Well, we've reached the end of another year and 2025 will likely be remembered for being tumultuous to say the least.
Here in the immersive cosmos we've seen high profile closings – Life And Trust – and openings – Masquerade – and that's just in New York City. Sleep No More opened in Seoul, Secret Cinema brought back Grease! and gave it a whole new twist, and Cosm got into the feature length movie game just before Sphere did.
Before we unleash our "Best Shows & Experiences" list, we like to take a moment and drill down on the moments that made our immersive year. These can come from anything, not just work that premiered this year, and represent the work that's kept us going and in love with the form.
It's A Really Good Quiche, Patty
(5 Lesbians Eating A Quiche – EverFound Arts)
As anyone who has every tried to produce a show where food in integrated into the experience can tell you getting it right is nigh impossible. Balancing all the elements – from the timing to whether or not it really works in the context of the story – is a tightrope walk not for the faint of heart.
Which is why the simple approach in Marissa Pattullo's production of 5 Lesbians Eating A Quiche wowed me when it worked so well.
To be sure: the quiche is right there in the title of the piece, and the increasingly zany story puts the quiche in the spotlight as plot device and metaphor alike, but the execution gave a materiality to the quiche that grounded said plot and metaphor in a way that only immersive & experiential work can.
Granted, the production outsourced the quiche, yet they did not fumble and served the lovely brunch staple to a packed house of roughly fifty. The quiche, already the topic of conversation amongst the characters became the topic of conversation at our tables, giving us an alibi for slipping into the world of the show just by picking up our forks.
Adding an experiential layer to an existing script isn't easy, but Pattullo and her team did so here with style and taste.
– Noah J. Nelson, Founder & Publisher
It's A Trap
(1884 - Koro Productions)
The sickening realization that I had walked, eyes-front and head-forward, into a trap just by working hard to help my friends navigate a complex bureaucratic system. Knowing I was now removed from them entirely and all I could do was try to let them know what had happened and pray they might be able to help me from the outside (unlikely, since by nature of my role I was the most capable and paperwork-literate), hoping that I might see them again someday… It was a sobering experience, one which is and has been going on in the Real World for some time with much higher stakes, and I don’t think I’ll forget that sinking feeling in a hurry.
– Shelley Snyder, London Curator
Running Toward Fear
(Demise of the Gricers – Entered)
If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d have told you that my scaredy-Kat self was completely incapable of doing any fear-driven immersive. In 2025, I decided to challenge myself, and one experience in particular challenged me more than any other.
Set in an abandoned trainyard in Eastern Belgium, Demise of the Gricers is a high-adrenaline “real-life game.” For three hours, you and your team infiltrate a cult that worships trains (yes, really), using stealth, strategy, and speed to avoid capture in a sprawling, technology-enabled, game of tag. You’re dodging enemies, crawling underneath train cars, full on sprinting, and unlike many other horror-laced immersive works, the physicality here is very real. You will be running. You can get caught.
About halfway through the experience, I had a full-on panic. I didn’t think I could do it. I wasn’t sure my body would keep up, or if I could quiet the pounding in my chest. But, with the help of my teammates and the gamemaster, I pushed forward, and in doing so, reshaped how I understand, process, and tackle the concept of fear.
– Katrina Lat, Toronto Curator
“I didn’t survive to be polite”
(Police State - Nadya Tolokonnikova - MOCA / MCA Chicago)
For me, immersive art can often be a salve against the current state of the world, but when the world goes too far, we need artists to reflect the absurdity and horror that we are experiencing. Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolonnikova did just that with her stirring piece Police State, which played in two major contemporary art museums at moments of great socio-political tumult. The first incarnation playing at MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary in the middle of June’s National Guard deployment in Los Angeles, where Tolokonnikova defiantly continued to perform and livestream while the museum was closed to the public. Then later in the year recreating the piece at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art amidst that city’s occupation by ICE. Context alone elevated the experience, but the work itself, wherein Tolokonnikova would spend days sewing protest patches (“I didn’t survive to be polite”) onto decommissioned police uniforms in a facsimile of the Siberian cell she was confined to by Putin’s government, emanated a power and clarity that we all need at this moment.
– Martin Gimenez, Correspondent At Large
Blood Soaked Shadow Casting
(House of the Exquisite Corpse V: Blood & Puppets - Rough House Puppet Arts)
While each vignette featured within any given House of the Exquisite Corpse from Rough House Puppet Arts is a wonderfully horrific Spooky Season delight, by far and away the stunning standout piece for 2025 was Blood & Letting. From creators madigan burke and Nina D’Angie, this five minute experience tells the tragic tale of twins in the womb who are being terrorized by a succubus. Like all Exquisite Corpse offerings, the audience watches Blood & Letting unfold through custom peepholes while wearing headphones that pump in music, sound effects, and dialogue. If the blood soaked shadow casting imagery, creepy child narration, and the performer wearing a deadeyed baby-doll mask and raggedy candy striper outfit wasn’t enough to instill terror into the audiences’ hearts, the act of willingly sticking their arm through a hole to squeeze a latex ball certainly did do so. This act of intense vulnerability was completely terrifying, as this act ties the audience and the twins together, as the faux wall separating the audience from the performance might as well not exist. Blood & Letting builds to a spellbeing ending where the succubus takes on its true form, rising into the air with a frighteningly massive wingspan. It’s a sight that’ll haunt me for the rest of my life. Everyone I spoke to who saw this years’ Exquisite Corpse was in complete agreement that Blood & Letting was absolutely amazing, a true immersive moment that you simply had to witness to believe.
–Patrick B. McLean, Chicago Curator
The Callback
(The Man From Beyond: Houdini Séance Escape Room – Strange Bird Immersive)
There’s not much I can say about the critically acclaimed The Man From Beyond that hasn’t been said before, but I’ll give it my best shot. This is the top-rated escape room in the United States, and it shows.
The fact that it is the top-rated escape room and also happens to be a hybrid immersive theatre-meets-immersive gaming project is just icing on the already fabulous cake.
Every single aspect of the experience has been thoughtfully considered, designed, tested, iterated upon, and polished with loving care, with an eye toward providing the absolute best participant experience possible. The props all make sense in the context of the storyline and are either actual antiques or look era-appropriate, down to the type of screws being used. The hint system is completely in-world, presented as a projector showing a silent film using actual historical footage of Houdini. It is so charming to engage with that I actually looked forward to asking for a clue or two, rather than feeling that stopping for one was an interruption or immersion-breaking. Even though I was playing with a group of folks who did not have a ton of escape room experience, the puzzle design and gameplay flow just felt right and well-paced. The team at Strange Bird Immersive has even found a way to make the “rules speech” interesting, engaging, and seamlessly integrated into the overall experience, which boggles my mind since it is so often a speedbump players ignore.
And I would be remiss not to mention all of the craft that has gone into giving players an alibi for interaction and setting up the emotional stakes for the story. The The Man From Beyond structure also explicitly grants performers space to improvise and react to players in real time, always authentically and on their own terms, during untimed segments of the experience. So when an offhand comment I made to an actor before the game started was incorporated into a later narrative beat, I thought, surely this is a scripted callback they do for everyone. Right?
Spoiler alert: it was not.
So if you’ve ever gone home after an immersive experience and said to yourself, “I had fun… the actors were great… but I wish my choices actually mattered,” then do whatever you can to get on the next plane to Houston.
Madame Daphne will be waiting for you.
— Kathryn Yu, Senior LA Reviewer & Executive Editor Emeritus
Discover the latest immersive events, festivals, workshops, and more at our new site EVERYTHING IMMERSIVE, home of NoPro’s show listings.
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