Prologue explored the formation of consciousness and the connection between image and analogue in the imaginal realm. This one-on-one full sensory immersion placed the audience member at the outset of a life catalyzed by the entropic forces of cultural isolation.
Prologue was a collaboration between artists from other immersive design companies including Whisperlodge and Alone as well as professional musicians from the Los Angeles area. The piece included live instrumentation, ASMR sensory interaction, and algorithmically created projection mapped environments.
Prologue was staged at the Midsummer Scream convention at the Long Beach Convention Center in July 2018.
Nicholas co-created and performed in the piece as well as constructed and fabricated the performance space.
“A brief journey into a melee of perception that only reaffirms the importance of collaboration, especially in immersive theatre, as a means to take the medium to a higher level.” - Haunting
Abide is a collaborative series of sound experiments exploring perceptual modality, seeking to create a space for participants to experience, through sensate realization, a nondual state of consciousness. Through live instrumentation, the creators engage in a kenotic outpouring, withdrawing attention from any semblance of binary musical structure or concrete thought, holding all present in a gentle open attentiveness.
The beginnings of the work formulated with our inquiry into a collaboration at the level of the heart. First within the confines of our own questions as artists and then the words of others. Through research into the study of consciousness, its definitions and boundaries, physics and systems, through theories of algorithmic creation, we formed a series of experiments around these questions.
As artists, how can we create a whole when we do so as the multifarious, perceiving from a place of separateness? Can one bring about a shift within their own structural perception and in doing so, create an experience such that others could perceive formlessness from within form? A different way of structuring the field of perception that does not depend on the initial bifurcation of the perceptual field into inside and outside, instead grasping the entire pattern as a whole-holographically- through a perceptual modality quantitatively more immediate and sensate, working on vibrational resonance rather than mental abstraction.
Abide has been performed in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland in performing arts spaces as well as for private conferences throughout 2017 and 2018.
Nicholas co-created and conceptualized Abide as well as performed live percussive instrumentation for all instances. In addition, he built the dome installation piece.
This ritual performance features a unique soundscape - including live instrumentation, classical text derived from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and physical theatre and dance generated by an all-female ensemble. Our very own ruin from an imagined San Francisco of antiquity, The Palace of Fine Arts - with its famous weeping maidens, sweeping pergolas and unique avian life - served as inspiration. Turning up the volume on women’s stories, we reach a hand back through time to empower those with lesser-known histories. Through Roman Women we explored the public and private lives of the women in Julius Caesar, in the late Roman Republic, and in the 21st century - imagining and recreating secret rites and hidden mysteries.
Roman Women ran throughout May and June of 2018.
Nicholas was the production stage manager for Roman Women. Creating the show flow, organizing the production crew, cast, and sets throughout the run.
“Site-specific work this sensorial, this well done, is its own raison d’être.” - SF Examiner
Whisperlodge is a sensory journey through live ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response). At Whisperlodge guests enjoy individual and group treatments designed to relax the body and mind, expand awareness, and heighten the sense.
Whisperlodge is an intimately-sized immersive theatre performance, maintaining a one-to-one ratio between guides and guests. The piece has been performed in New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and seeks to reach immersive and ASMR enthusiasts worldwide through live and digital means.
Whisperlodge has run from 2016 to the present in NYC, SF, and Los Angeles. While Whisperlodge was created by Melinda Lauw and Andrew Hoepfner, Nicholas performed and did some media work in the SF run of 2017.
“[Whisperlodge] is a way of being in your body, but quietly. It’s about very small movements and very small sounds, and the subtle ways our bodies react to them. It’s a different way of paying attention.” - The Atlantic
Fear Is What We Learned Here re-imagined Screenshot’s first immersive performance piece as a synesthetic journey through light, sound, and image. A one-on-one presentation of performance in environments created by projection, sound and physical installation. The piece explored fear as a tool for social and political control, challenging individuals to consider their perceptions and ask what is necessary to subvert systems of manipulation.
The piece placed individual audience members in a variety of situations and contexts in which they were robbed of agency, exploring abuses of power within political and religious institutions as well as within interpersonal and familial dynamics. While in the majority of the piece, the audience member felt a lack of agency, the ultimate message was one of empowerment. Even with a seeming lack of agency and empowerment, individuals and collections of people should make their voices heard and stand up to manipulation and abuses of power.
