things 3 / Baskin Robbins Operation Scoop Snoop experience.
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Since attaining his MFA from Purdue University, David Wally has worked in film, theatre and themed entertainment as a producer, director, writer and executive. He worked as an executive and producer on such films as Scent of a Woman, Hostage and Meet Joe Black; written, produced and directed several plays and films; been a senior film executive at City Light Films (Martin Brest) and Cheyenne Enterprises (Bruce Willis); worked as a creative director at various themed entertainment firms and has directed the Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor, one of the premier Halloween events in Southern California since 2010. Most recently, David has been the Creative Director for Bollywood Parks in Dubai, Aftermath 2 at Six Flags FrightFest and Alice in Winterland at the Queen Mary’s CHILL. Most notable recent credits include: Blade Runner 2049 Experience at San Diego’s Comic Con, Fallout 76 at E3, SXSWestworld and Bleed for the Throne at SxSW, Netflix's The Irishman Little Italy Takeover and the #Vegasworld Experience for HBO's Westworld Season 3 at CES 2020.
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ENGAGEMENT & IMPACT
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Caitlin Burns is Strategy Director at Future Colossal an award-winning innovation lab for experiential technologies in advertising, entertainment and art. Starting her career as an experience and narrative designer for high-concept live events she applied those skills to multiplatform franchise development and has developed and produced work on more than 30 unique platforms. A pioneer of the concept of Transmedia Storytelling in Hollywood, she helped translate themed entertainment into films, games into live events, multi-year ARGs and much more.
She developed and produced original work on new platforms for major film franchises, AAA console games, television shows and global brands varying from immersive cruise line experiences, social and digital media, interactive eBooks, VR, MR, and WebVR. She is notorious for her original projects including the award-winning full-length feature film distributed by location-based bar crawl McCarren Park (a.k.a. Jurassic Park Slope). She served on the Board of the Producers’ Guild of America’s New Media Council for 6 years, with 3 as Vice Chair. She is currently on the Advisory board of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center Press and the board of commercial space tourism company, Space Nation. Her past projects include Pirates of the Caribbean, Fairies, Descendants and Tron Legacy for Disney, James Cameron’s Avatar for Fox, Halo for Microsoft, Happiness Factory for The Coca-Cola Company, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for Nickelodeon and Transformers for Hasbro, Sony, Showtime, Pepperidge Farm, Diageo, Serial Box Publishing, Reed-Midem, Televisa, FEMSA, Wieden+Kennedy, Reebok, Stratasys, Space Nation, EY, VIFF and UNICEF Kid Power. |
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Peoplmovr is a creative studio specializing in involvement. With a rich history in engagement, we partner on the development and delivery of strategies designed to bring people closer. Our New York-based team provides audience development, communications, creative producing, cultural organizing, and facilitation, as well as coaching and consulting for organizations, artists, and communities.
We center the principle of equity in all areas of our work as part of our commitment to advancing love and collective liberation. This commitment is grounded in our belief that a more just and equitable world is possible. We all benefit when oppression is recognized and eliminated. Current and recent partners include: The Metropolitan Opera, Temple Contemporary, The Public Theater, The High Line, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Museum of the Moving Image, Sundance Institute Theatre Program, The Araca Group, The TEAM, Ars Nova, The Play Company, and Weeksville Heritage Center. Recent projects include a five-borough engagement strategy for The Mile-Long Opera, performed by 1,000 singers on the High Line, and five continuous seasons of involving communities with the Public Theater. Geoffrey Jackson Scott (Creative Director/Co-Founder, Peoplmovr) is a Brooklyn-based cultural organizer, creative producer, and engagement strategist. For the last fifteen years, his work has focused on advancing equity and inclusion in arts and culture. Aaron Cedolia (Communications Director/Co-Founder, Peoplmovr) is a communications strategist, creative producer, and artist. Aaron has worked for over ten years in communications strategy and marketing. He collaborates with Peoplmovr’s project partners on the most strategic platforms to help involve communities in various projects. |
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Shawn Taylor is a lifelong science fiction, fantasy, and comic book fan. He is a founding author of www.thenerdsofcolor.org, and a founding organizer of the Black Comix Arts Festival. His passion for stories of other worlds led him to an obsession with role-playing games, eventually becoming a paid Dungeon Master for many Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. In high school, he organized a live action D&D battle in his school’s cafeteria. He was suspended for two days for orchestrating the battle, but some folks still talk about it as a highlight of their high school experience. He just concluded a Senior Fellowship with the Pop Culture Collaborative where he studied how fandom power could be used for social good. Currently his company, Drum and Gourd, is working on a toy line, a collectable card game, and a LARPing system. Shawn also consults for media and gaming companies.
