the last syllable
Medium
Digital Platforms
Role
Experiential Consultant
Category
Participatory Theatre
Challenge
Known as “the largest theater event of its kind in Los Angeles,” the award-winning Independent Shakespeare Company produces admission-free classical theatre in LA’s Griffith Park.
ISC planned to stage a production of Macbeth, but the pandemic interrupted the production.
Artistic Director Melissa Chalsma, pivoted from a live, in-person show to a virtual, participatory event.
Process
The show's concept expanded beyond the historical text and into a story within a story: A fictional theater company is preparing to present Macbeth when a mysterious, unnamed global catastrophe upends their production and their world.
As these dual timelines unfold — the theatrical show of Macbeth and a world in turmoil — the audience ("travelers") explore Shakespeare’s Scottish play through a series of maps, telling a long-known tale in a new way.
The Last Syllable became an invitation to meditate on Macbeth, the nature of magic, and the ways loss can both diminish and transfigure us. All design elements were crafted to support and enhance this vision.
Solution
Scenes from ISC’s original, staged version of Macbeth were filmed and embedded into StoryMaps (by ArcGIS), an interactive cartography platform.
Anchored by five mysterious maps (corresponding to the play’s five acts), characters had their own interesting topography. The Last Syllable included video, audio recordings, poetry, and archival elements.
Participants could navigate the experience with agency, choosing the depths of their engagement, and when to begin, pause, and return.
The Last Syllable also charted new territory for interactive storytelling: It was the first narrative project on StoryMaps.
For ISC’s audience, The Last Syllable’s format was a departure. Would participants feel empowered to traverse self-guided and interactive digital theatre? To build excitement, we launched the Prologue.
The Prologue began with online missives to ISC’s audience from The Artist, the director of the fictional theatre company. She’d received uncanny messages from someone called The Stranger and she needed help decoding these messages.
Using Charter, an online tool, participants exchanged digital and audio correspondence with characters from ISC’s production.
This served as both a marketing campaign and an onboarding vehicle for audiences less familiar with participatory theatre.
To amplify participants’ sensory spectrum and forge a connection between personal memory and the full experience, scent artists at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab produced two bespoke perfumes.
Scent description for ‘Tis Strange Perfume Oil: Both bog and castle, moor and battlefield, chivalry and nightmare: scarred leather armor, moss-covered stone, shadows upon shadows, and billows of black incense.
"It's a scent that makes me feel dark and dangerous, bold bloody and resolute."
— Perfume review