F I W W L H was staged both in San Francisco in January of 2017 and in Los Angeles in March of 2017.
Nicholas co-created, co-wrote and performed in FIWWLH as well as created the audiovisual elements in the video installations.
“An emotional experience with a strong theme, powerful acting, and a set design that supported it all.” - Haunting
An interactive fantastical journey into a fictionalized world called Conscientia. 6 audience members at a time gathered around a bonfire and were transported to an alternate realm. Each audience member was given an initial clue and had to traverse a varied environment, finding tokens and characters to help uncover the mysterious blight over the land. Each biome within the world was connected by a rope and at the end of each rope was a fortune teller who would impart riddles and clues in exchange for found objects along the journey.
While the journey was not as heady or philosophical as past efforts from Screenshot, it did mark a number of firsts for the company. This was both the first time that Screenshot engaged with audience members as a group and was the first time that interactive game elements were integrated into an immersive performance.
In addition to the main run, an introductory piece of the Rope was staged at the ScareLA Convention at the Pasadena Convention Center in August of 2016. Also, a fully-produced interactive prologue to the piece was featured at IndieCade at USC in October of 2016.
The Rope remains the most massive undertaking in Screenshot’s portfolio. There was a cast/crew of nearly 20 people and a massive amount of scenic and installation design and fabrication. The performance was conducted over 2 months in the Fall of 2016 at Think Tank Gallery.
Nicholas co-wrote and directed The Rope as well as fabricated the set design.
“A unique experience with a breathtaking visual payoff at the end that left me utterly breathless” - The Verge
Promotional trailer for The Rope
A 4-part immersive journey through death and the intermediate state between death and reincarnation/transcendence. Part 1 was staged at the Midsummer Scream Convention in Long Beach in July of 2016. This 10-minute experience began with audience members lying on the ground in the wake of a terrible accident and ended with them being pronounced dead and literally buried in a dirt grave.
Acts 2-4 took audience members through the intermediate bardo realms. The performance took place entirely in one room that was transformed using projection mapping technology. Here in the intermediate state, the audience member encountered peaceful deities, wrathful deities, and ultimately themselves. Prior to the performance, audience members were sent a detailed questionnaire with probing questions about their lives. The answers were built into a customized script for each audience member and dictated the entire last act of the performance.
The ultimate intention of Bardo Thodol was to provoke internal thought and consideration as to how a life was being lived and in the process to instill empathy and connection to others’ experience.
Bardo Thodol utilized projection and laser mapping, video installation, live percussive performance, and customized dialogue. It was conducted over a 2 month run in Downtown Los Angeles in early Fall of 2016.
Nicholas wrote, directed and performed in Bardo Thodol as well as created the video installation piece.
“One of the most emotional and extremely real shows I’ve ever experienced” - Theme Park Adventure
A 90-minute outdoor guided meditation through the Zen concept of beginner’s mind. Individual audience members were guided through a 1 mile outdoor pathway and along the way encountered a series of installation pieces that revolved around a particular facet of Zen meditation (breathing, posture, waves of the mind etc). The installations ranged from self-guided to performative, asking audience members to engage in a range of activities from considering a small question before them to creating a calligraphy work with charcoal on parchment. Each installation was paired with instructive text that was fed into the audience members headphones, leading them deeper into the meditative state.
The entire experience was structured as a kaiseki meal revolving around the Spring season and was bookended by two tea ceremonies - one a formal guided meditative exercise, and the other an open-ended (non-headphone driven) dialogue with a performer about their journey, the trinkets they picked up along the way, the choices they made and how the experience reflected their innate personhood. Finally, the piece ended with a live performance for each individual by Charles Jones on keyboard and vocals. The overall experience was both designed to introduce the concepts of nondual consciousness as well as to ground audience members in the present moment; to experience the bliss of the eternal present.
Shoshin featured outdoor interactions, small culinary installations, bluetooth geo-located technology, live musical performance, and video / projection installation.
Performances were conducted over one weekend in May of 2016.
Nicholas adapted text, co-concepted, performed and created the video installations for Shoshin.
