Play Along: Designing the World's First Interactive Magic Spectacular
Metaverse of Magic — billed as the world's first interactive magic spectacular — toured Australia in 2023–24 with production design by Patrick Larsen, Studio Bound.
Metaverse of Magic — "the world's first interactive magic spectacular," which toured Australia in 2023–24. Production design by Patrick Larsen, Studio Bound.
Most magic shows ask you to watch. Metaverse of Magic asks you to play. It toured Australia across 2023–24 — opened at the Sydney Coliseum in November 2023, then Canberra Theatre Centre, then QPAC in Brisbane. I was production designer.
Metaverse of Magic — a pixelated face materialises out of a deep blue digital architecture, the audience-controlled illusions made visible at full stage scale. Production design by Patrick Larsen, Studio Bound.
A set that's also an interface
The audience plays along on their phones. That one decision changes everything about the design. The set isn't only a backdrop. It has to read as a digital, game-like world, hold the screens and interactive cues, and keep a whole theatre of people oriented inside it. Part stage, part interface.
A "pick a card" sequence rendered as oversized neon playing cards on screen — the audience choosing in real time from their phones. Production design by Patrick Larsen, Studio Bound.
Designing for the road
Touring has its own constraints. The set has to load in and out of a coliseum, a theatre centre and a concert hall and look equally finished in all three. That means engineering for transport and quick reconfiguration without it ever feeling like a travelling rig. The world has to arrive intact in every city.
A vintage magic parlour revealed inside the digital frame — vaudeville posters, red drapes and chandeliers staged against the show's pixel-grid surround. Production design by Patrick Larsen, Studio Bound.The parlour scene in motion — the ensemble inside the show's nineteenth-century magic-hall world, framed by the touring shell. Production design by Patrick Larsen, Studio Bound.
Where this is going
Created by JONES Theatrical Group, directed by Siobhan Ginty, with an international ensemble of magicians. There's talk of Broadway and the West End next. For me it's the clearest case of a thing I keep running into: production design now has to account for the screen in everyone's hand.
A full-colour ensemble number — fan-and-umbrella choreography lit against side panels of red, green and blue smoke, the digital surround at its brightest. Production design by Patrick Larsen, Studio Bound.
