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There was a time when the idea of theater was closely linked to one venue, a stage and a seated audience. But storytelling can now often expand beyond theater walls.
Unbound Productions’ Wicked Lit, which performed its first show in 2009 at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, has been an innovator in these outside-the-box productions. Its debut was a fully immersive, moving show with three different plays on three different parts of the grounds. Its 2010 show took place at Mountain View mausoleum and cemetery in Altadena — a location that became a regular host for the theater company until 2019.
“We never sought out to do site-specific immersive work, but when the opportunity arose, we went for it,” said Jonathan Josephson, artistic director of Unbound Productions. “We really were in over our heads, didn't know how complicated it was gonna be, did five performances, ended up selling out and said, ‘OK, maybe this is the way Wicked Lit is gonna manifest. With my producing partners, I knew we wanted to do horror stories as theater and we just grew from there.”
And grow it did, including other projects like History Lit and Mystery Lit — but then the pandemic hit.
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