By Kristen Nevarez Schweizer
March 25, 2026
There will be a cargo van parked on the UC San Diego campus this April.
Picture being inside. Alone in front of live monitors A voice crackles through a walkie-talkie. Your job: make it to morning without looking away. No, this isn’t a fever dream — it’s Night Watch by Bee’s Knees. An intimate immersive theatre thriller where corporate training meets corporeal dread, blending interactive storytelling with analog horror — and it’s just one of more than two dozen productions coming to La Jolla Playhouse’s 2026 WOW Festival, April 23–26.
Without Walls (AKA: WOW) is La Jolla Playhouse’s signature program that pulls theatre out of the black box and into parking lots, courtyards, and — apparently — surveillance vans. Thanks to excellent curation of one of America’s most decorated regional theatres (LJP has 42 Tony Awards from 37 Broadway transfers), WOW is one of the most important American laboratories for immersive and site-inspired performance.
Critics have claimed that immersive theatre has been having “a moment” for over 15 years now, but at this point, we have to call it a movement. Sleep No More opened in New York in 2011, the same year WOW was born, and ran for nearly 14 years, electrifying over 2 million audience members (including me, three times) before finally closing in January 2025. I will continue to evangelize about CAGES — a dystopian rock opera from Woolf and the Wondershow, set across multiple rooms of a converted LA Arts District warehouse, mixing live performance with cutting-edge projection. CAGES ran six months of sold-out performances before COVID forced it to close, then re-opened in 2022, selling out most performances before transferring to London. Its creators called it “future theater,”and I agree.
These aren’t novelty experiences anymore. They’re proof that the next generation is craving works that ask something of them. They want stories to pull them off the sidelines. The fourth wall can’t just be broken; it can be deconstructed and then rebuilt around the audience.
WOW answers that call with a remarkable range. This year’s lineup pulls from Belgium, South Korea, France, Canada, Philadelphia, Chicago, and (of course) San Diego. It includes multiple forms for art lovers of all ages and desires.
I’m most eager to see: DeepFake by Denver’s 404 Theater, a one-on-one experience where you play a PR executive navigating an AI ethics crisis; Karaoke Dreams by Blindspot Collective, a neon-soaked immersive night at a karaoke bar featuring Pink, Queen, and Alanis Morissette that sounds equal parts cathartic and chaotic; and Tea Party at the End of the World by IKantKoan Play/s, an intimate parlor performance inspired by the Arctic Circle and the existential weight of the climate crisis — cozy and devastating in the same breath.
The festival is free to attend, with the few ticketed shows topping out at a mere $29. The radically democratic access is meaningful. As Eric Keen Louie, La Jolla Playhouse’s Artistic Producing Director, put it: “art has no single shape — and neither does an audience.”
The festival runs April 23–26 on the UC San Diego campus. Here’s the rundown:
WOW Festival Projects
Adult Puppet Cabaret
By Animal Cracker Conspiracy
San Diego, CA
Tickets: $21
Step into a delightfully unhinged evening where grown-ups meet puppets – those mischievous creatures who come alive with a well-placed hand, rod, or string. Blending Parisian cabaret roots with modern puppetry mayhem, we unleash sassy beasts, mythical oddballs, and characters with more personality than room to contain them. Irreverent, intimate, and absolutely for adults, our puppets will whisper nonsense, dance badly, and lead you into joyful, collective chaos.
Again! Again!
Created and performed by Jeff Crocker, Andy Crocker and Tiffany Ogburn
Los Angeles, CA
Tickets: $25
What happens when a writer, a director, and a performer are also mom, dad, and babysitter? When does caregiving pause and the show begin? Most importantly, is tonight a treat night? Personal and participatory, Again! Again! dances at the crossroads of game, clowning, and the friends we call family. A work-life-art balancing act live on stage. Who’s watching the kid? Who’s watching the show? Three artists portraying themselves invite the audience to play their way into a conversation on balance, determination, and the joyful chaos of creative care. From running errands to running a rehearsal, playing to playmaking, lullabies to laundry, they try to do it all. And then do it again. Fueled by true life inspiration and contemporary clowning, Again! Again! is a love letter to collaborators of all kinds, teeter-tottering between sweet and challenging – like all worthwhile care-giving endeavors.
Carry On
By Cie Presque Siamoises
France
Free
A participatory performance on parenthood. Is carrying necessarily raising? Is raising the same as carrying? Who are these parents who carry? Carry on being a parent, going through the joys and difficulties, experiencing impermanence, witnessing a child’s journey – and our own.
That’s the real adventure. Carry On is a show co-created with parent-children from your town, to depict parenthood in the colors of diversity and singularity.
Choir! Choir! Choir!
By Daveed Goldman and Nobu Adilman
Presented by ArtPower at UC San Diego
Canada
Free
“Why see a show when you can BE the show!” Choir! Choir! Choir! is the fully interactive, participatory show that turns audience into performer. So get ready to laugh, dance and SING! your hearts out with hundreds of other music-lovers just like you. It’s like a big birthday party for the greatest songs of all time and you’re invited! So grab a friend (or ten) and come out ready to GIVE IT ALL YOU’VE GOT! – all voices welcome, no experience necessary. We Teach, You Sing! Everyone Wins!