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As Director of Exhibits and Education at National Children’s Museum, Elise Lemle has spearheaded the Museum’s creative development for the Museum’s 20,000 square feet of immersive exhibits and educational programming from the ground up. National Children’s Museum is a next generation science center and children’s museum in Washington DC focused on inspiring children to action through immersive play.
As Director of Special Projects at Two Bit Circus, Elise led experience development for a range of immersive projects including the first iteration of the company’s “Story Room” concept, a first-person, live puzzle solving adventure. Elise has also brought immersive exploration to digital product development, serving as Director of Product Development at EVERFI, an educational technology company, where she chartered award-winning digital learning products that prompted offline discovery. Elise has built experiences for companies and organizations including Intel, Amazon, Microsoft, Autodesk, GE, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Nickelodeon. A former classroom educator and theater artist, Elise’s writing has been published by Claremont College, Harvard University, and as the lead author for a title from Springer International Publishing. She holds an Ed.M. from Harvard University and an A.B. from Georgetown University. |
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Alex Todaro is an experience designer who is passionate about using design to enable the efficacy of people. In his work he actively experiments with physical and behavioral environments to understand how they facilitate trust, collaboration, and personal development. Alex is a regular contributor to Meow Wolf, and is the brand designer of the Experience Tube. He also guest lectures at MiCA’s MFAD department on experience design, teaching students to use poetic design methods as a model for ethnographic research. Previously, Alex was the co-founder of Median, an organizational development consultancy using experience design to help organizations better understand their operating structures. Most notably, Median was known for OfByFor, a series of Interactive dining experiences that taught audience members about the role of representation in democracy.
Most recently, Alex worked with National Children’s Museum on a permanent installation that teaches children about climate change and their own superpowers to make a difference in their communities. Alex holds an MFA from The School of Visual Arts Interaction Design program. |
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GAME & NARRATIVE DESIGN
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Tommy Honton is an experience designer specializing in the intersection of interactivity and narrative. He has produced immersive work for audiences of all sizes across the globe. He is also designer of the award-winning escape room Stash House and co-founder of the interactive exhibition Museum of Selfies.
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Jonaya Kemper is an educator, narrative designer, and games scholar who looks at roleplaying as a means of liberation for people of marginalized identities.
A graduate of NYU’s Gallatin Graduate school, Jonaya uses an interdisciplinary approach within her interactive design work, which often includes trauma theory, critical race theory, and radical theater approaches that inform the construction of inclusive player experiences. A winner of the prestigious e. Frances White Award, for work and artistic practice that holds significance beyond the academy, Jonaya investigates participant behavior in interactive experiences and games. In addition to this, she works across the game design spectrum to create innovative, engaging gameplay and narrative as well as consultation for more equitable game spaces. Her efforts can be seen in analogue games, immersive experiences and digital work where she has collaborated with such companies as John Wick Presents 7th Sea, Renegade Studios, Atropos, Avalon, Participation Design Agency, and Remedy Entertainment. |
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The Wild Optimists began when Juliana Patel (left) & Ariel Rubin (right), combined their theatre degrees and writing backgrounds with their lifelong love of gaming to create the Kickstarter sensation Escape Room In A Box: The Werewolf Experiment, now licensed to Mattel and winner of Game of the Year at the Mattel Inventor Awards. Today they focus on designing new ways to play, creating puzzle and gaming experiences for tabletop games, theme parks, music festivals, historical sites, marketing activations, and more.
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Kellian Adams Pletcher is the founder and mastermind of Green Door Labs, a Boston-based indie games company that works with informal education organizations to create games, immersive theater and physical/digital interactive experiences.
