Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More. Photo by Thom Kaine

For me it began in 2008 with Sleep No More, that haunted labyrinth of the McKittrick Hotel in Manhattan. As an audience member you don your mask and wander amongst bloody bathtubs, candy shops, asylums, graveyards, and forests as characters from Macbeth race through “Scotland” in a noir fever dream. After the production was completed not a single piece of taxidermy could to be found on the East Coast, so heavily stocked was the multi-story experience. 

To this day it remains one of the most influential productions I have ever seen. It also proves to be one of the best examples of an Immersive Experience: The world of the story revolves and evolves around you, and you discover it.

Nordo has been producing immersive experiences since 2009. We built our worlds around your dining table. We put you in an airplane lounge as espionage bubbled, a saloon the night before a hanging, the lobby of a haunted hotel, inside the doll house of girl named Violet. We engaged all of your senses. You, the audience, had a role and were implicated in the action. In our very first production we opened of a pop-up restaurant lorded over by an enigmatic chef who demanded your attention and preached the tenets of the Carnal Food Movement.

The set of the Modern American Chicken, 2013. Photo Credit: Bruce Clayton Tom

Production Images from The Modern American Chicken, 2009. Photo credit: John Cornicello.

In the decade that followed the “Immersive Theater” genre exploded. Escape rooms, themed bars, and site specific performances popped up in every major city. Then, the Sante Fe based company, Meow Wolf, created its first exhibit the “House of Eternal Return”- an entire world designed by artists through which you explore and discover a story simply by finding objects, reading letters and experiencing the art. Meow Wolf has solidified the word Immersive in the zeitgeist.

Like all things live, COVID squashed the momentum. But the creative wheels were still turning, waiting for an opportunity, because as restrictions  lifted around the country immersive experiences have been popping up like mushrooms. In major cities like New York, LA, and London there are dozens of options to choose from.

So, “what is immersive?”. The word “Immersive” covers a lot of ground from escape rooms to performance art, from theme parks to haunted houses, to dinner theater. The immersive experience is one in which the audience member is a participant and not simply a voyeur. In many ways, theme parks are the original immersive experience.

In 2023 it’s a buzz word trying to describe an emerging style of entertainment. In the age of screens patrons want something vibrant and interactive, and “immersive” is nothing more than asking you, the audience, to engage with your experience.

So, in considering what the next steps for Nordo should be, we asked ourselves, “What do we enjoy? What do we want to see in the world? What makes our faces light up with Wonder?”

We discussed our love of spectacle. The sense of danger at not knowing what may happen around the corner. The joy of entering a portal and being transported into a different world. We’ve stepped through refrigerators looking for wormholes, walked the aisles of a multi-dimensional grocery store searching for alien artifacts, and stepped off elevators into a maze of birch trees with no purpose other than to marvel.

And we realized, with some surprise, that Nordo has been cresting this wave without quite knowing it. Our Cabinet of Curiosities production way back in 2012 guided our audiences on a tour of the best exhibits of a time traveling museum dedicated to the culinary arts, for example.

The Cabinet of Curiosities, Photo Credit: John Cornicello

Today, we have an explosion of great storytelling through all of our streaming services. And gaming is having a renaissance whether it is on a console or the dining room table. Immersive experiences are a mixture of these two trends, and it’s going to continue to grow. I want to pull back the curtain a tiny bit on the world of immersive entertainment that is going on right now.

Let me introduce you to No Proscenium, a website that attempts to describe, encapsulate, and review all things Immersive.

And this site, Everything Immersive, by the same people, attempts to catalogue every immersive experience currently going city by city.

Would you like even more of a distillation? Here are some current shows that have peaked my interest …

 Madness 1917

Officially a cooperative game and not an escape room, this production by the Doors of Divergence is chapter 2 in a three-part series described as a narrative puzzle. Join the journey to solve how time broke and who is responsible. With performers and multiple endings the production asks you to leave your life behind and give it over the staff at Holly Groove Sanitarium. I plan on being in NYC in late June and will definitely be buying tickets to this.

The Nest

Equipped with flashlights you explore the storage room of a recently deceased woman obsessed with documenting her life. Piece by piece you unravel Josie’s dramatic life story. Part escape room, part narrative story, part podcast (there are audio tapes she left behind) this production by Hatch Escapes is a new take on intimate storytelling. 

