Interactive Acting Workshop & Live Performance
with Jeff Wirth & Caro Murphy
One Day. One Workshop. One Night to Show What You Learned.
Sunday, July 26th, 2026
16 Maple St, Belmont MA
Workshop: 10am–7pm
Doors: 7pm
👥 Workshop capped at 20 participants
🎟 Workshop Tickets: $120 — includes lunch & dinner
👥 Audience capped at 20 participants
🎟 Audience Tickets (Show Only): FREE
What Is This?
This is a full-day intensive workshop in interactive performance & theater — and then you actually do it.
Twenty participants spend the day with Jeff Wirth and Caro Murphy learning the craft of interactive performance: how to build a character grounded in truth, how to collaboratively build narrative with guests (or "spects"), how to make an audience member feel like the most interesting person in the world. Then, that same evening, you step into a live show and use everything you just learned — with a real audience.
No passive learning. No "we'll apply this someday." You learn it, you rehearse it, and you perform it. Same day.
Some prior performance experience is helpful, but not required. If you're curious, you belong here.
Your Instructors
Jeff Wirth
Jeff Wirth is the director of the Interactive PlayLab, a training and resource lab for live interactive performance experiences. Jeff has consulted for Cirque du Soleil, Blue Man Group, and Disney Imagineering, and served on the faculty of the University of Central Florida for 10 years. He wrote the book Interactive Acting, as well as Interactive Performance 101 and companion Teacher’s Edition. Jeff has created over 100 interactive performances. Jeff’s eclectic background includes ballroom dancing, computer programming, and clowning for the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Caro Murphy
Caro Murphy is the co-executive director of Playable Theatre — a nonprofit dedicated to fostering interactive performance experiences — as well as Sr. Interactive Producer at Trivium Interactive, and Exec. Creative Director of Incantrix Productions. They are former Immersive Experience Director for Disney's Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, and have taught at the college level for over 10 years at institutions like Northeastern University, WPI, MIT, Harvard, Ringling, and more. Caro often collaborates as Interaction Director for Green Door Labs and performs in many immersive productions. They have recently become obsessed with clowning and perform in the Boston area as Nilly the Clown.
The Day at a Glance
10:00am — Workshop Begins
12:00pm — Lunch Break (included)
1:00pm — Workshop Continues
5:00pm — Dinner Break (included)
6:00pm — Final Rehearsal Run-through
7:00pm — Doors Open / Audience Arrives
Workshop Ticket cost: $120, includes lunch and dinner accommodating your dietary needs!
What You'll Learn in the Workshop
The day is structured to take you from warmup to performance-ready, covering:
Morning: Foundation Warmups (stretching, physical embodiment, emotional grounding), ensemble work, ethics and consent in interactive performance, and how to approach an audience member without it being weird.
Character & Technique Building a character who is specific, funny, and real. The "Yes, Yay!" principle. The art of the question — two-things technique, top-down vs. bottom-up. Endowments, thin slicing, building and amplifying. How to walk a room.
Being a Good Scene Partner Working on a spectrum from easy scenes to difficult ones. How to support your fellow interactors. Group scenework and individual scenework.
Narrative & Structure Driving the narrative vs. supporting it. The difference between participatory theater and interactive theater. Show structures and how to use them. Ice breakers that actually work.
Afternoon: Rehearsal Applying everything to the show. Running scenes. Getting ready for 7pm.
The Show: Speed Friending
Presented by Peanut Butter & Chocolate Industries
Making friends as an adult is hard. Like, genuinely, embarrassingly hard.
That's why Peanut Butter & Chocolate Industries created Speed Friending — a guided, ridiculous, surprisingly heartfelt evening where you meet interesting people in your area who also want to make new friends. Find out if your interests line up. See if there's a spark. Walk away with someone you actually want to hang out with again.
The best part? You don't have to stop once you've found your people. Come back and keep expanding your circle.
Tone: Think The Office. Comedic characters, grounded in reality, with genuine warmth underneath.
Capacity: 20 interactors. 20 audience members. Intimate by design.
What to Expect as an Audience Member
When you arrive, you'll be handed a nametag — but it won't be your name.
It'll have a hook: something about you that starts a conversation. A hobby. Something you love. Maybe you'll also have a photo of your best friend or your arch-nemesis. By the time the doors open, the story has already started.
Expect warmth. Expect laughter. Expect to actually talk to strangers — and maybe not mind.
Touch level: business casual.