Since starting Green Door Labs in 2012, Kellian has designed and produced projects like Murder at the Met with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mystery of the Megatherium Club with the Smithsonian Castle and dozens of other game-based museum interactives across the country, including projects with her software, the Edventure Builder. In 2016 Kellian created the first installation of the world of Club Drosselmeyer 1939, which has since grown and changed each year with Club Drosselmeyer 1940, 1941 and 1942. In 2018, Kellian partnered with Lizzie Stark to create Save the Munbax and in 2019, together they built The Night Cafe. Kellian teaches game design capstone at Northeastern University. |
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Husband and wife team Luke and Madison Rhoades are the owner’s and creative minds of Cross Roads Escape Games in Anaheim. Luke graduated Vanguard University with a BA in Performance and Technical Theatre. Madison graduated the University of Southern California with a BA in Fine Arts and Theatre. After graduating, they became a tag team art department designing, building, and painting sets for theaters and haunted attractions throughout Los Angeles. Cross Roads Escape Games opened in Anaheim January of 2016 with the award winning Hex Room game. In April 2016, the family friendly Fun House game opened followed by The Asylum mini game and The Box mini-game. Luke and Madison created the first ever strategic escape room, The Psych Ward, which opened December 2018. Still on the path to create unique experiences, their interactive theatre event, The Séance, opened October 2019 with a limited run.
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Mike Salyh is an immersive game designer who specializes in building arcade machines and escape rooms. His games have been featured at the IndieCade showcase, the GDC Alt.Ctrl booth, and been sold to hundreds of arcades across the United States.
In 2018, Mike co-founded Coin Crew Games with the goal of making arcade gaming more social. "Play together, not just next to each other" is the company's motto. The group has released two arcade titles, 'Hot Wheels: King of the Road' and 'Battle Bowling', both large-group multiplayer games. This year, Mike also worked with Two Bit Circus to design 'Dr. Botcher's Minute Medical School', an unusual escape room about performing surgery on a life sized puppet. Mike believes location-based entertainment is the best medium to push people out of their comfort zones and get them interacting in novel ways. "I'm happiest whenever I see a guest make a new friend". |
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Rachel Joy Victor works in worldbuilding and narrative design for immersive and emerging media forms, with a focus on creating speculative future narratives. Rachel's work spans live experiences, speculative dinner parties, mirrorworlds, virtual realilty, and virtual beings. Her degree in computational neuroscience and background in consulting on participatory culture, fan engagement, and transmedia franchise storytelling for Disney, Fox, and HBO informs her design of engaging storyworlds.
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THEATRE
Michael Bontatibus is the Artistic Director of Witness. He founded the company in 2017 with the debut of The Visitation, a fully immersive theatrical experience staged at the Wyckoff House, the oldest building in New York City. Under Witness, he has also created and written Found Footage on Governors Island and Noirtown for the inaugural Rave Theater Festival. Witness's latest immersive theater experience, Last Days of the Tsars, will premiere February 2020 at the historic Stimson-Green Mansion in Seattle.
Mister and Mischief are Jeff and Andy Crocker, a husband and wife creative team who produce playful, one-of-a-kind experiences. Combining their collected background across film, television, theatre, comedy, and themed entertainment, they're out to create projects that inspire, delight, and turn strangers into co-conspirators. In addition to their popular existentialist puzzle play Escape from Godot, they have also created a 3D interactive human child.
Andy is a live experience designer and director with a background in theatre, television and immersive events. Specializing in playful genre parody and interactive comedy, Andy has worked with The Bezark Company, Comedy Central, IFC, adult swim, The Second City, Skirball Cultural Center, ComedySportz and Center Theatre Group.
Jeff has previously produced for film and television, visual effects, and projection mapping animation. Currently, he is a project manager for Cinnabar, a leading custom fabricator of museum exhibits, theme park attractions, and art installations. Recent projects include Wallis Annenberg PetSpace, Avatar: Discover Pandora, and the Community Planetarium at Orange Coast College. He is the president-elect of the Themed Entertainment Association, Western Division.
