Submersive Productions' Institute of Visionary History Returns

Two episodes of The Institute of Visionary History and the Archives of the Deep Now will return in July and August at The Peale Center (225 Holliday Street, Baltimore, MD 21202).

Where can you have a dinner party with ghosts and conduct an experiment to extract your inner darkness? Winner of BEST DEVISED SHOW and BEST SHORT PIECE SERIES (2018 BITRSweet Awards), The Institute of Visionary History returns this summer with a limited return run of "Altar Ego" and "Project P.S." Both are self-contained, 45- to 60-minute multi-sensory experiences for a group of up to five people.

In "Altar Ego" you are invited to a unique house party to learn more about your "model citizen" Vietnamese-American neighbor, and explore the boundaries between home and not home, life and death. "Altar Ego" is actualized by Kim Le and runs with staggered entry times July 6, 7, 17, 20 and 21.

"Project P.S.," actualized by Mika Nakano, runs August 16, 23, 24 and 25. Subjects needed. Join in on procedures and extractions of metaphysical kurayami with a biomechatronic sculptor to examine the hypothesis that one can obtain enlightenment.

Last fall, Submersive Productions pulled back the veil on The Institute of Visionary History and the Archives of the Deep Now. The Institute's lab was painstakingly recreated by Submersive from instructions left behind by a centuries-old secret society once based in the Peale Center. The Institute believed the Peale building to be a kind of "thin place" where one can more easily transcend our present reality and contact other planes, places, and times. Their experiments combined scientific inquiry and visionary perception to uncover histories yet untold. Each episode engages an experiment designed by The Institute to ask a specific philosophical question. The six original episodes, each very different from the others, were released between September and December of 2018.

Now, two of those episodes - "Altar Ego" and "Project P.S." - will be restaged.

"Kim and Mika's pieces were two of our earlier episodes," said Submersive's Co-artistic Director Glenn Ricci. "They opened before word of mouth had spread and we think they deserve a second run so more people can experience these two gems. So much of what we try to achieve at Submersive is encapsulated in these two 'experiments.'"

"Last year, The Institute was a new, episodic concept that was part installation, part theatre," said Ursula Marcum, Co-artistic Director of Submersive Productions. "The audience really loved the experiences even though they did not know at first what they were signing up for. We learned a lot about this unique, intimate format from the early episodes. We're excited to have the opportunity to tweak and expand them so even if you saw them the first time, there will be new content."

Tickets for both shows are available now here.

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