“How this high concept translates into an actual experience is quietly magical.” - No Proscenium
An on-going, multi-year interpersonal performance and installation art project utilizing technology and in-person interactions to explore the implications of personal freedoms in a culture of big data collection. Loosely adapted from Franz Kafka’s The Trial.
The performance unfolded in a chapter format, supported through the architecture of personal data collection and was ‘staged’ for only one person at a time in a variety of venues via several methods of immersion. Each chapter was adapted and personalized for the audience member based on both interactions we had with them in-person and through various digital means.
In our day-to-day lives we generate vasts amounts of data effortlessly, and presumably harmlessly, through our interaction with technology. Data that is collected and stored by individuals, researchers, corporations and governmental agencies. Each individual creates a footprint of data that follows their lives, thoughts and emotional states. Das Gericht sought to explore questions around who owns the personal data we produce and how that data affects our lives, our psychological health and the culture of a community.
The experience was staged between April 2016 and December 2017 for a total of 10 participants from a cross-section of socio-economic and racial backgrounds.
Nicholas adapted the text from The Trial and co-created the performances and digital interactive pieces.
“An unsettling element of discomfort is now imbued into my life, and curiosity is currently reigning over prudence and practicality.” - LAist
A 30-minute individual immersive experience taking audience members through their birth and into the first moments of waking life. Audience members had the option of choosing either a theatrical (clothed) or natural (naked) birthing experience and were led through a fabricated birth-canal, onto an operating table and ultimately into a warm embracing interaction with their earthly mother. Prior to the experience, audience members were asked to reflect on the circumstances of their birth and the answers they provided were integrated into a performed dialogue with their ‘mother’ at the end of the experience.
While the experience sought to simulate the terrifying first moments of life at parturition, the ultimate aim was to illuminate the beauty of each individual audience member. The creative team sought to communicate to each person that, no matter their life circumstances, they are loved, cared for and ultimately connected to the entire human organism through the shared origin of life.
The piece utilized video installation, bluetooth headphone technology, strobe lights and original orchestrated soundscapes to simulate both the tranquility and fragility of life in utero and the harsh transition out into the world.
Parturition ran for 4 evenings in January, 2016 in a black-box theatre in North Hollywood.
Nicholas co-created the piece and shot/edited the video installation.
“This isn't a performance about the insignificance of your being in comparison with the vastness of the universe, but the magic of your very existence” - LAist
An immersive performance art piece taking individual audience members through a 45-minute exploration of the deepest fears of the human psyche. Each fear (the fear of the unknown, loneliness, rejection and failure) was represented through a short participative vignette and was framed within the context of a dream-state. While the piece illustrated fears of ultimately not living up to one’s potential, the final statement was one of empowerment - a call to action to rise above our fears and in doing so, to liberate others from theirs.
Fear Is What We Learned Here featured video installation, dance, morphing passageways, sensory deprivation, light, and fog to mirror a waking dream. Participants were outfitted with bluetooth headphones and a headlamp angled such that they could only see an arm length ahead of them. Sounds, dialogue, and instructions were live-mixed and fed into the audience members headphones and all performers were on the same bluetooth feed so they could both call out instructions/cues to the sound designer and understand at every moment where the audience member was on their journey.
The performance took place over a 2-month period in the Fall of 2015 in Los Angeles County.
Nicholas co-created the piece, concepted the audience pathway and created the video installation.
“An utterly beautiful evening that left me pondering life as well as leaving me with an overwhelming feeling of elation.” - Blumhouse Productions
Blackout Haunted House is a solo walkthrough experience and the original ‘extreme haunted house.’ It is a mixture of theater, performance art, mixed-media set design and ultimately a safe place to confront the edge of your security. Blackout is in many ways a haunted house in reverse. Much of the scariest time in there is spent alone, in the dark, while nothing happens. Whatever you walk in there being afraid of -- that's what's lurking in the house's imagined dark recesses.
Blackout has been staged in various forms in various cities between 2009 and the present in NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
While the show was created by Josh Randall and Kristjan Thor, Nicholas worked as a PSM on the west coast shows between October and May of 2014. Nicholas headed operations of the production of Blackout: House throughout October 2014, a version of Blackout at the Forum on Halloween Night, and various off-season events in the spring of 2014.
“The extreme theater event of the year.” - The New York Times