Andy is a live experience designer and director with a background in theatre, television and immersive events. Specializing in playful genre parody and interactive comedy, Andy has worked with The Bezark Company, Comedy Central, IFC, adult swim, The Second City, Skirball Cultural Center, ComedySportz and Center Theatre Group.
Jeff has previously produced for film and television, visual effects, and projection mapping animation. Currently, he is a project manager for Cinnabar, a leading custom fabricator of museum exhibits, theme park attractions, and art installations. Recent projects include Wallis Annenberg PetSpace, Avatar: Discover Pandora, and the Community Planetarium at Orange Coast College. He is the president-elect of the Themed Entertainment Association, Western Division.
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Genevieve Gearhart is an actor, director, and choreographer based in Los Angeles. Genevieve’s work has been seen at the Getty Villa, REDCAT, the Ohio Theater, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Williamstown Theater Festival, and several found spaces in Los Angeles and New York. As Co-Artistic Director for The Speakeasy Society, Genevieve has directed over 30 productions in the last 7 years, as well as starring as Zelda Fitzgerald in Wild Party, (a collaboration with The Broad Stage) and the villainous Ozma in the acclaimed Kansas Collection, a ten part episodic series which allowed participants to choose sides in the battle for the throne of Oz. Genevieve received her MFA in Acting from California Institute for the Arts and her BA in Dance and Theatre from Manhattanville College.
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Julianne Just is a Los Angeles based director and co-artistic director of The Speakeasy Society - named Best Emerging Immersive Theater Company of 2015 by the LA Weekly. Select directing credits include: Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba, Purcell's baroque semi-opera spectacular The Fairy Queen, and various new operas, plays, and unique site-specific events. Most recent immersive projects with The Speakeasy Society include: The Kansas Collection (a multi-year episodic experience originally created for IndieCade's Night Games with the intention of exploring the intersection between immersive theater and gaming), The Johnny Cycle (an interactive tracked experience that puts the audience in the central role of Dalton Trumbo's groundbreaking novel Johnny Got His Gun), Under the Big Top (made specifically for and currently running at Two Bit Circus) and Wild Party: A Jazz Age Immersive Performance (made in partnership with The Broad Stage in Santa Monica). She has also done concept development for Creative Entertainment at Walt Disney Imagineering and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts.
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Lauren Ludwig is a multi-media director who specializes in interactive storytelling and creating communities for artists. She co-founded the award-winning Los Angeles theater company Capital W which specializes in intimate experiences for small audiences. Under their banner, Lauren has written and directed five original shows in as many years, including a recent commission for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts called THE BLIND DATE, a one-audience-member-at-a-time experience that recreates the risks and rewards of a blind date. HAMLET-MOBILE, her adaptation of Shakespeare's HAMLET staged in a cargo van, was published in the anthology Best Plays from American Theater Festivals 2015. Lauren’s work with Capital W has won Best Overall Immersive Work at Hollywood Fringe 2017 and the Game Design Award at the 2016 IndieCade Festival.
Extending her expertise for immersive storytelling to the screen, Lauren directed the VR short film GIRL which was released by the Tribeca Film Institute. She was a staff writer on the choose-your-own-adventure digital series EXP, developed for Eko. Lauren regularly teaches and speaks on immersive theater. She was an artist-in-residence at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a speaker at the inaugural Immersive Design Summit. When not making her own work, Lauren is committed to helping other artists birth theirs. She was the Director of AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women and is the co-founder of Wayward, a week-long retreat in the Canadian wilderness for womxn artists. A queer artist herself, Lauren is passionate about advocating for marginalized voices. She believes deeply in the transformative power of collective experiences, be they film shoots, theater happenings, or pagan rituals in the woods. |
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Charlie Miller is Associate Artistic Director at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. He is the co-founder and Curator of Off-Center, which began in 2010 as a small theatrical test kitchen has grown into a signature line of programming for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, credited with bringing immersive theatre to Colorado and helping establish Denver as a national hub for immersive art. Off-Center’s recent large-scale immersive and experiential projects, including Sweet & Lucky (2016), The Wild Party (2017), Between Us (2019), and The Last Defender (2019) have garnered local and national praise and attracted a significantly younger audience to the DCPA. His most recent projects include Camp Christmas created by Lonnie Hanzon and the upcoming world premiere of Theater of the Mind created by David Byrne and Mala Gaonkar.