These are just 2 of the many that caught my attention.

I will be going to a conference in LA called Next Stage for immersive artists and companies. I can’t wait to see and hear what innovators in other cities have been conjuring. Stay tuned for what I find.

Immersive is everywhere.

-Terry Podgorski, co-Artistic Director and World Builder at Nordo

Nordo co-Artistic Directors Terry Podgorski (writer) and Erin Brindley.

The search is on for a permanent venue!

Nordo is looking for a new home, a new production house to continue the storytelling that has been the central focus of the company: to be a unique brand of world building and sensory engagement that provides escapism and joy and wonder. That’s the hope. The task of finding this new home is daunting, and the possibilities endless.

To be honest, there are not many facilities in Seattle that are suitable for what we are talking about. We want a place for Nordo to stretch its wings, but where we can also partner with other experiental artistic businesses to create a destination for Seattleites. The facility will be a rare gem that checks all the boxes; we will know it when we see it.

People ask, “How’s it going? Has anything happened yet? What are you doing?” And the answer is, learning. There’s so much to learn when you want to take over the world. Or even just little old Seattle.

The REAL World

There’s learning commercial real estate, permits, zoning, development, investment strategies, purchasing strategies, and on top of all that learning is the art itself. What exactly does this new Nordo want to be? What kind of clothes does it want to wear? What does it imbibe? What stories does it want to tell?

At least we know how to do the latter. It happens through exercising the imagination, and dreaming, and conversing with collaborators. All that other stuff needs to be learned. And how does one learn? Through meetings.

Many meetings. There have been meetings with commercial real estate brokers, real estate investors, representatives from the office of economic development, the heads of local business improvement agencies, and fundraising professionals. Meetings are how relationships are made and relationships are the only way a dream like this could come to be. Also, through meetings you learn what is going on in Seattle. I don’t know about you but I find it difficult to hear what is really going on in our city. Where is the next art show? The next big event? The next big move that will change the city?

In these meetings I have learned of some important and very cool enterprises…

The Watershed Community Development

Born out of Equinox Studios begun in 2006 in Georgetown with the intent of providing affordable living and work space for artists this organization, the Watershed Community Development will take these ideas to the next level and change the fabric of the city. Over 4 city blocks of property along the 4thAve corridor in Georgetown will be developed into affordable live/work space over the next seven years bringing 1000 units online as well as providing shop and retail space for those artists.

I first heard of it during an initial conversation with Sam Farrazaino, the founder of Equinox, and the sparks of imagination immediately began to fly.

Imagine a hub of live/work space and in the same neighborhood an artist run hub of entertainment hiring those resources. It’s an exciting prospect. The Watershed group hopes to break ground this year, and the first building will not be completed until late 2025 at the earliest, so it’s a long-term project, but the final product will completely alter that part of the city and solidify a strong artistic community in Seattle for decades.

Perhaps Nordo will be a part of it.

Seattle Restored

This project, created years ago and curated by Nordo favorite Matt Richter, attempts to fill vacant storefronts with temporary art projects. It beautifies an area while bringing traffic and vibrancy, and giving artists the incredibly valuable asset of space.

Storefronts in Belltown, the Central Business District, Pioneer Square, and the International District have been embellished. Many of the projects are art galleries, but there are also retail stores of locally handcrafted goods and a couple of performance spaces including one inhabited by long time friends of Nordo, Degenerate Art Ensemble.

The DAE have yet to produce any live performances in their space, but they undoubtedly will and when they do we will be there.

COVID  hit the downtown corridor hard with vacancies, and no one sees this trend reversing quickly, so let’s turn it over to bright and creative stars who will happily fill the spaces with imagination and give all of us unique and entertaining things to do again.

The mayor is expected to announce a larger, stronger, more streamlined version of this project this summer, and hopefully there will be funding attached. Cross your fingers Seattle makes this concerted effort to fill our downtown with imagination and life.

This project may not lead to a long-term home for Nordo, but pay attention, because a pop-up Nordo performance may materialize amongst the desks of a vacant office floor or in the cavernous vaults of a bank. One never knows…

The Seattle Restored storefronts in the Downtown Corridor.

