Wandering Through Immersive Spaces: On Viola's Room and The Nest
I'm glad that Punchdrunk's "Viola's Room" has entered the immersive scene, and the contemplative wandering it inspires
A few weeks back, I went to see Viola’s Room at its New York City home at The Shed. Punchdrunk’s newest immersive theater show saw its worldwide debut in London last year, although that show ended in December. And while I’ve rarely come across similar productions, it’s exactly the kind of contemplative immersive experiences I’d love to see more.
So…What Is Viola’s Room Anyway?
Structurally, Viola’s Room is an audio-led immersive experience that guides attendees through a ~45 minute long dark fairy tale guided by an audio track narrated by Helena Bonham Carter, and environmental cues to nudge you on when and where to advance. Groups are small (anywhere from one to six people at a time), and the story guides you through a surprising number of spaces and “rooms” to complement the storytelling conveyed by the audio.
The show’s slogan provides the most straightforward explanation of that navigation: Follow the light.
After a ritualistic experience of removing your shoes and socks and getting fitted with noise-cancelling headphones, attendees are guided into a dark hallway and instructed to wait for the door to illuminate before proceeding. This philosophy literally follows throughout the experience, with lighting cues directing you where to go next, and sometimes even when you might have overstayed your welcome in a space.
That does come with the biggest warning for the experience: it gets dark (the show actually starts by taking you into a room with a single lightbulb and then plunging the space into total darkness to make sure you’re comfortable with that element). At one or two key moments, it also gets extremely cramped. I’m a fairly big guy and still managed to safely squeeze through the primary (and literal) bottleneck of the experience, but I did find myself worrying a little while doing it and would have appreciated a similar “hey if you can fit through here, you’ll be fine” test.
Okay, But What’s the Experience Like
As an experience, Viola’s Room is an ethereal labyrinth through real and fantastic spaces to tell a dark fairy tale that revels in sensory exploration as much as it does physical exploration. The space is experienced barefoot, making the textures of lush carpet, paneled wood, and sand just as much a part of the experience as the intricate sets, dioramas, and shadow puppetry that helps transition attendees from fantasy and reality.
And while Helena Bonham Carter’s narration gives a straightforward fairy tale narration of events, puzzling out how that story intersects with the glimpses of Viola’s life in the real world does take some thought: while this is easily an experience you can progress through and enjoy through vibes alone, there is a deeper story to untangle and details that can easily be missed.
But while there’s depth to the experience, this isn’t something like Sleep No More or Life and Trust where there’s value that can be found in going a dozen times. I’d be happy to see the show again when a friend comes in from out of town, but the linear pathing (what No Proscenium refers to as a “dark ride” immersive) means your experience will be very similar every time you come…and frankly, I consider that to be a good thing, as it means attendees are more likely to come out feeling like they got a full experience they can understand.
That shift also might explain why the show’s London run started experimenting with themed reskins of the experiences (with Halloween and Christmas editions), as a way of luring in repeat visitors.
The Inevitable Comparison to The Nest
While I can’t say I’ve experienced anything quite like Viola’s Room before, the closest comparison I can make is to The Nest, an equally intimate immersive experience currently run out of Hatch Escapes in Los Angeles.
Like Viola’s Room, The Nest tells a deeply personal story of a woman’s life through a story that seamlessly weaves between the mundane and the fantastical and metaphorical. It even has an audio component, with a central mechanism of the experience revolving around discovering and listening to a series of cassette tapes left by the owner of the storage locker you’re exploring.
The primary distinction between the two shows is your agency as an attendee. With Viola’s Room, you’re a spectator - I’m not entirely sure I even remember what narrative justification (if any) is given for your presence. With The Nest, you have been charged with exploring the storage locker of a recently deceased woman, and it’s your discoveries and actions that help “unlock” the next chapter of the main character’s life. Rather than a light guiding you to the next location, you are the one finding the tapes, and you are the one taking the actions necessary to move forward.
That ethos even extends into the discoveries themselves: at one point, you find yourself exploring a facsimile of the woman’s high school lockers: one particularly heartwarming easter egg is the tattered fragments of a high school yearbook, secretly celebrating the names of select fans who helped “save the show” and move it to Hatch through a crowdfunding campaign.
Both experiences raise questions of what it’s like to examine one’s life through ephemera, and to use the emotional weight given to items that were dear to us to tell stories that often end up being emotionally devastating. And both explore different visions on how much agency the audience brings to that exploration.
But they also rank among my most treasured immersive memories, made all the more impressive considering they didn’t involve the direct presence of actors to breathe life into the spaces.
In short: if you find yourself in New York City, consider adding Viola’s Room to your itinerary. If you find yourself on the other coast in Los Angeles, give The Nest a look.