Theater of the Mind

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The Brief:

For this project our audience was all back stage. We created a highly automated control system to guide and monitor guests through a complicated immersive experience. The stage manager orchestrated everything from our master control station, while roving attendants could oversee any room from a nearby touchscreen. The experience included a 16 seat live virtual reality experience including sight, sound and scent. Once installed, we trained the crew to maintain and operate the show.

The Show:

Theater of the Mind was a large-scale immersive theater production created by David Byrne and Mala Gaonkar, hosted in Denver Colorado by the Denver Center for Performing Arts’ Off Center division.

Assuming the roles of misremembered friends, the audience participates in a series of sensory experiments that help a recently deceased "David" confront the unreliable nature of memory. Together they wander through the emotional milestones of their lives, mapped across a fantastical 10,000 sq. ft. set. The sprawling, hour-long walking play accommodates 5 overlapping performances, with a capacity of 36 shows in a full day.

David Quakenbush, BrightJOY founder, was invited to support the theater company as the show’s Technology Manager.

The Tech:

Audience members can keep an eye on their entry time via a boarding clock in the lobby. This display is duplicated in the green room to help performers stay on track. It also sent a time signal across the network to keep all the other tech in sync. We wrote the clock in Touch Designer.

We also wrote a custom video player in Touch Designer for the performers to use within the experience.

Each scene begins when the audience enters the corresponding room. Performers trigger key moments by interacting with the room: doors opening and closing, flipped light switches, and wireless remote presses. We also wired various props, like a faux piano and a vintage transistor radio.

Events are interpreted by a master show control system, which was written in a platform called “Medialon.” It exchanges events via a network of Raspberry PI microcontrollers, which also managed crew signal lights.

Medialon published the control panels for the show manager and a network of attendant iPads. The show manager’s station shows the activity in each room, including sensor states, performance times and a live video feed of each room.

We designed and manufactured a stoplight to post near each crew access door to indicate at a glance whether a room is currently active, needs to be reset or if it is ready for the next performance.

Much of the technology we created belongs to the show and cannot be described in detail, including full images of the sets, control system details or an explanation of the Virtual Reality experience. We can share that the show relied heavily on one-of-a-kind technology to operate smoothly.