I am writing this at 3:11 a.m. on Sunday night/Monday morning. I just got home after spending the last 48 hours+ participating in the LA Immersive Invitational, co-presented by After Hours Theatre Company and The Immersive Experience Institute. It’s a 48-hour theater “competition” where immersive theater companies are tasked with creating a new 10-minute piece over a weekend. I led the Rogue Artists Ensemble team, and it was the first time I’ve been able to participate myself, even though Rogue has been involved as a company for a couple rounds.

The general breakdown of the day is not unlike your typical 24-hour or 48-hour theater festival. It generally looked like:

1. Getting together Friday night to get assignments (location, emotional beat, prop, and a storytelling restriction or challenge that we gave ourselves).
2. We get to work Friday night and all day Saturday.
3. Saturday night we play test with other teams — meaning we are the audience for other teams; with immersive theater, the audience is an important character and variable that is hard to plan for without actual bodies in the room.
4. Sunday we started performing at noon for audiences through 9pm.

Unlike a typical 10-minute festival where you might get the play performed 1-3 times, we performed ours…25 times.

There’s a brilliance in being able to create something and not have the luxury to be burdened with a desire for perfection. To let a project find itself in repetition. And to not assume this HAS to be a bigger, fancier project down the line.

I find myself getting stuck in cycles of production — I seldom write without an agenda and expectation. Free writes and journaling spark immediate irritation for me (even though I understand the WHY of it all). But this kind of cycle only serves to burn me out. It sucks the joy out of a process.

(Pictured above – the “backstage crew” i.e. me and John waiting with Carlos to hear what the audience decides, which triggers one of three endings.)

This weekend was a joyful process. Did we hit some snags and clashes? Yeah. Was it a perfect show? No. Did we create the seeds of something that might turn into a bigger THING? Maybe.

But most importantly, it made me remember how fun all of this is. And somehow in the big scheme of trying to have a “career” I’ve gotten in the loop of constant production and have forgotten how to play.

Sometimes forcing ourselves to play, to not be precious, to let your collaborators in, to be okay with not knowing all the answers…that’s the way to break out of your patterns.

Fittingly, the play was about folks who try to break a man out of a time loop he’s stuck in. We made three different endings that the audience helped choose–their actions in the story had three different outcomes. One progressive. One tragic. One psychedelic.

But every ending can also be a beginning. And every writing/creation exercise strengthens the muscles.

So, do you have permission to come out to play?

Think about that while I take a week-long nap.