When people can feel the system, they can change it.

I design embodied performance systems-live, hybrid, and participatory environments where attention, agency, and meaning are authored through rules, roles, and spatial choreography.

Quick-scan summary

  • What it is: Live, hybrid, and participatory environments authored through rules, roles, liveness, and spatial choreography.

  • Where it helps: audience experience design, hybrid performance systems, participatory facilitation, and environments where attention and consequence must be legible.

  • How to work together: participatory system design, rehearsal architecture, hybrid experience development, and live-format reviews.

What an embodied performance system is

A performance system is more than a show. It is a behavioral engine: a designed situation that shapes how people listen, move, decide, trust, and collaborate. The craft is not adding interaction-it's authoring liveness when control is distributed.

A woman dressed in ornate blue and gold costume with a crown and shoulder armor, wearing a black face mask, standing on a stage surrounded by fog or smoke.

Design lenses (usable across art, culture, and institutions)

• Performance + cognition: the body reads the room before the mind forms an opinion.

• Liveness + game mechanics: meaningful choice requires constraints, feedback, and consequence.

• Audience as co-author: participation is designed through permissions, not hype.

• Space as causality: thresholds, orientation, and proximity determine what is possible.

A large group of diverse people gathered outdoors in a park with tall green trees, posing for a group photo. Some people are smiling, some are making peace signs, and a few are wearing masks. There are wide smiles and casual clothing among the group members.

Tool: The Director's Compass (for cross-platform experiences)

• Time - phases of engagement (before, during, after; synchronous + asynchronous).

• Design - story structure + game dynamics + participation levels.

• Site - location, objects, sensory cues, and locative meaning.

• Intent - purpose, values, and what the experience trains people to become.

• Persona - roles/characters/ensembles and the behavior each role invites.

A group of people sitting at tables in a spacious room with large windows, wooden furniture, and string lights, playing a card game with illustrated cards laid out on a wooden table in the foreground.

If your audience (or stakeholders) can't tell what matters, how to act, or what the consequences are, the system isn't authored yet.

Work With Me
Work With Me