Specters and Systems: Advanced Horror Experience Studio
Co-Taught with Joe Pino and Mary Ellen Stebbins
Debuted Fall 2025
Syllabus: Link here.
Lecture example: Link here.
Specters and Systems was an advanced interdisciplinary studio at Carnegie Mellon that I developed and co-taught with Joe Pino and Mary Ellen Stebbins. The course structure, syllabus, and semester arc were designed around two primary pedagogical goals. The first was to give students experience designing for non-proscenium, audience-traversed formats, closer to the professional contexts of theme parks, immersive experiences, and site-specific productions than the stage management-led workflows most theatrical design students train within in the Drama School season. The second was to require students to build a fully automated show control system, one triggered by audience interaction or a running timeline rather than a human operator, so that once the show was launched it ran without intervention. Together these goals pushed students to design for conditions of uncertainty, in which the audience's movement and behavior, rather than a rehearsed sequence, shaped the experience.
The syllabus (link) structured the semester in four modules: concept and design, technical implementation, production and assembly, and execution. This arc mirrored a professional production timeline, moving students from narrative worldbuilding and site analysis through show networking, sensor integration, and QLab programming, toward a fully realized final performance open to an outside audience. Grading emphasized process over product, with weekly self-evaluations forming the backbone of assessment, reflecting the course's investment in collaborative practice and individual accountability within a group project.
The first lecture (link), “Smoke and Mirrors: Phantasmagorias, Theatrical Horror Experiences and Why We Love Them”, established the intellectual and historical frame for the course. It traced the origins of projection-based horror entertainment from the magic lantern shows of the 17th century through the elaborate phantasmagoria performances of Étienne-Gaspard Robertson, who in the 1790s designed immersive horror experiences in an abandoned Parisian monastery using mobile lanterns on rails, projections on smoke, rear projection, layered mechanical slides, and a live glass harmonica score. The lecture then moved through Japanese Obake Yashiki traditions, the Disney Haunted Mansion, and contemporary haunted attraction design, before turning to the neuroscience and sociology of fear as a designed experience. The session closed with an introduction to common scare tactics as design tools, including misdirection, environmental distortion, rhythm and startle, framing the rest of the semester's work as a practice with both a deep history and a legible craft vocabulary.