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Designing for meaningful participation and play: Co-creation, personal connection, and the immersion that money can’t buy

  • Weds

“What if we told you that the most powerful form of immersion isn’t about set, tech or budget. That it’s actually about something much simpler: the power of personal connection.”

The last few years have seen a surge of innovation from the fringe of the immersive scene. A model for immersive that is low budget and agile, yet whose quality and impact has drawn praise from critics, and loyalty from audiences.

Work that is hailed by those who experience it as powerful enough to be life changing.

Immersion built on a deep understanding of the power of playful co-creation to form stories, worlds and performances that are genuinely responsive and truly personal, and that genuinely place the audience at their heart.

Katy Naylor, Artistic Director of grassroots interactive arts community platform the Voidspace, brings together a panel of creators of some of the most impactful smaller scale works of recent years, to share insights into responsive co-creation, what makes this innovative approach so exciting, and how it might be used to create the most powerfully immersive work, at any scale.

Chloe Mashiter

Chloe is a facilitator and designer (both mechanical and narrative) whose experience spans larps, tabletop role-playing games, jubensha, mega-games, ARGs, pervasive games, street gaming, immersive & interactive theatre and board games. They have worked with companies including Coney, Parabolic Theatre, Secret Cinema, Blast Theory and Jury Games, and are currently a Creative Associate at Bridge Command. Chloe’s primary interest is in role-play based experiences that reinforce the players’ worth as storytellers.

has over a decade of experience as a facilitator and designer (both mechanical and narrative)

Seth Kriebel

Seth Kriebel makes unusual performance, often inspired by games. His work has been presented across England and internationally.

His Exploration Games (‘The Unbuilt Room’, ‘A House Repeated’ and ‘We This Way’) and his retellings of classic stories (‘Beowulf’, ‘The Death of King Arthur’ and ‘Faust’) have been presented in venues including Brighton International Festival, Turner Contemporary (Margate), The Science Museum (London) and Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery and continue to tour nationally.

His new Exploration Game ‘The Map and the Echo’ (autumn ’25) has been commissioned by the British Library in conjunction with its major new exhibition ‘Secret Maps’.

Jack Aldisert
Deadweight Theatre

Jack Aldisert is a writer, director, and performer, and the creator of ‘The Manikins: a work in progress’, which was hailed as “the best immersive show of 2024” by Immersive Rumours, a “model of the industry” by No Proscenium, and a “masterpiece” by Broadway World. He has taught interactive performance at the University of Puget Sound, the London East 15 Acting School, and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where he completed an MFA in advanced theatre practice. He is currently a writer on attachment at the Royal Court Theatre in London.

Yannick Trapman-O’Brien
Undersigned, The Telelibrary

Yannick Trapman-O’Brien is a Performer, Theatermaker, and Creative Hand for Hire. His practice centers on exploring unorthodox invitations to and applications for performance, and the exchanges we are willing to make with strangers. He is the creator of a series of cult-favorite immersive experiences, including the critically-acclaimed “Undersigned” and the award-winning and long-running telephone experience “The Telelibrary.” His pieces have been official selections at La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls Festival, as well as the Denver, True/False, and Overlook Film Festivals, and the publication No Proscenium declared his work “a North Star” in the industry for creating responsive and deeply personal encounters for audiences of one at a time.

As a consultant, he helps organizations shape engagement and think critically about the exchanges they make with their constituents, from single events to workshops to BFA programs. He is a theatrical advisor for the Temple of the Stranger, an ongoing collaborator and producer for the The Arts & Health Project at NYU Tisch Open Arts, and has worked with Monument Lab since 2017, where he currently serves as a Project Specialist.

Past performance credits include include training and work with Theater Mitu, Witness Relocation and the Interactive Playlab, appearances at The Walnut Street Theater, The American Czech Theater, New Light Theater, the Franklin Institute, and Morris Jumel Mansion, and collaborations with Public Movement (2016) and Amalia Pica (2017) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Occasionally, he sleeps.

https://www.yannickto.com/

Katy Naylor
The Voidspace

Katy Naylor is Artistic Director of The Voidspace, an organisation that supports and platforms grassroots immersive and interactive theatre.

The Voidspace produces events across the year, the highlight of which is Voidspace Live, an annual two day festival of interactive arts.

Katy has also recently published Voidspace in Conversation – an anthology of interviews with and essays from dozens of leading practitioners.

She looks forward to continuing the conversation.

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