Colorin, Colorado
By La Jolla Playhouse POP Tour
San Diego, CA
Free
Georgie, a shy fourth-grader with a hidden talent for guitar, panics when asked to read aloud and ends up in the principal’s office, sparking an unexpected friendship with the fearless and ever-curious Inez. While Georgie worries about her grandfather in the hospital, she discovers an old story he once wrote: the magical tale of two fantastical creatures: Goyo and Gato. With help from her new BFF Inez, Georgie finds the courage to face her reading challenges and brings the story to life — just in time for the Festival de Primavera. In the end, talents are discovered, a family bond is deepened, and the story finds its perfect ending.
DeepFake
By 404 Theater
Denver, CO
Tickets: $21
You are the Head of Public Relations at Mirrorminds.ai, a company preparing for the launch of their newest product that allows anyone to create fake videos that look perfectly real. As sole audience member and active participant in this immersive theatrical experience, you will video-chat with co-workers, investigate the materials in your office, and argue for your own perspective on the appropriate use of AI. It’s up to you to make this launch a success… or not. Part puzzle room, part quiet horror story.
Fool’s Gold: A Trickster Review
San Diego Unified Honors Theatre Project with La Jolla Playhouse
San Diego, CA
Free
High school performers from across San Diego Unified School District bring a whirlwind of trickster tales to life with clowning, chaos, and big goofy energy — all anchored by a wildly-reimagined Tortoise & Hare that runs (and occasionally crawls) through the entire show. As the race unfolds in unexpected ways, global trickster stories pop up, collide, and interfere, flipping familiar narratives upside down. Expect laughter, delightful sabotage, physical comedy, and a joyful reminder that sometimes the “loser,” the fool, or the rule-breaker changes the story entirely.
Handle with Care
By Ontroerend Goed
Belgium
Tickets: $25
A box is mailed to the theatre. The instructions are clear: Invite a group of people, on a specific day, at a specific time. Let the audience take their seats. Place the box at the center of the stage. The audience is waiting. And then an audience member stands up and opens the box.
The show has started. No one is watching. Can you create something meaningful? Handle with Care is a theatre performance in a box. No actors, no technicians. Just a box. And you.
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By Drew Petersen
New York, NY
Free
A cathartic lecture and live dissertation on a fictitious relationship, [IMAGE DESCRIPTION] is a participatory theatrical encounter that explores objectivity and subjectivity in our optical perception of things. Framed as the story of a friendship/relationship between the audience and the performer, [IMAGE DESCRIPTION] examines the distance between a captured image and a lived experience in an attempt to highlight the surrealness we encounter every day in our lives and pictures. Ultimately, in a world, time, and context that is obsessed with how something looks, [IMAGE DESCRIPTION] asks us to examine what something actually is.
Jam Side Up!
By the Kif-Kif Sisters
Canada
Free
Flying bunnies, speeding French fries! This duo fights giant pink monsters, practices the art of snacking and ensures the triumph of the umbilical cord. The Kif-Kif Sisters mix surprising comedy and audience interaction with enough happiness to make vegetables explode! Inseparable since the womb, these twin sisters have been doing street performances all over the world for over a decade.
Karaoke Dreams
By Blindspot Collective
San Diego, CA
Tickets: $21
Step inside a neon-lit karaoke bar where the beer is cold, the mic is hot, and every song tells a story. Karaoke Dreams is an immersive celebration of connection, community, and the catharsis of singing out your truth. Join a group of regulars – and a few unexpected newcomers – for a night of anthems, ballads, and guilty pleasures that we all know by heart, including music by Pink, Queen, Rihanna, One Direction, Alanis Morissette, and many more. As patrons step up to the mic, relationships ignite, memories surface, and strangers are bound together by song. Guided by a charismatic host and fueled by hits spanning decades and genres, Karaoke Dreams becomes the immersive soundtrack of our lives — joyful, messy, loud, and unmistakably human.
Message in a Bauble
By Enemies of Time
Berkeley, CA
Free
Toy vending machines don’t generally ask for favors. But this one does: “I know you must be terribly busy with the forthcoming apocalypse, but something seems to have gone horribly wrong. I could really use your help.” Text the phone number and go on a real-world adventure. EDIN is trapped in the machines and terrified of its newfound mortality. Will you help?
Molly Went Missing – A WOW Developmental Workshop
By Enemies of Time
Berkeley, CA
Free – Reservations Required
Can you gentle parent a poltergeist? The ghost of a scared kid takes over a local haunted history tour in an unexpectedly real crisis. Molly Ward was seven when she died in this very hotel room in 1978. If it weren’t for the fire, she’d be 54 years old today. How it goes depends on you. Can you see the child through the poltergeist?