Location, location, location…

And finally, for those of you still reading, beyond meetings, we learn through site visitations. Many commercial buildings have been visited, and each time we learn more about what is available, but also what the needs for our dream project are.

Jackson and 26th?

16th Avenue in White Center?

Nordo in Ballard?

Nordo further south on 1st Avenue?

We have visited sites in SODO, White Center, Georgetown, and Ballard. Each neighborhood provides a different atmosphere for the business. As you walk down the sidewalk you ask, “What would it be like to be here?” In fact, every site visited conjures new visions of what could be.

The facility and its environs are a uniquely shaped vessel that will alter the contents that are poured into it. Here is where the possibilities can be daunting. Imagine our sign hovering over each of the facades. Each one is a new world.

What do you see?  

From the desk of co-Artistic Director Terry Podgorski

This short story by Alexei Cifrese, your Front Desk Representative who takes your box orders, packs them lovingly, and sends them off to our kindly FedEx driver. He's had a lot of time to ponder Room Service and hopes you enjoy this holiday tale.

Imagine this..

You’re sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table. A magnificent feast lies before you, but you can’t have any of it - not until everyone’s gone around and shared what they’re thankful for.

Grandma says she’s thankful that her Pumpkin Pie turned out great. Well, we’ll know in about 45 minutes.

Uncle Phil Who Drinks Too Much Wine says he’s thankful that his oldest survived pre-calc and is heading to college. The crowd breathes a sigh of relief.

Nephew Ted Who’s Ten and Three Quarters says he’s thankful for his family. What a poser.

And while you try to come up with something better than “I’ll be thankful for when this is over,” Cousin Meghan Who Does Everything Right suddenly drops this bomb:

“I’m thankful I got to experience all three of Nordo’s Room Service boxes before they went away forever!”

A BEAD OF SWEAT tumbles down your forehead.

“Room Service boxes?” Uncle Phil inquires, his eyebrow curved like the freshly refilled wine glass cradled gently in his hand as if it were the newly born Christ.

“Yeah!” Cousin Meg exclaims, flipping her ponytail back with such elegance that, had she lived in Ancient Greece, Hera would strike her down in a jealous rage.

“This super cool immersive dinner theater transformed some of their original plays into room service boxes during the pandemic, so that people could still experience the magic of theater in their own home!”

NOW, dear reader, you cannot see your own face, but if you could, you would see the thousand-yard stare every actor worth his salt has tried to recreate on the big screen as scenes from The War flashed before them.

Only instead of The War, your mind is plagued with memories of you sitting on the couch at 2am playing the same video game you haven’t beaten since childhood. Of you and your significant other trapped in yet another endless loop of “I don’t know what do YOU want to do today?” Of you…going outside.

“Oh!” Grandma perks up from the kitchen garbage can, shoving down the remnants of what appear to be shredded Cyrus O’Leary boxes. “Like those Hunt A Killer story boxes?”

“They’re even better than Hunt a Killer!” Meg smiles, flashing her perfect teeth for the camera that exists only in her mind. “They all include specially crafted cocktails and artisanal desserts!”

View fullsize

“DESSERTS?!” Nephew Ted shouts, suddenly invested in the conversation.

All those years searching for a chance to broaden your horizons, to be a wo/man of culture, or hell, for just a pleasant escape into another realm, only to recognize the answer in front of you the moment it vanishes forever into the void.

What a fool you have been.

Dear Reader, this fate does not have to be yours!

Now until the end of 2022 you can experience all three of our original story boxes!

Will you unlock the secrets of Hotel Nordo in Do Not Disturb?

(42 remain)

Or maybe donning a crown and gavel and judging some guilty characters in The Interrogation of Alice is more your style?

(27 left)

Or perhaps you'd care to summon some devils in The Witching Hour?

(Extremely limited supply!)

Or maybe you suffer from option paralysis, so you opt to get all three. (A valid life choice!)

Whatever you decide, order by Monday, November 21st and they’ll be shipped to you in time for Thanksgiving. Don’t hesitate - these boxes will disappear at the end of the year.

Save on shipping with local pickup in Seattle!

Erin in the Nordo kitchen.

Mahria Zook as the Botanist in Spirit Parlour. Photo by Bruce Clayton Tom.