Monica Miklas is the co-founder and creative producer of Los Angeles-based immersive theatre company Capital W, where she produces intimate, emotional, experiential performances that draw the audience into the world of story, including the one-on-one hit Red Flags and the bildungsroman epic Rochester, 1996. In 2019, Capital W was commissioned by the Denver Center for the Performing Arts as part of the Between Us project, developing The Blind Date at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. Capital W’s work has twice appeared in the Denver Film Festival and the company’s first production, Hamlet-Mobile won “Best Game Design” at the 2016 IndieCade Festival and is published in the Applause anthology Best Plays From American Theatre Festivals 2015. Monica is a co-founder and board member of the League of Experiential and Immersive Artists, an industry group for producers and creators. Along with Capital W co-founder Lauren Ludwig, she was an artist-in-residence at the Unit One at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2019 and has taught workshops on immersive producing in Los Angeles and Seattle. Monica studied Sociology at Stanford University and holds an MBA/MFA from Cal State Long Beach’ Theatre Management program.
Dave Mortensen is a producer/director based in Salt Lake City, UT, with Sackerson theatre, producing shows including traditional stage plays and immersive works. Most recent collaborations include A Brief Waltz in a Little Room: 23 short plays about Walter Eyer, a takeover of 10 former Anthropologie dressing rooms into immersive environments; and Hindsight, a walking play through downtown Salt Lake City (coming back in 2020). Both shows enjoyed an unusual four-month, sold-out run in Utah. An alum of the Commercial Theatre Institute, Mortensen serves on the Salt Lake City Arts Council Board, and this summer will launch the Micro-Immersive Theatre Experience Festival (MITEFest.org) in Utah.
Spencer Williams is the Producing Artistic Director of Walk the Night, an immersive/experiential production company. He left network production offices and production/direction of pilots, theatre, indie films and small business commercials after he began helming large-scale haunted corn mazes with strong narrative throughlines; went on to create site-specific sandbox pieces and singular 1-on-1 sessions. Among his commissions are consultation for Rogue Artists Ensemble’s Ovation Award-winning Kaidan Project and Lucca Comic & Games Convention 2019. He has performed in several immersive activations at San Diego Comic Con for HULU and Amazon Prime, as well as for Netflix.
Original works include the Walk the Night series, a 5-part, 5-year sandbox-style piece that adapted classic works throughout 4 locations: a Victorian mansion, an ancient Franciscan Convent, a vacant corporate headquarters and a vacant nature center. As of this writing he has two ongoing, bespoke boutique experiences (The Guest & The Host: Make Music and Tales By Candlelight) rooted in Music Production (with Dawson Records), and scented tabletop RPG candles (with Cantrip Candles and The Great Company, producers of Delusion). Several other 1-on-1 boutique pieces are in development. He is a proud member of the LEIA Education Committee.
Original works include the Walk the Night series, a 5-part, 5-year sandbox-style piece that adapted classic works throughout 4 locations: a Victorian mansion, an ancient Franciscan Convent, a vacant corporate headquarters and a vacant nature center. As of this writing he has two ongoing, bespoke boutique experiences (The Guest & The Host: Make Music and Tales By Candlelight) rooted in Music Production (with Dawson Records), and scented tabletop RPG candles (with Cantrip Candles and The Great Company, producers of Delusion). Several other 1-on-1 boutique pieces are in development. He is a proud member of the LEIA Education Committee.
VIRTUAL REALITY & BEINGS
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Pete Billington (Fable Studio) explores the convergence of art and technology. His career began at Silicon Graphics at the dawn of the web era. As a visual effects software consultant, he contributed to films like Star Wars and The Matrix. He helped pioneer the motion-capture pipeline and rapid prototyping design process now adopted by most major studios. His artwork can be found in over 15 feature films. He is the director of the acclaimed Virtual Reality experience Wolves in the Walls, which strives to balance narrative structure with natural, intuitive interaction. His next pursuit is the creation of a long-term character relationship utilizing Ai, interactive storytelling and a little magic.
