MAP IT
Uncover the Nation's Story: An Immersive Journey with Rorschach Theatre
Delve into the ghosts, divinations, and delusions of a country on its milestone anniversary and revive long dead Americans whose presence continues to vibrate through our Capital City.
Explore the physical and psychological landscape that defines a nation in the Rorschach Theatre’s immersive, self-guided experience. Each month, participants will receive a map and instructions to travel to a curated location in the Gallery Place/Chinatown Neighborhood. They’ll also receive a box of artifacts to engage all five senses while exploring each site with story elements such as letters, music, souvenirs or photos. Each monthly box reveals a new location and a new chapter in the ongoing story.
What is PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIES?
More than a thousand DC-Area audiences joined us for Rorschach’s first five Psychogeographies projects, described by the The Washington Post: “[a] season-long immersive experience, [the project] sends audiences on monthly excursions to lesser-traveled Washington-area sites, where landscapes — together with the contents of curated mailed packages — help conjure a mysterious overarching story that is partly set in those locations.”
DC Metro Theatre Arts said about the project, “Rorschach Theatre’s current production is…an adventure of the mind and, if you wish, the body… The innovative form of art incorporates literature, music, mystery, romance, and DC’s highlights and history, all steeped in a hope for a better world.”
“Psychogeography” is a term coined by philosopher Guy Debord in the 1950s and refers to the intersection of psychology and geography. Our own psychological experiences of a city reveal hidden places – forgotten, discarded, or marginalized aspects of an urban environment. Locations have a history, a soul, a meaning beyond the dirt and bricks that surround it. These meanings range from the historical to the aesthetic to the personal, but all of these things give the space its resonance.