I am a great defender of food gimmicks. Of bells and whistles. They must be delicious, of course, otherwise what’s the point? But watching an audience interact with a bubbling cauldron of liquid nitrogen, or squeal in delight over a thing that looks like a thing but tastes like a different thing, has been a great joy of mine. My background is, after all, in theater more than it is in food. I want it to tell a story and to be a spectacle, like the Nordo performances are.

Spirit Parlour is different. There is magic and spectacle, certainly, but Julia Nardin (and the whole team) has created a quiet world that is more meditative. Hair will stand on end, but the audience isn’t there to be terrified. Rather they are invited to explore this place where the veil is so thin that we are able to interact with the spirits amongst us.

There is a lot of grief in the ghosts of Spirit Parlour. And as I worked on the menu for the Sunday Dinners, my beloved big brother passed away unexpectedly. I was suddenly thrust into the world of grief food.

The “hot dish” phase: A friend shipped me an entire basket of Babkas from a bakery in NYC. Another friend cooked a gorgeous, multicourse Italian meal and left it on my porch. It was so comforting, every bite, but what lingers in my mind is the lemon cake. I’ll never forget that cake. The outpouring of food from people’s hearts were warm spots in those first few dark weeks.

Julia and I had poured over a lot of information about food rituals around the world. The primary theme was comfort and simplicity. And isn’t that what we want to eat as the chill of fall comes upon us?

Erin and her brother Ryan in Las Vegas.

Of course, it wouldn’t truly be a Nordo menu if it ended at comfort food. Diving deeper into thoughts of life, death, life-force, energy disbursement, and all the things those of us without a deep religious tradition must grapple with when we lose someone we love, I was comforted by the idea that nothing really ends. Death feeds life. Ripe grapes rot and we get wine. Fermentation literally transforms dead food into live, bubbly, delicious, nutritious food. Those “live, active cultures” everyone is talking about? That’s essentially rot, folks. 

So we’ve woven that throughout this menu, designed to touch that thin line between the ache of death and fizzy, bubbling, beautiful, delicious life. My mom Debbie Brindley, a professional baker and incredible cook, has been right beside me throughout Nordo’s decade-plus of menus. Working with her on this one - as we are both in it as far as the shock of overwhelming grief goes - feels more special than ever. She calls the sourdough starts “the babies.” She feeds them even as she mourns her real baby, grown man that he was.

Together we cultured and churned our own butter, made real buttermilk, fed sourdough starts, made crème fraîche, braised beef in fermented cider, and found every way we could to lace the whole, comforting menu with the tang of loss and renewal.  

There are no zingy surprises - just real, beautiful food. And that feels just right for this story. 

Savor Erin’s dinner menu on Sunday’s only at Spirit Parlour, playing through November in Nordo’s Culinarium.

>> MORE DETAILS

By Erin Brindley, Nordo Co-Artistic Director & Executive Chef

Childhood photo of Ryan, Erin and their bulldog Rosie.

The secrets of julia nardin

Julia Nardin, creator of the upcoming Spirit Parlour at Nordo, is a storyteller and worldbuilder whose immersive works invite audiences to explore the dichotomy of human nature and our relationship with the natural world. When she isn't creating theatre steeped in magic realism, she's helming the writers' room at Bungie where she works as the company's Universe Narrative Director on the well-known video game Destiny. Her previous theatrical projects include Starling, Den of Thieves, and an ode to the dark heart of the Pacific Northwest: Dump Site. We recently sat down with Julia to learn more about the mysterious world we’ll be visiting this fall.

Talk to us about the moths. What is inspiring about them, what do they mean for the storytelling of Spirit Parlour? When did they come into the process?

 Julia: Moths are a symbol of death and transformation—I actually have an enormous tattoo of one spread open across my back, so the idea to involve them was sort of peeking over my shoulder before I even realized it was there. I was looking for an iconic piece of imagery that could represent the show and make a statement about how it’s different from some of the other Halloween experiences out there. There’s nothing explicitly violent or gory about Spirit Parlour. It’s not the sort of show that’s going to hit you with a jump scare or chase you out of the building with a chainsaw. Our frights are the kind that float in through your bedroom window at night because you invited them by leaving a light on, like moths do.

