10 W E S T W O R D F a l l A r t s G u i d e 2 0 2 4 westword.com sive theater has expanded in Colorado, with companies such as Audacious The- atre, Control Group, Elevate Immersive, OddKnock Productions and the Cata- mounts continuing to push boundaries. “The immersive art community in Den- ver has blown up at a much faster rate than the theater community has,” says Ren Manley, Audacious Theatre’s founding director. “My theory is that you have a lot of stoners who like to get high and walk through things, as well as Denver being a very activity-driven city. There’s a lot of cities that you go to and most of the people are at home. People in Denver want to do things. Also, because we do not have an es- tablished arts scene like Broadway in New York or the film industry in Los Angeles, there is still room for experimentation. And having someone like Lonnie here as a vortex is part of it, as is the DCPA and Meow Wolf’s strong decision to invest in immersive.” DCPA’s Off-Center and Meow Wolf are the undisputed leaders of the local immersive scene. Since its inception in 2010, Off-Center has welcomed over 593,000 people to 67 productions and 15,040 performances, resulting in a surge of new theater-goers. In fact, Off-Center patrons now make up more than a quarter of all new DCPA ticket buyers. On the other side of the equation, Meow Wolf’s 90,000-square-foot narrative art exhibition, Convergence Station, opened in 2021 — five years after the flagship House of Eternal Return opened in Santa Fe — and is based on the concept of quantum travel. What started as a ragtag art collective now also has facilities in Dallas and Las Vegas. “We’ve centered [immersion] in all our exhibits so far,” says Alex Bennett, Meow Wolf’s senior vice president. “A lot of it is story-based, with unique nar- ratives that complement the physical art. The Meow Wolf universe continues to expand alongside our exhibitions, which are very brick-and-mortar-based. When we opened in Santa Fe in 2016, it was very much a collective effort with a story involved, creating something unprece- dented. As we expand, those stories shape the underlying art. ... Our core principles will continue to evolve smartly. As we open new exhibits in Houston and L.A., you’ll see new technologies and storytelling methods that reflect this growth.” However, with expansion comes new challenges. Meow Wolf recently had to lay off 165 employees, many in Denver, and continues to negotiate with the Meow Wolf Workers Collective, its employee labor union. “These adjustments are part of a broader strategy to streamline oper- ations and allocate resources effectively,” Bennett says. “As a young and growing company, some of these changes were nec- essary as we continue to learn our business and seasonality. These changes were not a result of poor performance, but rather a point of learning through our growth.” Off-Center has faced its own obstacles. The logistical and financial demands of producing large-scale immersive works have caused it to scale back its original programming. “I would love for us to do one every year, but it’s just not feasible given our human and financial resources,” Miller says. “But there’s a lot of demand for this work in Denver, and we want to be more than a once-every-other-year opportunity for people to do cool things. So our strategy and model going forward is going to be to produce our own work every other year or thereabouts, and in between, to bring in the coolest stuff we can find from around the world.” Patrons may have already noticed this shift, with imports such as Space Explor- ers: The Infinite, Darkfield and the upcom- ing Monopoly Lifesized making their way through the Mile High City instead of orig- inal, locally produced Immersed in Art continued from page 8 continued on page 12
