The No Proscenium Podcast

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 NOTESCirqueSaw @ WellAttended (ticketing site)CirqueSaw InstagramNext Stage Immersive Summit: Program Guide

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

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 NOTESVoidspaceImmersive RumorsFranco Milazzo, Broadway WorldThe Next Stage Immersive SummitNoPro's Best of 2024: Immersive Moments

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. –NoahSHOW NOTESLife And TrustSleep No MoreSpeakeasy MagickEmursiveThe Next Stage Immersive SummitContact Noah about that thing he mentioned.

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 NOTESSkydance’s BehemothAnn Morrow Johnson, of Gensler, Joins Board of The Immersive Experience InstituteThe Next Stage Immersive Summit: Speakers & GuestsThe Next Stage Immersive SummitThe Next Stage Immersive Summit: BadgesNo Proscenium Gift Subscriptions

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 NOTESBatman: Arkham ShadowCamouflajRépubliqueGet Cast In A Dream Role In ‘Batman: Arkham Shadow’ (The NoPro Review)A Christmas Carol VRGitHub - AgileLens/HalcyonVRAlex Coulombe (@ibrews.bsky.social) — BlueskyAlex Coulombe Presents Unreal Engine TrainingThe (Unofficial) Unreal Engine Podcast - YouTubeThe Weeknd’s ‘Open Hearts’ Drops On Apple Vision ProThe Next Stage Immersive Summit