Dan is considering going to LA next month. Specifically, UCLA to give a talk on automatons. Leveraging his work last year for the immersive theater musical¹ Masquerade, which is still running. This show is a retelling of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera using the immersive theater format. Immersive theater is a performance style that breaks the fourth wall, placing the audience directly inside an often site-specific, 360-degree environment where they can become active participants in the show, rather than just passive observers.
For this show Dan made six automatons that were designed to augment the musical. While still in development two of them are shown operating above, mechanical hands wearing opera gloves clapping and a violin playing itself. It is on the strength of this work that Dan has this opportunity to go to Hollywood.
For Dan, this work is a labor of love, as shown below with one of his 40K models. Whether the theme is steampunk or plain out gothic, his talents lend themselves to creating these devices. It was serendipity for him that he scored his first gig in immersive theater, Life and Trust. He did set construction for it for almost a year, many times longer than the show actually ran. Most of that job was carpentry, but he also made some automatons there too. That gig led to Masquerade, which now appears to have opened the door to this UCLA visit.
- Masquerade now bills itself as the first immersive theater musical.