Artemis Is Burning has created quite the splash on New York City’s immersive scene with their show The Death of Rasputin, which took its first bows on Governors Island last year. That show “explores the tumultuous final days of the Russian Empire and the factions aiming to seize power,” as our own Penelope Ray explained in our review last year.
This month directors Hope Youngblood and Ashley Brett Chipman have offered up “an immersive ritual journey where you move with the cast, dissolving the line between performance and lived experience” in the form of Rasputin’s Cult Circle: A Night of Magic & Ritual which takes place at Othership in Williamsburg. Specifically using Othership’s sauna.
A “mad monk” and a sauna? Oh boy.
We checked in with Youngblood and Chipman to find out just what they are cooking up, no pun intended, with this riff on their hit show ahead of a planned remount.
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No Proscenium: Tell us a little bit about your experience. What’s it about? What makes it immersive?
Hope Youngblood and Ashley Brett Chipman: This experience is about dragging Rasputin’s myth out of the history books and sweating it back into the body. It unfolds inside a real working bathhouse—sauna, cold plunges, showers, tile, heat—and the audience free-roams through the space in towels and swimsuits as the story erupts around them. There’s no stage. Rasputin appears, disappears, resurrects, seduces, and refuses to die while you’re actively sweating, shivering, and breathing beside him.
It’s immersive because the conditions (and the participation) are non-negotiable. You feel the heat. You feel the cold. You breathe with Rasputin. You’re invited to join the revolution, submit to ritual, or watch belief spread through the room. The experience is communal and interactive by design; a shared séance built to bring Rasputin back on his birthday after our Governors Island run, and ahead of the show’s return in 2026. You’re not watching a resurrection. You’re helping make it happen.
NP: What was the inspiration for your upcoming experience?
HY & ABC: Rasputin is the inspiration. Not the facts, but the contradiction. Mystic and fraud. Healer and con artist. A man who promised transcendence through excess, and who people followed anyway. That tension—belief versus manipulation—is the core of the piece.
The other inspiration was bathhouse culture as a space of voluntary vulnerability and pleasure. You strip down, submit to heat, ritual, and sensation, and power quietly reorganizes itself. That’s where cults form and where people also laugh, flirt, and let go. Putting Rasputin there felt inevitable. This isn’t about reenacting history; it’s about why belief can feel intoxicating, and why surrender is sometimes fun before it’s dangerous.
NP: What do you think fans of immersive will find most interesting about this latest experience?
HY & ABC: Fans will notice that this experience is our continued, deliberate exploration of collective moments within the world we’ve carefully built and it all happens in an incredible sauna. Every element, from the heat to the cold plunge, from the rituals to the free-roam flow, has been designed to create intimacy, tension, and shared power. It’s dramatic, raw, and alive—less about chasing a plot and more about intentionally placing the audience inside the same conditions that shape Rasputin’s myth. You might find yourself standing next to someone who’s just been inducted into the revolution, sharing a laugh, a glance, or a fleeting moment of power. There’s no pressure, no rules yet every choice, every encounter, is crafted to sweep you into something bigger, something charged, something unforgettable.
NP: Once you started designing and testing, what did you discover about this experience that was unexpected?
HY & ABC: We discovered that the sauna became a character in its own right, and we leaned fully into it. The heat, the steam, the close quarters—it carries tension, desire, and power, amplifying every interaction. Moments between Rasputin and the Tzarina, or between audience members, are heightened by the environment itself. The sauna isn’t just a setting—it’s part of the story, a participant in the chaos, the seduction, and the passion of the revolution. By embracing it, we realized the space could shape the audience’s experience as much as the performers themselves.
NP: What can fans do to get into the mood of the experience?
HY & ABC: Honestly? Just pop on your swimsuit and go for a ride. Bring your curiosity, your energy, and your willingness to lean into heat, steam, and ritual. Follow the story, follow the revolution, follow Rasputin—or just stand, breathe, and share a moment with someone else in the room. The experience is built to guide you, so all you need to do is show up and surrender to it…and join our cult.
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