The latest from Screenshot Productions, the ongoing collaboration led by husband and wife designers Nicholas Sherwin and Meghan McHale-Sherwin, The Rope is an offbeat addition to LA’s Spooky Season that has taken up residence at Think Tank Gallery for a part of each week this month.

Neither a haunt in the traditional sense nor a processional-style immersive as some of Screenshot’s previous work (Parturition, Shoshin) were, The Rope most closely resembles a game. Specifically a Japanese role-playing game, if that game were based on Japanese designers overhearing a heated discussion about the connection between Jim Henson’s Labyrinth and H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands by American otaku, released a game in Tokyo during the Playstation 2 era, which was that was translated into English and reinterpreted as a live action experience by folks who cut their teeth in extreme haunts.

In short: it’s quite unlike anything else I’ve encountered this season.

Sherwin and McHale-Sherwin’s work has steadily carved out a unique tone, one that has a meditative core that is shrouded in occult trappings. The Rope, their most ambitious work in terms of scale this year, is in many ways a continuation of this tonal experiment. The tools are different, but the net goal seems to be the same: to suspend the participant in a space within the landscape of the mind.

In Search of the Gates of Conscientia (Spoilers Ahead)

After being led down an alleyway while blindfolded, I stepped up and into a loading dock that had been repurposed into a campsite, where the first of many red-cloaked guides took my blindfold off and bid me to sit around a fire with the rest of my fellow travelers. He proceeded to tell us a fable, and impart that we had a role in redeeming a fabled land that had fallen to ash, one that we would soon be ascending into. We were admonished that anything we find we should take to the fortune teller who would be waiting for us. We should also seek her out if we got lost.

From there we stepped into a freight elevator and were re-blindfolded. As our guide did this he whispered a clue to each of us. Up we went, and then were guided into the space, where the blindfolds were removed, and our hands placed on a rope which had, like Ariadne’s thread, been woven through the space.

Other red cloaked guides — it’s Screenshot’s signature look — were standing by to put us on our various paths. Initially I just happily followed the rope, until one of the guides stopped me and asked who I was looking for. I remembered part of what the first guide had told me, and luckily it was enough for him to lead me where I belonged. (Which was just behind me, I had walked by the person I was supposed to find without realizing it.)

After that encounter — which was with actress Trish DeLuca, who I recognized from Devoted — I made my way down the rope line and found the fortune teller. There I showed the token I had been given and got my next assignment.

Thus began a steady rhythm of fetch quests, actor encounters, and trips back to the “hub” of the fortune teller. In truth: about half the encounters were wordier than they needed to be — I got into the mode where I just listened for key words that I thought might unlock things, but ultimately gave up on tracking everything since the the objects they would give me at the end of each encounter seemed to be what moved the action forward.

The monologues seemed to trip up some of the actors, who pushed through their lines as if they were merely giving exposition… yet others excelled at bringing the tone. These encounters made me feel like I was interacting with actors who deserved to be wearing some of Brian Froud’s finest weird creations. On the night I experienced the show I’d say about half the troupe was feeling the vibe, and the other half was trying — sometimes a little more than they needed to.

Only one encounter stood out in a bad way, when the script called for a particular character to choke the hero — that would be me — and bring me down to the ground. The actor in question went for more of a real choke than a stage-choke… which given that this is a Halloween show and that Screenshot has some extreme haunt in its DNA was quite possibly the given instructions. Unfortunately for the actor in question I don’t play that, and we wrestled for a bit. (Which could also be the plan.)

Luckily he dropped the maneuver at a certain point, because I don’t really have any control over my fight instinct in those situations. It’s why I don’t go in for Blackout and the other extreme horror stuff: I don’t want to end up hurting an actor who thinks they’re just giving a punter a thrill. In the end: I don’t think all that much is gained from this particular splash of kinetic violence, and indeed I have to stick these two paragraphs here as a warning to anyone who isn’t down with that particular form of manhandling.

Despite some of the unevenness of the acting and the density of some of the dialogue, the underlying structure of The Rope is compelling. This is the most game-like immersive I’ve encountered so far this side of an escape room. I really got into the groove of going out on the fetch quests and racing back to the fortune teller. That alone was engaging enough that I lost track of time — always a good sign — and managed to be the second person to complete their track. The story itself hangs somewhat loosely on the skeleton of the game, but it’s the dreamlike quality of some of the encounters — especially the finale — that made my quest for Conscientia worthwhile.

There seemed to be some pacing issues on preview night, and a couple of times I saw other members of my group getting parked, waiting for their turn with one of the characters. This might have been due to the others slipping off their tracks, which happened to at least one of my companions. There are still, clearly, kinks in the system.

Yet there’s also some wonderful reveals and fun moments. The Rope doesn’t try and connect on a personal level the way Screenshot’s last show — Bardo Thodal — attempted, nor is it contemplative in the way that Shoshin was. Instead it is very much about the world that you are given to explore. This is a vein that I hope Screenshot continues to tap, as the taste for the experimental which guides this troupe is leading them down some very interesting corridors indeed.

The Rope runs at Think Tank Gallery in DTLA on Tuesday and Wedensday nights through Novemeber 4th. There will also be a preview at IndieCade’s Night Games on October 15th on the USC Campus.