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Jessica Yaffa Shamash (Fable Studio) began her career at Pixar Animation Studios where she learned the art of making creatures into friends and infusing magic and whimsy into the everyday ordinary. Her passion for storytelling brought her to Facebook’s universally-recognized, Oculus Story Studio, known for pioneering and defining the landscape of Virtual Reality cinema. Her work marries innovation and timelessness, fusing various art forms and technology into new imaginative mediums. She is the Co-Creator and Creative Producer of Wolves in the Walls, a Neil Gaiman adaptation, which earned her a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Innovation in Interactive Media. This work was also featured at Sundance, Cannes and Tribeca Film Festival. She lives in San Francisco and is a founding member of Fable Studio.
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Tender Claws is an indie game studio based in LA. The team is committed to creating compelling, unique games that are rooted in story and creatively tailored to compliment platform strengths. They've become recognized for quirky high-quality content and imaginative mechanics. Their debut PRY, was named one of Apple’s Top Apps of 2015 and was a finalist for The Future of Storytelling Prize and for IGF’s “Excellence in Narrative” award.
They next created Virtual Virtual Reality: a narrative comedy adventure that won Google Play’s best VR game of 2017, was a finalist for Unity’s Best VR game and one of the best selling/top reviewed on Oculus GO. Their AR virtual pet that feeds on your emotions, Tendar, was showcased at Sundance, received an Honorable Mention at the GDC Awards and won Innovation Awards at Indiecade and Games For Change. Currently they are in their first live actor run for The Under Presents where immersive theater meets VR gaming. An intriguing multiplayer experience set between two worlds: a jaunty vaudeville stage and the harrowing survival narrative.
They next created Virtual Virtual Reality: a narrative comedy adventure that won Google Play’s best VR game of 2017, was a finalist for Unity’s Best VR game and one of the best selling/top reviewed on Oculus GO. Their AR virtual pet that feeds on your emotions, Tendar, was showcased at Sundance, received an Honorable Mention at the GDC Awards and won Innovation Awards at Indiecade and Games For Change. Currently they are in their first live actor run for The Under Presents where immersive theater meets VR gaming. An intriguing multiplayer experience set between two worlds: a jaunty vaudeville stage and the harrowing survival narrative.
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Alex Coulombe is an architect turned XR-chitect with over 10 years experience crafting immersive experiences. As Creative Director of the NYC-based studio Agile Lens, Alex leads innovative VR and AR projects for performing arts as well as the built environments they're performed in. Recently Alex led design for "Loveseat," a live VR performance from the Venice Film Festival, the first tabletop theatre experience in Magic Leap's app store "That Kind of Guy," and the ghost speed-dating experience "Ghosted AR.”
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Allyson Morgan is a writer, producer, and performer. She is the founder and Executive Director of the award-winning film and theatre collective F*It Club; a winner out of thousands in the Bombay Sapphire Imagination Series; her short film “Need For Speed (Dating)” premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Twice she’s been selected for the iTV/Catalyst Content Festival pitch competition and was also one of twelve finalists in the Comedy Script competition for Catalyst. Recently, Allyson produced the Webby Award-winning podcast for Dave Holstein and Alan Schmuckler's “Wait, Wait, Don't Kill Me” and both co-created and starred in “Ghosted AR” which won “Most Innovative Immersive Experience at the North Bend Film Festival and the Audience Award at the NYC Media Lab Summit.
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Maxwell Planck was a co-founder of Oculus Story Studio and the technical lead and executive producer of Lost, the Emmy award winning Henry, and the Peabody award winning Dear Angelica. Max is a co-founder of Adventure Lab, a team creating an event based VR adventure platform that combines the social play of escape rooms with the emergent joy of a live host, all from the comfort of your home. Before Oculus Story Studio, Max was a technical supervisor at Pixar, having worked from 2004 to 2014 on Cars, Wall*e, Up, Brave, Monsters University, and The Good Dinosaur.
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Be HERE
March 27-29, 2020
