The Operator has come calling again.

He calls, as always, from a blocked number. His voice is soft and ever-so-slightly courtly. He comments on the sky, on the celestial bodies within it, and on the divide between us and outer space — “thin and fragile as notebook paper”. His voice crackles through the phone.

He says little, if anything, about himself. Instead, he wants to know about you.

This experience is moonlight serenade, Candle House Collective’s second ticketed event. moonlight serenade takes place over three days of phone calls, all arranged by the mysterious Operator. In those phone calls, stories unfold for an audience of one. Participants talk with numerous characters: counseling them, confiding in them, and making decisions that will change their lives forever. When it’s over, the Operator returns with a final phone call — like the host of the Twilight Zone, gently drawing the story to a close.

It sounds simple enough — but what Candle House accomplishes is no easy feat. From ambitious story mechanics to personalized content, they are treading new territory: for now, at least, there is nothing else quite like them.

While Candle House’s previous show Crossed Wires told three discrete horror-themed stories, moonlight serenade makes the bold decision to tell a single fantasy story unfolding from multiple points of view. The premise: you, the participant, have recently purchased a star from Serenade Exploration. And in doing so, you have unwittingly started a chain of events in the inner life of Zephyr Burrow, a lonely soul who dreams of that star and its imaginary inhabitants. Now, you find yourself attempting to help not only Zephyr, but the cast of lovable characters who populate his imagination.

What follows is a tonally-varied otherworldly adventure. On one phone call, you find yourself hatching a zany plan for the containment of adorable wombats. On another, you remotely lead a board meeting, making political decisions with far-reaching ramifications. And on still another, you comfort a grieving mother who cannot bear to forgive herself. The tone moves quickly from light to dark and back again, a careful dance that evokes the best of Lemony Snicket and other similarly dark children’s literature.

As you progress through the three days of phone calls, you start to get a sense of not only Zephyr’s psyche, but of the questions that keep Candle House Collective up at night. You find yourself holding whispered conversations about the elusive, wild, untamable nature of creativity; about the question of what friends owe each other; about the social and structural underpinnings of isolation.

moonlight serenade is an ode to science fiction, creativity, and folklore, but it is not a solo: it’s a duet, and the participant’s willingness to dive deep into late-night intimacies can open the doorway to magic.

Just as your decisions send ripple effects down the chain of stories, you may find that your conversations in previous experiences may be referenced in the present. The Operator remembers all: and occasionally he may refer to past exchanges with a characteristic delicacy. Not enough to be alarming: just enough to remind you that you are known.

The result is a feeling of collaboration. Participant and actors building something together. As you come to know the characters, they appear to come to know you.

Ultimately, as your journey comes to a close, it is clear: moonlight serenade has used the fantastical tale of a star to examine the gravitational forces that drive us together and pull us apart.

In the world of ARXs (alternate reality experiences), phone calls often gravitate toward aggression. It is an easy thing to capitalize on participants’ phone anxiety, to force them into making quick, uninformed gut choices and then berate them for those choices. It is harder and deeper work to make people feel understood — particularly when you have never laid eyes on them, and vice versa. Candle House Collective’s great strength has always been reaching for that higher-hanging fruit: expecting more both from themselves and from their audience.

From the audience, they expect the attention and engagement to track a layered, well-populated story over multiple days…a story that tells its tale not just through words but through the spaces of what is left unsaid. From themselves, they require characters who actively and affectionately listen. Characters who react to participants with genuine warmth, making them in on the joke — never annoyed by interruptions, never impatient. The result is an elevated and gracious form of storytelling: one that enjoys and celebrates the peculiar, the awkward, the offbeat.

Perhaps this is the hallmark of a Candle House experience: despite how they may physically and psychologically torment their characters, they are, at heart, rigorously kind.

That said, moonlight serenade does not land with the power of Crossed Wires. The threads are not woven with the same confidence; the loose ends feel less artful and more unfinished. This is to be expected: like a short story writer now writing their first novel, creator Evan Neiden gave himself more to wrangle when he chose to tell a single, longer story instead of multiple shorter stories. The result is occasionally unwieldy, the second and third acts trampling on each other in a prolonged conflict that never quite comes together the way you expect it to. Some unspoken narrative promises go unfulfilled; a few encounters feel unfinished.

But these are simply growing pains. As the Candle House Collective experiments in new genres, new forms of storytelling, and branches out to new cast, the heart of the experience remains the same. Lovingly crafted, whimsical, and weird, these calls are always a window to a world I desperately want to visit again.

Until the Operator calls again, I’ll just have to wait.

moonlight serenade has concluded. Learn more about Candle House Collective.

Read an interview with creator Evan Neiden.

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