 It sort of spiraled from there. We (Julia works with co-director Mark Siano, as well as two other writers) named our secret society the Sacred Order of Aurelians because it’s only slightly less difficult to say than “Lepidopterists.” Our designers started looking for as many ways as possible to weave them into the tapestry of the world we were building, which included working with Moth & Myth to populate it with a collection of beautiful paper specimens. One of our resident spirits entombed himself because he was so obsessed with the idea of transformation through death. I don’t think I’m that far gone (yet).  

What haunts you? What do you find especially scary that you'd like to share with our audiences?

 Julia: The things that haunt us and the things that scare us aren’t always the same, but they can be. The spirits in Spirit Parlour have a lot of unfinished business, otherwise they wouldn’t be spirits. There are a lot of recurring themes in their stories about the mistakes they made, the things they left unsaid, or things that maybe they should have left unsaid but didn’t. Everyone in the audience has their own version of that too, I think. By its definition, life is pretty irreversible. Death, even more so. That scares me.  

How does going "under the influence" affect Spirit Parlour's story telling?

 Julia: Spirit Parlour is part cocktail bar, part boutique haunted house. The audience and the spirits share the same space most of the time, so you might be having a drink at the same table as a soldier who died during World War I, or you might be cozying up with your date on a couch twenty feet below a circus acrobat who fell to her death. If you’re lucky, you might even be able to have a conversation with them like you would a stranger at the other end of the bar.

 The spirits in the cocktails correspond with the spirits in the parlour, and there are five of them. You’ll learn their stories by interacting with them, but you’ll also receive a little lore alongside the drink of your choosing, which will help you piece it all together. You'll get as much out of the experience as you opt to put into it, which is a nice way to also allow everyone to establish their own tolerance. 

 Be sure to catch Spirit Parlour this September through November in Nordo’s Culinarium. MORE DETAILS>>>

Promotional photos by John Ulman

I don’t come into your inbox often, but we have big announcements this month, the foundation of our Imagine/Reimagine campaign, and I wanted to tell you personally this one:

We are beginning the search for a building that we will turn into the new Nordo…a vast, immersive experience that will house permanent installations that transport you into the magical worlds of Nordo.

When we first moved into the Culinarium at 109 South Main Street, we saw all the possibilities that could fit into that beautiful, historic empty box. Perhaps you’ve seen it transformed into a mid-century airplane, or an old west saloon complete with swinging doors, a haunted hotel lobby, or the viewing chamber of Dreams Inc.

And this fall, with Spirit Parlour, you will see us experiment with another iteration, very different from what we’ve done before, all in service of pushing forward the possibilities of Nordo. You’ll see more accessible ticket options that don’t include food. You won’t see four acts with three food breaks. You will see us, once again, experimenting and reimagining.

We will haunt the bejeezus out of The Culinarium, and then at the end of the year we will close its doors.

We signed the Culinarium lease in 2014 and knew we would be in our upstairs, street level venue for 5-10 years. We knew we would experiment with different forms, new ways of transforming the space and creating unique experiences for Seattle to enjoy. I am proud to say we have done that, hands down.

It’s time to look forward to new possibilities. And I couldn’t be more excited.

The Culinarium and the Knife Room are only the beginning in this artistic journey. Over the last 2+ years of pandemic shutdowns, we have had time to dream about life after the venues in Pioneer Square. And for a bit, we will operate solely out of The Knife Room, our subterranean cabaret, and use it as our creative laboratory.

Then we begin the planning stages for the next Nordo leap: a building of our own.

It is time to apply what we have learned into creating that next vision: A venue that can house a permanent version of our Cabinet of Curiosities - a show that has a near-legendary status in Nordo lore. We took over a three story building and turned it into a roving, edible, installation and performance experience!

Imagine rotating seasonal installations to wander and taste. Imagine having a candy shaped appetizer in Violet’s Attic, potato donuts with coffee gravy in the Lost Falls Diner, and finishing the evening with a Crum Bumb at the Sauced Speakeasy?

Imagine all of that in addition to accessibility from parking, to central air, to elevators, to more affordable ticket options.

This new vision begins now. We have already raised $57k of our 75k goal, and have $18k left to raise by August 30th to take the first steps towards this dream. A donation from you today would let us know you believe in our capacity to imagine a re-imagine. Won't you join us in celebrating the future of Nordo?

Thank You,

Terry Podgorski
Co-Executive Artistic Director
Nordo