Our writer tries her hand at EMIT’s immersive theatre-escape room fundraising event
KIMBERLY!! KIMBERLY!! Has anyone seen Kimberly?
Suzy — a fellow student of Hughes High and the class science nerd — is running through the Hughes High gymnasium yelling for our resident alpha mean girl. It’s time for Kimberly to announce the Homecoming King and Queen, and no one has seen her through the forest of purple balloons, side ponytails, and life-size Pac-Man props.
The English teacher, Ms. Johnson Walsh, is even asking for Kimberly’s whereabouts. Fed up, Suzy decides to stand on a chair in one of the two large rooms on the second floor of Solas, a bar at the edge of the East Village, which is masquerading as our prom venue.
Suzy makes the big announcement herself. Her squeaky voice projects throughout the room, as she says, “The Homecoming King for the Class of 1988 Time of Our Lives Prom is….”
Surprise, surprise, Kimberly and her jock boyfriend Brian win the crown…classic high school, but really, where is Kimberly? Brian runs to find her, but as soon as he tries to go down the stairs to leave Hughes High, he is viciously electrocuted to death and walks back to the gymnasium as a ghost, white-faced and wearing torn clothing.
Suzy groans that we are trapped. The laughs stop. The music stops.
There’s a crackle over the PA system: it’s Kimberly and she sounds pissed, even more so than when the wannabes try to sit with her at lunch.
Kimberly vehemently shares that she has been waitlisted at all of her universities of choice, so to get her revenge she has electrified the floors of the school (cue her evil snotty laugh).
Get Michaela Ternasky-Holland’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
SubscribeSubscribe
Kimberly is “nice” enough to leave a box with the disarm button locked inside. If we can open it, the senior class of Hughes High will be free, and no one will die at this prom (besides Brian). Kimberly is back on the PA system nasally gloating about how dumb we all are.
We have less than an hour to crack the code, and the puzzles are strewn through the school.
Brian, Suzy, and Ms. Johnson-Walsh waste no time, quickly organizing us into teams based on the colors of the neon glow-in-the-dark wristbands we received at the door. What I hadn’t noticed when walking into the prom, was that the whole second floor of Solas bar off East 9th St. had been converted into Hughes High, complete with a science lab (the upstairs bar), a library (a dark corner filled with books), and the main administration office (the second large upstairs room). The chaperones guide their students on a hurried rotation through each room to pressuring them in a frenzy to crack each puzzle. I am on the “blue” team and find myself following Suzy to the science lab. She is trying her best to be helpful, distracting, and distant to my team’s hurried reactions to the hot pink puzzle prompts.
This escape room/immersive theater hybrid was a wonderfully heartfelt production and fundraiser for Education Mobile Immersive Theater. Despite its low-budget set design, lighting, and sound, it thoroughly matched and overcame expectations. Time of Your Life used improvisation and humor via the familiarly zany tropes of the ’80s as well as smart well-placed, well-timed puzzles. Each room dealt with a three to four step process to unlocking its code. For a team of about eight to ten people, it felt like each person was able to contribute and engage in each room. The riddles also kept within the theme of being a high school student in the ’80s; I encountered the Dewey Decimal System, multi-colored filing folders, and high school chemistry beakers and scientific scales.
Once we gathered the solutions from each of the rooms, the teams came together for the finale that involved blacklight flashlights. I won’t give away the ending, but I will share that Suzy and Brian shared a dance to the titular ’80s song “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” from Dirty Dancing.
This fundraiser has now ended, but Gianna Cioffi, Artistic Director of EMIT, shared that there will be a remount in February.
I can’t lie. I am tempted to buy two tickets, find my best ’80s prom dress, bring a date, and go again.
Find out more about Educational Mobile Immersive Theatre and their mission on their web site.
NoPro is a labor of love made possible by our generous Patreon backers. Join them today!
In addition to the No Proscenium web site, our podcast, and our newsletters, you can find NoPro on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, in the Facebook community Everything Immersive, and on our Slack forum.
Discussion