Collaboration Brings Interactive Escape Room to Theater Performance
Julissa Duran, Staff Reporter
On Thursday, September 15 NESA Creative Writing will premier three thrilling escape rooms full of sorcery, ghouls, and adventures across the sea. The escape rooms will work as an interactive activity to go hand-in-hand with Allied Campus Theater’s fall show She Kills Monsters.
The themes for the rooms will be scourcers, vampires, and pirates. Oliva Strain (12), NESA Creative Writing Fiction Editor, came up with the themes after being picked to manage the event. “I was sorta just volunteered,” Strain said.
Each room will come with their own host with Jay Sutton (12), NESA Creative Writing Art Director, hosting the sorcerer room, Strain in the pirate room, and Logan Clements (11) as host of the vampire room.
NESA Creative Writing students began preparations for the event two weeks ago, and have been working hard towards the escape rooms in hopes of giving the attendees a good time. “We put in a lot of work, and stress, and hours of time into building this stuff for it,” Strain said.
Each room is filled with props and designed in a way that really brings the themes to life. No stone was left unturned during the creations of the rooms with both big and small details incorporated, and even more yet to come. With the pirate room sporting fishnets across the wall and a collection of empty booze, the sorcerer’s room filled with potions and plants making you feel like you just entered a world of wizardry, and a table full of gothic victorian accessories wilh a homemade coffin bringing it all together.
“Our neighbor was like redoing her fence,” Sutton said in reference to the coffin. “We were like ‘can we have these fence pickets?’ and she was like ‘yeah sure I was just gonna throw them in the trash’ so we just have a coffin now.”
The entry fee for students will be $5 and $10 for adults. Those involved in setting up the room are expecting a good turnout due to affordable cost and the anticipation they’ve heard around campus.
“I think from what I’ve seen people are actually excited because like it’s a cheaper escape room,” Sutton said. “It’s only like five dollars as opposed to going to a traditional one and paying like $20, and I think it’s going to be a good turnout and our expectations will pay off.”
NESA Creative writing staff received the offer to do the escape room a little while back after theater students caught wind of an escape room they plan on doing later in the school year. “We were gonna do an escape room for Apocalypse but then Lee theater was like ‘hmm wait a minute,” Sutton said. “This is basically a test run for future escape rooms, hopefully.”
She Kills Monsters follows the story of Agnes Evans, an average high school senior, who in the wake of her younger sister, Tily’s, recent death comes across a Dungeons and Dragons notebook that belonged to Tily. As a way to connect with her departed sister, Agnes dives into the world that was once Tily’s safe haven, and begins to learn more about Tily and her challenges with her sexualtiy. This heartfelt comedy-drama takes place both in game and reality, and will be showing from Thursday, September 15 to Saturday, September 17.
