Tarot is an exercise in deriving or projecting meaning, depending on your point of view, on cards filled with densely packed imagery. For some it’s a mystic process for others, meditative. There are those who don’t see a difference between those two. Then there are the killjoys who think it’s all bunk — which overlooks the psychological process that card interpretation triggers.

You Must Be Here For The Reading, the latest piece from choreographer and designer Koryn Wicks, both uses the tarot as a tool in the meaning making and invites the audience to explore the process of meaning making itself through both the lens of a reading that goes tragically off the rails before it can even start and poetic cut-up techniques that are equal parts William S. Burroughs and Mad Libs.

While Tarot is usually meant for two — a reader and a querent — the production is a salon experience for a small group. There’s definitely something to explore in that idea, and in the run I went to it felt like we were only scratching the surface of what a communal tarot reading for a group of strangers could do or be. Especially as we are asked to bring a question of our own as one would in a personal reading, only to have a spread laid out for all there.

But the reading side of things is only part of the puzzle, as surrounding the reading is a quietly unfolding tragedy involving a couple — the tarot reader and her partner — which finds the audience ahead of the characters after a sudden start. Indeed we know the characters’ fates long before they are fully read in.

Audrey Rachelle (left) and an audience member in 'You Must Be Here For The Reading'. (Image courtesy Koryn Wicks)

The night I saw it this lead to a moment where the audience nearly derailed the tone of the piece by openly considering telling one character bluntly what was going on. I’m not entirely sure what would have happened if they had, but the vibes of the piece won out and the audience didn’t take us down that path. It does make for a high wire act for the performers, who have etherial choreography and a narrative arc to complete all while drawing out the audience’s own interpretation of the cards.

This was slightly complicated by having a professional tarot reader in the mix for our audience which consisted of a couple of different groups of acquaintances. I suspect a group who knew each other as a whole would either fare better, or would at least gleefully head down an anarchic path together.

As a story about loss and constructing your own meaning from the random pulls that life gives you, You Must Be Here For The Reading definitely works. That layer of the show is in the capable hands of the ensemble, with a double casting of the reader, Constance (Haylee Nichele/Audrey Rachelle) and her partner Bill (Sam Alper/James Cowan). The company is cast in such a way that there is a chance you might see either performer paired with the other, which is bound to bring small tonal differences to the dynamic. However it lands, you’re bound to be in good hands.

That said, there’s definitely some room to both tighten up and go further with this one. For starters, the shift from the casual opening — which finds the audience exploring the space, chatting with the front of house staff who are themselves partly “in world,” and engaging with written prompts — to the show proper doesn’t quite gel as a surprise beat gets muddled by audience placement that isn’t wholly organic. The piece has been staged inside the set of After Hours Theatre Company’s Dark Library: The Time Machine, and that provides a lot of visual production value, but also provides some constraints that require a bit more by in from the audience for a few of the bigger narrative swings.

Haylee Nichele (left) and Sam Alper (right) in 'You Must Be Here For The Reading'. (Image courtesy Koryn Wicks)

Then there is the tension between arriving at a reading with a personal question and the evolution of the reading into something communal. It’s here that I think the most potential for development lies. The challenge of doing what is traditionally a deeply personal act for a small group, and of strangers at that, is not to be underestimated. Wicks succeeds in what’s been built for this edition of the show, but I can’t help but think a slightly more on the nose framing of the collective reading process might reach deeper. There’s some juice to this group tarot process and I think Wicks and her collaborators have the teeth to draw it out.

There’s something about this particular moment in time that feels like it needs consciously crafted group meaning making experience. In part because we’ve been so fractured by the age of social media, which isn’t so much “social” as it is “everyone yelling at each other.” In some ways it is the deepest sickness our society has, and at its best the immersive form has the tools to act as a treatment for this disease. I can see this piece evolving to be that kind of medicine.

Here in the present what’s exciting is that the show is already connecting with audiences outside the immersive enthusiast sphere, introducing them to some of the more avant-garde aspects of the form, as practiced by members of the immersive creative community dedicated to evolving the game. That’s an unequivocal good thing, and I’m looking forward to seeing how that audience shapes the future of this work.

You Must Be Here For The Reading, plays at the After Hours Theatre Company space in North Hollywood from June 4- 20, 2026. Tickets are $35-65.

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