Mucca Pazza Plays Around
By Mucca Pazza
Chicago, IL
Free
Join Mucca Pazza as they Play Around. Liberated from the confines of the stage, the band will swirl, twirl, flop, and bop around – untethered by cables and inhibitions. Watch in wonder and dance joyously as they interact with audience, architecture, and anything else they come across. Finding opportunities to blur the lines between serious art and unabashed silliness.
My Body’s Wake
By Sensory Dimensions
New York, NY
Free – Reservations Required
Through a visceral blend of body painting, live improvisational dance and violin, projection, and generative sound, My Body’s Wake invites audiences into an immersive, sensory-rich journey through the emotional landscapes of grief, isolation, anger, and care. Rooted in the artists’ lived experiences with chronic pain and dynamic disability, the performance offers a raw yet tender space for witnessing the unseen. While unflinching in its exploration of pain and longing, the piece ultimately moves toward moments of connection, resilience, and renewal. This one-of-a-kind performance offers an experience that’s as intimate as it is unforgettable; don’t miss your chance to be part of it.
Night Watch
By Bee’s Knees
Los Angeles. CA
Tickets: $29
Welcome to the night shift. You’ve been assigned to a surveillance van parked in a remote lot. The monitors are live. A voice on the walkie is ready to guide you. Your task? Watch closely, follow protocol, and make it to morning. Night Watch is an intimate immersive thriller where corporate training meets corporeal dread. Designed by a team of immersive theater and theme park design veterans, this experience blends interactive storytelling with analog horror – all set within a 9-foot cargo van. Stay focused. Don’t break the rules. And whatever you do, don’t look away.
Out of Body Expo
By Freak Nature Puppets
Los Angeles, CA
Free
Freak Nature’s giant puppets and scrappy approach to immersive theater have time and time again narrowly avoided achieving world peace. This time, it’ll be different. Enter Out of Body Expo, a world of ramshackle DIY puppetry and reality-bending experimentation built out of cardboard and foam. Buckle up and lock in for a live-scored outdoor experience that lies just beyond what our flesh brains can imagine.
Rhythm Delivered
By DrumatiX
San Diego, CA
Free
Step into a world of wonder with DrumatiX’s award-winning Rhythm Delivered. Six performers unleash an electrifying blend of tap dance, body percussion, and drumming on everyday objects. Buckets, boxes, crates, household items, and plastic tubes are mysteriously discovered and transformed into musical instruments. Momentum builds as sounds and props rise to an overhead rail for a thrilling finale. Equal parts spectacle and live concert, Rhythm Delivered is interactive, laugh-out-loud, and visually striking – a family-friendly, 30-minute experience that reveals the extraordinary in the everyday and sparks creativity long after the last beat.
Suzik
By FORCE
South Korea
Free
Go beyond the competition, look for the value of cooperative harmony. Suzik is a Chinese pole performance of three persons resisting the vertical structure. While going against the gravity of the Chinese pole in a risky and perilous position of verticality, they support each other and try to create a new meaning of “the vertical” with a coexistence and a cooperation rather than a competition. Suzik means “verticality” in Korean. What about win-win, rather than competition in a vertical society? Horizontal, not vertical. It is a story where you can feel the ‘value of cooperation’ while living together. Rather than trying to pull each other down in a vertical structure, wouldn’t it be much more meaningful to reach out your hand and step forward together if someone falls behind? The show demonstrates the new meaning of ‘the vertical’ and the system of the win-win; a reciprocal achievement through the performance.
Tea Party at the End of the World
By IKantKoan Play/s
Philadelphia, PA
Tickets: $25
As a guest of this intimate tea party, you are presented with exquisite tea and parlor games, and when the end comes, no need to panic, you won’t be alone. Tea Party at the End of the World explores how we connect to one another in times of uncertainty and fear; celebrating the splendor of being alive in a beautiful and disappearing world, while honoring the unfathomable cost it exacts on our ability to connect and find purpose. Inspired by the creator’s time in the Arctic Circle and the ritual comfort of loose-leaf tea, this cutting and cozy exploration of the eco-apocalypse proposes that remaining playful in dire circumstances is the key not only to surviving but thriving.
Terra Firma
By Sandra Portal-Andreu
Miami, FL
Free
Terra Firma engages us to channel our memories, our connection to the land, our home. In collaboration with Betty Osceola of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, she shares the perspectives, teachings, and traditions of the Miccosukee people. The performance invites us to redefine our relationship with home by encouraging the public to share a message for future generations via written notes placed in a capsule. It is an acknowledgement for our land ancestors and an opportunity for the public to ground themselves in the spaces we live in and share.
With Honors
By Jesca Prudencia
San Diego, CA
Free
Ever wanted to be celebrated, congratulated, and awarded for being exactly as you are? With Honors does exactly that in this feel-good ceremonial dance party experience where you get the graduate experience. Hosted by the Masters of Fine Awesomeness (dancers, singers, and a live DJ), this playful evening is packed with surprises that will give the guests of honor (you!) the red-carpet treatment. Sit back to bask in your glory or step up to be recognized for your brilliance.
