Guest Artists and Speakers
Meet the workshop leaders and speakers shaping this year’s Miami Immersive Intensive.
SADAH ESPII PROCTOR
Director of Immersive Media South Florida PBS
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Sadah Espii Proctor is a director and creative producer working across hybrid documentary and immersive storytelling. Her work explores diasporic memory, ritual, and Black cultural experience through cinematic and experiential forms.
Originally trained in theatre and performance, her practice is rooted in dance and devised ensemble work, with early explorations in interactive sound shaping her approach to spatial storytelling. Her work spans collaborations with artists including André M. Zachery, Nichole Canuso, Sasha Velour, and Soul Science Lab, as well as the creation of large-scale projection and multimedia environments for global brands, artists, and nonprofit organizations including Puma, Birkenstock, Mary J. Blige, and the Celtic FC Foundation.
An Onassis ONX Member, SOZO Fellow, and NEW INC alum, she contributes to a cross-sector community advancing new models for creative practice and immersive media. Her projects include adrift: the bayou project (Lincoln Center); Ancestral Futurisms (The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture); and Girl Icon (VR for Good). Premiering at SXSW and Tribeca Festival, Girl Icon screened at festivals internationally and was exhibited at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. The project was nominated for Best Digital Narrative at Sheffield DocFest and named one of Forbes’ Top 50 XR Experiences of 2019. She co-produced Futures We Dream, a documentary series commissioned for the Smithsonian FUTURES Exhibition.
She serves as Director of Immersive Media at South Florida PBS, where she leads the station’s immersive media program— the first of its kind within PBS. Through her artistic and institutional work, she advances immersive storytelling rooted in community, cultural memory, and public impact.
DAVID FEINER
Albany Park Theater Project, Co-Executive Director
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David Feiner (he/him/his) is an award-winning director, producer, and educator. He is a co-founder and co-executive director of the acclaimed Albany Park Theater Project, a Chicago company where youth artists devise world-class performances inspired by the real-life stories of their immigrant and first-generation community. Over three decades, David has worked as a co-director, co-creator, and/or producer on all of APTP’s more than 25 world premieres. For nearly 15 years, David has led APTP’s collaboration with Third Rail Projects, including Learning Curve (named one of the Top Ten Shows of 2016 by the Chicago Tribune, Time OutMagazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times) and Port of Entry (Chicago Tribune and NoProscenium best of 2023 lists), which continue to run in Chicago after nearly 3 years and 200 performances
JENNINE WILLETT
Co-Artistic Director of Third Rail Projects
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Jennine Willett is an immersive director and experience designer whose work centers on story as a catalyst for connection. She is Co-Artistic Director of Third Rail Projects, the New York–based company known for critically acclaimed immersive productions, including the long-running hit Then She Fell. Among her largest-scale collaborations is Port of Entry, a partnership between Third Rail Projects and Chicago’s critically acclaimed youth ensemble Albany Park Theater Project. In addition to her work in the arts, Jennine serves as Creative
Director at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, where she applies immersive storytelling principles to science communication for internal and external events. Integrating artistic and theatrical elements into established formats, she creates experiences that bridge narrative, audience, and mission in delightful and often unexpected ways.
ABRAHAM BURICKSON
Co-Founder of Odyssey Works
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ABRAHAM BURICKSON, Co-Founder of Odyssey Works and Director of the Experience Design Certificate Program, has spent twenty-five years exploring the relationship between what we make and how it is experienced. Trained in architecture at Cornell University and in poetry and playwriting at the Michener Center for Writers, he has also studied the transformative power of designed experience with the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey, the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and with countless artists, designers, and students through Odyssey Works. He spent decades organizing communities around the creation of transformative experiences for what the New York Times called “a tiny but infinitely more affected audience.” He is also the founder of The Long Architecture Project, which rethinks architectural practice from the perspective of Experience Design. As a consultant and designer he has worked with big tech companies, religious organizations, local arts councils, and non-profits working to end hunger and stop the AI apocalypse. He has won prizes, lectured and taught widely, given a TEDxtalk, and was once hired by German television to kidnap an American skateboarding champion. His book on Experience Design was published by Yale University Press in 2023.
