{"id":12472,"date":"2018-08-27T00:00:09","date_gmt":"2018-08-27T07:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/Becomeimmersed.com\/?p=12472"},"modified":"2019-12-12T13:24:10","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T21:24:10","slug":"erik-blair-thea-rivera-immersive-theater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/becomeimmersed.com\/erik-blair-thea-rivera-immersive-theater\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation with Erik Blair and Thea Rivera on Immersive Theater"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Below is an interview with Erik Blair and Thea Rivera of<\/em>\u00a0They Played Productions spanning immersive theater, audience participation, and future plans for their company. Many thanks to Kevin Hsu for filming the interview and Jon Kobryn for editing it.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>LARPing and Ren Faire and improv, oh my! Erik Blair and Thea Rivera of They Played Productions<\/a> have all the experience you could want from immersive theater creators. Their varied backgrounds culminated in Captivated: Act One\u2014Justine<\/a>, one of the more innovative immersive shows of 2018. Blair and Rivera recently sat down with our sister site Haunting<\/a> to discuss their experience and plans for They Played Productions.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s certainly a lot of cross-pollination among performance forms, according to Blair: \u201cI think what we bring to the immersive community tends to be based on what we\u2019ve learned\u201d in LARPs and other immersive formats. It\u2019s there, he says, where creators have already devised excellent working solutions to currently contentious issues about audience consent and balancing audience input with authorial control.\u00a0Blair and Rivera are both committed to letting guests genuinely impact the narrative\u2014rather than merely being mobile presences amidst an inflexible story. But occasionally they butt up against rather enthusiastic\u00a0<\/em>audience members who want to commandeer the show themselves.<\/p>\n

Two more acts of Captivated are forthcoming, and the creators are aware that future guests may not have experienced the first act. However, future audiences can rest assured Act Two will feature an opening that immediately engrosses old hats and new. The sequel will cover \u201cwhat should be\u00a0<\/em>a tremendously somber situation\u2026\u201d but They Played Productions<\/a> has already built a reputation of inverting audience expectations.<\/p>\n

Blair and Rivera also discuss other projects they\u2019re cooking up at various stages of conception\u2014some comedic, others political. You\u2019ll want to stay tuned.\u00a0While you wait for whatever comes next from this exciting company currently in its sophomore year, you can watch our full interview with them below.[\/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bKFOuvOx18k”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Below is an interview with Erik Blair and Thea Rivera of\u00a0They Played Productions spanning immersive theater, audience participation, and future plans for their company. Many thanks to Kevin Hsu for filming the interview and Jon Kobryn for editing it. \u00a0LARPing and Ren Faire and improv, oh my! Erik Blair and Thea Rivera of They Played…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":25519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4239,6515,9284],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[9009,198,9261,12405,12404,12403,2401,5647,9263,12402,12401,4029,246,258,1647,5716,9264,3623,12365,12364],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/becomeimmersed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/They-Played-Productions-Conversation-with-Erik-and-Thea-Interview-Thumbnail.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrPML-3fa","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/becomeimmersed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/becomeimmersed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/becomeimmersed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/becomeimmersed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/becomeimmersed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/becomeimmersed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/becomeimmersed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/becomeimmersed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/becomeimmersed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/becomeimmersed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12472"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/becomeimmersed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}