Phoenix Tears Productions presents, Posthumous an immersive interactive Zoom show where you act as investors or new employees and through your choices take one of five paths and cause one of ten endings. Audience is encouraged to interact, participate, ask questions, talk to Posthumous employees, and directly affect the story.
I sat in and sketched a beta version of the show which I imagine is the equivalent of a dress rehearsal. After a quick introduction to the Zoom interface, I was moved into a zoom meeting room for new employees. There were about 30 people in the zoom meeting to start who were new employees, prospective clients, or potential investors. Having so many people in the meeting set me into panic mode as I scrambled to fit everyone on the page. I probably wasn’t the ideal new hire since I was sketching the entire time.
The general premise is that Posthumous is the the biggest and best afterlife company who supplies an ideal scripted afterlife for people’s souls after they die. As part of the new research team I got to meet one of the recently deceased who was a bit disoriented. We got to experience one of her final waking life memories and began to unravel both the mystery of her death and the darker side of the Posthumous corporate culture. An amazing twist is that we were able to interact with the memory as if we were in the body of the deceased. Any questions asked would alter the memory.
I felt a little disappointed that I had lost so many people as they branched off to their own individual adventures. Slowly however people began to trickle back into our meeting to share their experiences as investors and prospective clients who had been given a tour. Giving a corporation the ability to curate death has menacing consequences and it became our responsibility to get to the bottom of a dark mystery.
Only at the end did we discover who was in the cast and who was in the audience. Those distinctions blurred and didn’t matter as we worked to unravel the corporate mystery. I fully enjoyed the experience. I certainly would have been able to contribute more if I had not been distracted with sketching, but there was a dark delicious humor to the show as a whole.
Show times are,
- Fri., Sept. 23, 2022 at 8 p.m.,
- Sat., Sept. 24, 2022 at 3 & 9 p.m.,
- Sun., Sept. 25, 2022 at 1 & 7 p.m.,
- Fri., Oct. 7, 2022 at 8 p.m.,
- Sat., Oct. 8, 2022 at 3 & 9 p.m.
- Sun., Oct. 9, 1 & 7 p.m.
Tickets are $35 to $45.