Neotropolis

At Neotropolis - a large-scale immersive cyberpunk-themed festival blending interactive storytelling, environmental design, and mission roleplay - I serve as Art Director and Creative Lead for a multi-room interactive installation (the largest of its kind on-site), and have been recognized by the Themed Entertainment Association’s prestigious Thea Awards for our work (2026 Recognition Of Merit for Collaborative World Building Experience) - alongside other incredible creators like Universal Orlando’s Epic Universe, Disney’s Haunted Mansion Parlor, Efteling’s Dance Macabre, and more.

For four years, I’ve led a team of over 40 collaborators, designers, artists, fabricators, and interactive performers (“The Thirteens”) to offer a meticulously-shaped immersive environment and questline that invite an audience of several hundreds to become active participants in thousands of substantial missions - from the clandestine (think gritty cyberpunk noir) to the existential (What is a soul? At what cost do we pursue life?)

Combining augmented reality, detailed sets, durable props, and intricate lighting and sound design - each year our team takes bold new risks, expanding our vision, footprint, and throughput.

My role sits at the intersection of creative direction, production design, experiential storytelling, and team leadership. I develop the overall visual language and user experience for the space while coordinating a wide range of contributors across fabrication, programming, prop design, lighting, graphics, costuming, mission design, and interactive performance.

The installation itself functions as a fully interactive narrative environment: part shady pawn shop, part memory bank and morgue, part immersive theater set. Guests move through the space as participants rather than spectators, engaging with performers, physical artifacts, branching missions, and reactive environmental storytelling.

As an interactive audience-member (or “player”), you might be lured in by the cheerful crisp, pastel-laden retro-corporate lounge of the Soul Bank - and convinced by our eager clerks to back up your soul to “state-of-the-art magnetic tape reel” - ready to reflash into a new body in the event of your “death.” Or you might try to clandestinely trade smuggled weapons for discount cybernetics at Pick ‘n Pull Pawn. Try to move up the corporate ranks at the Soul Bank - or learn what connects the pawn shop to the mysterious Morgue - and you’ll find yourself steering a plot amidst underworld kingpins, a never-ending need for bodies, cryptography, missing persons, a growing singularity,…and choosing what to do when your time runs out…and realizing you’ve been given one more shot at life.

The design challenge is always to create an environment that feels densely layered, lived-in, and cinematic while still functioning operationally under heavy audience throughput for an entire week-long event.

A major part of my work involves synthesizing contributions from multiple creative minds into a cohesive visual and experiential whole. I oversee outsourced and collaborative design work, give aesthetic direction to fabricators and builders, curate found objects and scenic materials, empower and encourage risk-taking in other creators, and maintain consistency across every layer of the environment - from architectural layout and lighting tone to mission props, signage, textures, and interactive touchpoints.

The project relies heavily on practical fabrication and adaptive design thinking. We build many scenic elements from carefully curated found materials, modified consumer objects, custom props, salvaged electronics, and fabricated set pieces. I lead the overall build process while also remaining deeply involved in hands-on execution: space planning, scenic installation, prop integration, environmental dressing, workflow troubleshooting, and iterative redesign during live operation.

Because the environment is interactive, the work also requires balancing aesthetics with usability. Every design choice has to support performer workflow, audience navigation, narrative clarity, and repeatable user interaction. I work closely with performers and mission designers to ensure that the physical environment reinforces story structure and encourages intuitive engagement - without breaking immersion.

What excites me most about this kind of work is building worlds that are intentionally authored but alive - spaces where meticulous visual curation, collaborative design leadership, and tactile physical detail combine to create emotionally memorable experiences for an audience moving through them in real time. I measure our success in the number of people who keep coming back - both as players and as my co-collaborators - and in the deeply emotional impact the experience leaves behind.

A high point has been the Thirteens receiving the attention of the prestigious TEA Thea Award - one of the highest honors in the themed experience industry. As a named and credited part of the Neotropolis team, we have received the Thea Recognition of Merit - spotlighting project excellence for innovative thinking and delivery on the fringes of the industry.