Theater of the Mind — Reid Murdoch

Immersive theater is the basic thing here, but this one is trying to do something more specific. “Theater of the Mind” isn’t just a walk-through art piece or a conventional play with seats removed. It’s a 75-minute, small-group experience inside the Reid Murdoch Building in downtown Chicago, where audiences move through a 15,000-square-foot installation built around perception, memory, and identity. The Chicago run is being presented by Goodman Theatre, and it’s running now through July 12, 2026. (choosechicago.com) ### What is this, exactly? It’s a guided theatrical journey co-created by David Byrne and writer Mala Gaonkar, then directed by Andrew Scoville. The setup is simple on paper: you follow a Guide through a sequence of rooms and take part in sensory experiments and story beats that are meant to make you question what your brain is doing for you — and to you. But the point is not just to watch. The audience is part of the machinery. (choosechi([choosechicago.com)he Reid Murdoch Building? Because the space is doing real work. This isn’t being staged in a normal theater house. It’s in the Reid Murdoch Building at 333 N. LaSalle, and the production uses that offbeat, repurposed footprint to make the whole thing feel less like “a show” and more like entering a constructed mental environment. That matters for immersive work — the building helps sell the illusion before the first trick lands. (([choosechicago.com)### What makes it different from other immersive shows? The neuroscience angle. Byrne and Gaonkar built the piece around the idea that our senses feel reliable right up until they don’t. So the experience leans on experiments, distortions, and guided interactions that show how easily memory can shift and how unstable perception really is. Basically, it’s theater using the logic of a brain teaser — except you’re inside it. (theaterofthemind([choosechicago.com) actually in it? No — and that’s worth being clear about, because his name is the first thing many people will notice. He co-created the work, and the project carries his sensibility, but he is not performing in the Chicago production. The people at the center are your Guide, the cast around you, and the audience group itself. (theaterofthemindchicago.com) ### How intimate is “imm(theaterofthemindchicago.com) of this footprint, and it changes the feel completely. Instead of disappearing into a crowd, you’re close enough that your own reactions become part of the event. The catch is that intimacy also makes tickets more finite than a normal theater run — there are multiple experiences per day, but each slot is still small. (choosechicago.com)s really theater, or more like an installation? Turns out the answer is both. The official framing calls it a theatrical experience, but the structure borrows from installation art, sensory design, and participatory performance. Reviews out of the Chicago run describe it as trippy and hard to slot into a standard category, which is probably the point. It wants the emotional shape of theater and the physical logic of an exhibit you move through. (chicago.suntimes.com) ### Who is it for? People who like theater that messes with form, obviously, but also people who are curious about how the brain can be nudged, fooled, and redirected. It’s recommended for ages 10 and up, which tells you the producers want it to be accessible, not forbiddingly abstract. Still, this is not a sit-back-and-let-it-happen kind of night. (goodmantheatre.org)ce with major-name creators, a downtown landmark setting, and a concept sturdy enough to justify the immersive format. That’s the pitch here — not spectacle for its own sake, but a carefully staged argument that your mind is a less trustworthy narrator than you think. (choosechicago.com)