The following is adapted from this week’s NoPro LA newsletter. Subscribe here.

For those of you who have been following the development of immersive in LA closely, you know that last year’s tragic fire in Oakland at the Ghost Ship space drastically altered the way that the City of LA viewed live events in non-traditional spaces. This has impacted every production that sought to do all of its work above board this year, and has driven some work underground.

The work that I’ve been doing with LEIA (the League of Experiential & Immersive Artists) has been in a large part motivated by the need to find a legal, permitted path forward for immersive work. After all: the scene cannot grow and artists cannot build sustainable careers if events are going to get shut down by the cops for not having enough fire exits. (Not that shows should be staged WITHOUT enough fire exits!)

Since Ghost Ship there has been a de-facto moratorium on performance pieces in non-traditional spaces. Which is why it was surprising to see 29 Rooms, Happy Place, and Candytopia pop-up this season. Without having access to the creators behind these events — and we tried — I assumed that they were getting by on gallery permits of some kind.

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As it turns out, that’s just not so.

29 Rooms went on without incident — perhaps because the rules for temporary structures are different from structures that are being temporarily repurposed — but Candytopia wasn’t allowed to open and Happy Place was shut down because of the permit issues.

This is the downside of what we talk about when we say that immersive is a lot bigger than theatre. Events both large and small, independent and corporate, are charting strange waters. The good news is that the will to chart these courses exists; the bad news is that there’s a hell of a lot of inertia in the way.

But we’re digging in our heels, and raising our banners. Look for an announcement about LEIA’s first public Town Hall after the holidays.

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