Our guest on this special edition this week is Charles Melcher of the Future of Storytelling who you might know from his own podcast and who is the author of the new book The Future of Storytelling: How Immersive Experiences Are Transforming Our World which is available now.

Charlie’s book is really a fantastic snapshot of the world of immersive storytelling as it stands today, containing both an extensive catalog of expeirences AND essays that provide an framework to understand what makes this work… well.. work.

Best of all — we’ve got a copy of the book to give away.

Plus: an update on Season Two production!

• The Future of Storytelling: How Immersive Experiences Are Transforming Our World
• Book Excerpt: The Future of Storytelling (Plus Giveaway)
• FoST
• Spotlight Series: Yannick Trapman-O'Brien

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This week, a visit to Dungeons & Dragons The 20-Sided Tavern in Los Angeles – where the show is wrapping its current stand this weekend before heading off to Scottsdale, Arizona and Dallas, Texas.

We sit down with Alex Stompoly, one of the Tavernkeepers of the Tavern to talk about the unique role he plays in the production which is part MC, part rules lawyer, and carries with it some creative heft of its own.

• Dungeons & Dragons The 20-Sided Tavern
• Alex Stompoly
• No Proscenium
• Everything Immersive

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We're still on hiatus, but we recently got a chance to visit the new home of The Willows in LA and talk with Justin Fix and Stephanie Turek of JFI Productions as we toured the new home of one of LA's favorite immersive shows. The show has gotten a glow up in this new production, and fair warning that there are a few audio spoilers of new elements. If you're not deterred by that, come along and explore the new space with us, maybe encounter a real ghost, and get a bonus mansion tour thrown in as part of the bargain.

• The Willows

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We've reached the end.

Of Episode 500 and Season One.

Which means one last word from our host.

See you in Season Two.

(But don't act too surprised when we pop up a few times for some specials between now and then.)

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This one is for the diehards.

On Friday, August 29th, 2025 we held a Launch Party for Episode 500 in the NoPro Discord. We had no idea who would show up.

To our delight Jacob Patterson, who you had a chance to hear in the last part of the marathon, ARGN’s Michael Anderson — who gives us a spoiler-free expectation set on Masquerade, the immersive Phantom currently in previews in New York City, NoPro correspondent Briana Roecks who shares some Spooky Season anticipation for both LA and Las Vegas, and drop-ins from Laura Hall and Cameo Wood as well.

It’s a hangout episode and fair warning: the audio quality is sub-par in the extreme! I’m even on my Airpods because I was so exhausted from editing and being on the Yeti for hours on end that I just jammed the Pods in my ears and forgot how bad they would sound. So if you skip this because it sounds mid, I won’t take offense. This one, as they say, is for the sickos.

But if you do stick around, well: you’re a real one, and all the copious links in the show notes below are going to make sense.

• Tammany Hall is a Petco: Zohran's Summer Scavenger Hunt
• Masquerade
• Majestic Rep Las Vegas
• People In the Dark: An Immersive Ghost Story
• The Willows
• The Haunted Soiree
• The Wild, Citywide Scavenger Hunt That Ate San Francisco (Wired)
• Santa’s Village
• Where Dark Things Dwell
• Junior’s at Resorts World
• The Beast @ Area 15
• DASH – Different Area, Same Hunt
• ‘The Long Walk’ Turns Screening Into Endurance Test With 3 MPH Treadmill Rule (The Wrap)
• 'What the f--- is this?': What Darren Aronofsky has to do with new payphones in NYC (Gothamist)
• Why Did the Indie Film Studio A24 Buy an Off Broadway Theater?

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We start Part 7 off where the show began, way back in Episode ZERO, which we first released on SOUND CLOUD as a pilot for a potential series, with an interview with Annie Saunders of Wilderness, whose The Day Shall Declare It jump started that renaissance era and got the local performing arts world taking things seriously.

Annie and I look back on that, and on the roadblocks that have kept her from making work here at that scale since. And then I talk to some of the other folks who come up in our conversation and those who helped shape the way I thought about and moved through the LA arts scene — like Lauren Ludwig and Monica Miklas of Capital W, and designer Tommy Honton who did so much work on the permitting crisis that hit LA in the wake of tragic events in Northern California in 2016.

And, of course, Jacob Patterson, who ran Think Tank Gallery in DTLA and gave countless projects and artists a home… including this podcast for a while.

One last jaunt through LA for Season One. Because you know we had to.

• Annie Saunders
• Wilderness
• The Day Shall Declare It
• 14th Factory(NPR)
• Jacob Patterson
• Monica Miklas/Aviary Creative Works
• Capital W Performance
• Tommy Honton
• Lauren Ludwig

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And now is the part of the Episode 500 Marathon where we get to some lasts.

In this case, the last Review Crew of Season One.

For this one, which was the last we recorded, and the last thing we officially recorded for Episode 500, LA Reviews Editor Kevin Gossett and Chicago Curator/Remote Editor Patrick McLean join me for a chat that ranges from haunts, to the Golden Age of LA Immersive (appropriate, given where we're going next), and I ask the fellas the questions I've been asking everyone over the course of the marathon: when you first started down this road, did you think it was going to be such a big deal for you?

Plus: Overlook Film Festival's Landon Zakheim takes his turn in this part's Spotlight section.

• You Can't Scare Me (Meta Quest)
• Walkabout Mini Golf Passport Tokyo
• BurnerSphere (The New Burning Man VR experience)
• People In the Dark: An Immersive Ghost Story (The thing from the Limos people)
• Overlook Film Fest
• Overlook Film Festival Submissions - Including Immersive (For The First Time)
• The Manikins
• Purrgil
• Du-Par's
• Diner Grill

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Welcome to PART FIVE of the Episode 500 marathon "An Unstructured Conversation About Immersive Theatre," which, really, could also be the title of the whole dang podcast but that might just break the very ontological concept of SEO.

Come to think of it, that might not be a BAD thing.

On this part of the Megasode we touch base with Episode One guests Genevieve Gearhart & Julianne Just of The Speakeasy Society, who are about to launch their new show Family Meal this October, the first new Speakeasy Society show in LA in some time! Plus we're joined by Jay Bushman, who in so many ways, is responsible for us interviewing Gen and Julianne in the first place.

• The Speakeasy Society
• Family Meal (Seed & Spark Campaign)
• Jay Bushman

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