LA: Tradecraft

by NoPro Newswire
NoPro Newswire
•
August 27, 2018
•
3 min read

When: Sep 21–29
Where: West LA
Price: $60

Tags: #participatory, #thriller, #intelligence

The writer behind the 2017 HFF hybrid Dark Arts partners with one of the 007 franchise’s most experienced scribes to create an immersive espionage thriller that seems to put a fragile peace in the hands of the audience.

Press Release Follows

New Immersive Theatre Experience, from 007 Screenwriter and Veteran TV Writer, Comes to Los Angeles This September

“Tradecraft” places audiences in the middle of an espionage thriller.

Los Angeles, CA, August 21 — Ichabod’s Cranium, a full-service immersive and experiential entertainment company, has announced details for TRADECRAFT, its latest immersive theatrical production.

TRADECRAFT is a paranoid thriller inspired by similar films from the 1970’s, such as The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor, in which audiences will find themselves recruited for a top-secret intelligence program that may have just gone off the rails.

TRADECRAFT is written and produced by Lawrence Meyers, whose previous immersive production was the intimate and emotionally-charged Dark Arts. Meyers is a veteran television writer/producer, having penned scripts for the Emmy-winning Picket Fences, The Pretender, Outer Limits, Early Edition, and Crossing Jordan. He also wrote and produced the award-winning Porn Rock at the 2016 Hollywood Fringe Festival.

TRADECRAFT is directed by Bruce Feirstein, screenwriter and co-producer of the first three James Bond films starring Pierce Brosnan: GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, and The World is Not Enough. Feirstein is also the writer of six of the 007 video games.

“Bruce is the perfect director for the show, given his history with the most succcessful franchise in film history,” Meyers said. “He also has an innate understanding of immersive structure, thanks to his experience in gaming.”

TRADECRAFT is also inspired by incidents and individuals Meyers and Feirstein have encountered in their years as journalists.

The story centers around guests having been recruited to participate in a “Civilian Oversight Panel”, designed to “bring more transparency to how foreign military operations are executed”.

The extent of the “oversight” is where the central conflicts arise.

“What I’ve learned, after years as a journalist and communications consultant, is that the stories fed to us contain about one percent of the truth. I want audiences to experience what it’s like to think you know what’s going on, only to discover there are multiple parties working for and against each other, and you’re caught in the middle without knowing whom to trust, and with stakes that could not be higher.”

The show will be experienced by only 9 participants at a time. Guests will have opportunities for character interactivity, and their choices may affect multiple aspects of the story. “How guests answer certain questions, their choice of words, how they behave in certain circumstances — all of these can alter character behavior that trickles through the entire story,” Meyers says. “Guests will be observed much more closely than it may appear.”

As with most immersive productions, the show’s location is top-secret and will only be disclosed to ticketed audience members 48 hours before the performance. However, Meyers and Feirstein said, the location itself plays a critical role in the piece.

“Films like The Parallax View incorporated a visual scheme that enhanced its sense of disorientation and displacement. The location for TRADECRAFT is a kind of forgotten Los Angeles landmark, whose architectural design subconsciously generates similar feelings and serves the broader story we’re telling.”

TRADECRAFT runs September 21–23 and 28–30, with performances beginning every hour on the hour, from 6 PM to 9 PM each evening. Tickets are $60.