KIERNA CONNER
Experience designer, creative producer & performer
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Kierna Conner is an experience designer, creative producer, performer, and educator working at the intersection of storytelling, play, and human behavior. Based in Orlando, Florida — and also considering New York City and Arizona home — her work spans immersive theatre, themed entertainment, live events, and interactive installations. She has served on original creative development teams for projects with Disney Imagineering, Universal Studios, Six Flags Fiesta Texas, Floating Tower Productions, Culture House Immersive, ImmerseFest Orlando, Hawkmoon Immersive, and more; bringing narrative depth, systems thinking, and guest-centered design to both large-scale and independent experiences.
She began her career as an actor trained in classical and musical theatre, and that foundation continues to shape how she directs, writes, and builds experiences from the inside out; prioritizing embodiment, agency, and emotional payoff. Over time, her practice expanded behind the scenes into creative producing, experience architecture, and team leadership, where she translates ambitious ideas into executable systems and guides multidisciplinary teams from concept through delivery.
As an educator and coach, Kierna teaches artists, creatives, and organizations how to design meaningful engagement by blending performance training, behavioral insight, and experiential strategy. She is particularly interested in how people make decisions inside fictional worlds and how play can serve as a tool for learning, connection, and transformation.
Outside of her professional work, she is an avid film buff, amateur escape room enthusiast, and seeker of strange museums and collaborative adventures; constantly researching the next great experience by stepping inside it.
Links: www.kiernaconner.com
MIKHAEL TARA GARVER
Founder of Culture House Immersive
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Mikhael Tara Garver, an immersive pioneer for over 2 decades, is the Founder of Culture House Immersive; was the Director of Immersive Experience of the THEA award-winning Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser; staff director of A.R.T.’s Sleep No More; and Creative Director for the band Great Caesar ( fandom-building journey at SXSW that 100x’d their fans in 8 days). She’s created award-winning experiences for AMC Television, Amazon, National Park Service, Bloomberg, BBDO, Hormel, Smirnoff, IDEO, Facebook, and Virgin. She is a founding board member of the Immersive Experience Institute; was awarded the first-ever immersive commissions from The Kennedy Center and National Theatre of Scotland; a multi-year grantee of Pop Culture Collaborative; an International Sacatar Fellow; and a Lead Creative Consultant Internationally for Walt Disney Imagineering. Garver has spent her career consulting and building business models in the immersive entertainment field while fundamentally centering artists, audience, and culture change. She is currently launching Culture House Immersive’s Inaugural Incubator.
NOAH NELSON
Founder of No Proscenium
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Noah Nelson is the founder of No Proscenium, a publication dedicated to exploring the immersive and experiential arts, its sister site Everything Immersive, and co-founder of the non-profit organization The Immersive Experience Institute. As a producer he has led multiple immersive industry events including The Next Stage (2025, 2023) the Los Angeles Immersive Invitational (2019, 2022, 2024, 2025), the Denver Immersive Gathering (2022), and the Immersive Design Summit (2018 & 2019). His extensive experience consulting on immersive work includes Camp Christmas (Denver Center for the Performing Arts), and working with Tender Claws to develop initial casting protocols for The Under Presents (Meta Quest). He is proud member of the faculty of the CalArts School of Theater and holds a bachelor's in Theatre Arts from San Francisco State University. His reporting has been heard on NPR's All Things Considered and APM's Marketplace.
CASEY JAY ANDREWS
Designer for Punchdrunk
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Casey Jay Andrews is a multi-award winning Designer and Writer. She was Designer of Punchdrunk’s Viola’s Room, Assistant Head of Design of The Burnt City, and Senior Designer of Punchdrunk Enrichment, where she continues to be an Associate Artist.
Casey Jay has an eclectic design background ranging from large scale immersive theatre design to mural painting, graphic design, and carved wooden puppets. But the thread through all of her creative work has been her particular interest in intimate narrative-led installations; these have provided a home for many of her writing and storytelling projects. Her recent project Oh My Heart, Oh My Home (Edinburgh, 2023; Washington DC, 2024; Adelaide, 2025) was designed to marry both sides of her creative practice: intricate design seamlessly harmonised with intimate stripped-back storytelling.
She has previously designed for Shotgun Carousel, Migration Matters Festival, Imogen Heap’s Mycelia World Tour, BT Sport, Francesca Moody Productions and The Immersive Great Gatsby in London, New York and Seoul. She has also toured internationally with her original productions: The Archive of Educated Hearts, A Place That Belongs to Monsters and The Wild Unfeeling World.
BRANDON POWERS
Choreographer
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Brandon Powers is a director, choreographer, and technology translator who creates experiences across physical and virtual space. His projects span forms incorporating AI, extended reality, and live performance including Echoes in Motion (Lincoln Center), Queerskins: ARK (Venice, Cannes XR), Frankenstein AI (Sundance), Duet (New York Live Arts), and Kinetic Diffusion (FilmGate Interactive, New Images).
Brandon is the co-founder of Pulse & Pixel, where he is building a new motion capture choreography tool. He is the Artistic Innovation Lead at Musical Theatre Factory, Onassis ONX Studio member, NEW INC alum, Lincoln Center Collider Fellow (2025), and has spoken on the intersection of arts and technology across the world at TCG National Conference, Verizon’s 5G Lab, DanceXR Singapore and more.
ZACH MORRIS
Co-Artistic Director of Third Rail Projects
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Zach Morris (he/him/his) is an immersive theater director, experience designer, consultant, and educator. He is Co-Artistic Director of Third Rail Projects, a New York–based performance company internationally recognized for creating works that place the audience at the very heart of the storytelling.
For over two decades, Third Rail Projects has been hailed as one of the foremost companies in the field, trailblazing the creation of site-specific, immersive, and experiential works. Zach is co-creator of the immersive theater hits Then She Fell, The Grand Paradise, Sweet & Lucky with the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and Ghost Light at Lincoln Center Theater’s Claire Tow Theater, among others.
He has been honored with numerous awards, including a Chita Rivera Award and two BESSIE Awards; projects he has collaborated on have garnered a Drama Desk nomination, a Peabody Award, and an Emmy Award. His work has been presented nationally and internationally with the support of grants, commissions, and residencies, and he has taught, mentored, and created new platforms to support artists at home and abroad.
Zach believes memorable, meaningful experiences happen when audiences become the heroes of their own journey. Attended to with compassion, thoughtfulness, and care, these experiences can be transformative, creating connection and empathy—something needed now more than ever.
OCTAVIO CAMPOS
Choreographer
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Octavio Campos is a Cuban-American performance artist, choreographer, and community agitator known for immersive, site-specific works that blur the line between ritual, rebellion, and performance. A master of disruption and deep feeling, Campos has staged flash mobs in shopping malls, led car wash operas and motorcycle ballets, created spectacles in abandoned buildings, and brought immersive theater into motel rooms, city streets, and recovery centers. His longtime collaboration with Juggerknot Theatre Company has helped redefine Miami’s performance scene, engaging audiences as participants in raw, unpredictable, and deeply human experiences.
Trained at SUNY Purchase and Germany’s Folkwang Hochschule under the legacy of Pina Bausch, Campos has worked with global visionaries including Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, Vivienne Newport, and Yoshiko Chuma. Campos brings rigor and mischief to every space he enters—whether a stage, a street, or zero gravity. With more than forty years of work across continents and communities, his practice remains rooted in transformation, joy, and the radical power of presence.
Learn from the best.
Don’t just be inspired—get in the room where it happens. Secure your spot at the Miami Immersive Intensive and train alongside the artists who are reshaping the future of live performance.