Master Class 2024
Curriculum
Master Class Fellows will join a cohort of international cross-disciplinary artists in May 2024 for a dynamic and energetic week of learning, playing and designing.
Nestled in the magical Haute-Saône region of France, Fellows will join Odyssey Works Director Ayden LeRoux and Associate Director Sophie Larsmon for one week to learn our secrets from two decades of designing experiences for one-person audiences.
Together, we will collaborate to make a once-in-a-lifetime Odyssey for one chosen individual.
We will hit the ground running. We will present concepts of empathetic design, teach methods for making diagrams, and practice creating spaces of intimacy and curiosity. Each fellow will be selected for their particular expertise, and we will work across disciplines to create a transformative experience that is site specific. Days will be spent researching our chosen participant, collaborating in the development of particular moments for them, and learning the Odyssey Works approach to experience design. Each fellow will return home seeing their personal, professional, and creative lives through a new lens.
Be prepared to spend the week deeply immersed in creative research, design, and production. We will be in a remarkable place, and the project we complete together will be demanding. We will live, eat, and work together full-time for the week.
To learn about the work of the 2022 Fellows in Portugal, check out The Road to TAZ.
Watch this video to learn more about how we make Odysseys with a cohort of Master Class Fellows. Video by Michelle Calabro.
Applications open:
1 December 2023
Deadline for Applications:
15 January 2024
Dates of Master Class:
May 20 - May 27, 2024
Location of Master Class: Vesoul, France
2024
Meet the 2024 Master Class Fellows
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Maggi (she/her) is a dancer, dance teacher, choreographer from Norway with a BA in dance and pedagogy. She also has an MA in fine arts where she focused on immersive performances that focused on the poetics of space and movements.
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Mira (she/her) is an Innovation Instigator and Learning Experience Catalyst at the University of Maryland, where she teaches how to build at low resolution, collaborate radically, let go of being experts and lean on others, and most of all, talk to each other in meaningful ways. In addition to teaching, she designs artifacts to communicate concepts and tools; partners with groups across campus to design new classes, curriculum, and workshops; and prototypes new ways to weave innovation into the cultural thread of the institutions she works in.
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Chris (he/him) is an architect, experience designer and design strategist with a background in designing places for performance in real and virtual worlds. He organises Long Now London and teaches design at a couple of universities and feels self-conscious when writing about himself in the third person. :-)
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Abbygaelle (she/her) is a jack-of-all-trades who spent most of her adult life travelling and doing odd jobs here and there, a fascination for the theatrical and for emergent rituals has followed her throughout. She has spent the last year helping in the first steps of an intentional community and cognitive science research center near Lisbon, Portugal, where she has made her first steps in designing immersive theatre events.
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Lina (she/her) is a passionate driven designer, who stopped midway through a business career to pursue an inspiration, and turned it into a profession. Designing projects geared to facilitate inner transformation by evoking audience thoughts and feelings in experiential exhibitions, rides and immersive theatre.
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As an artist, Brian Rush (he/him) is mostly known for his “relational prosthetics,” objects that invite (usually awkward) encounters between two or more people. When he’s not working as a product designer in Portland, Oregon, these days he’s reimagining interpersonal engagement through pranks, hug rugs, cozy sci-fi, and experimental massage.
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James Lopez (he/him) is a magician and minimalist immersive creator based in Denver, Colorado. James is the founder of The Exposure Project, an immersive theater company that explores minimalistic immersive experiences through magic, storytelling, technology, and sensorial experiences.
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Anna (she/her) is a creative producer, experience designer and artist based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. With a particular interest in site-responsive work. She has engaged audiences in chemical laboratory buildings, bathtubs in bookstores, community halls in regional towns, disused warehouses, libraries, theatres and galleries.
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Amy Segreti (she/her) is a relational experience designer, writer and intimacy ceremonialist who focuses on connective, embodied, small-scale encounters. Through the weaving of guided itineraries, sensory exploration, skillful communication, and openness to the unknown, Amy helps people access new levels of intimacy and inner knowing. She comes from a background as a print journalist, group facilitator, and sex educator.
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Casey Selden (she/her) is a San Franciscan, an intentional community builder, and an unconventional educator who leverages unique environments to disrupt expectations and spark curiosity. She specializes in instigating social and emotional growth by shaping interpersonal dynamics and designing challenges that nurture self-confidence and compassion.
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Alex (he/him) is an experience designer, foodie, gardener, and all-in-all creative project lover who lives in the Hudson Valley. He has consulted on experience design projects with Google, Meow Wolf, and NASA. He also runs an annual creative residency in Italy called Residenza Lago Scuro, that focuses on regeneration, sustainability, and the magic that can happen when creative minds come together in a nourishing space.
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Sarah (she/her) is an educator, community builder and learning experience designer based in the Netherlands. She designs and implements learning philosophy and pedagogy for K-12 international schools, and is currently studying for a doctorate in education policy and practice.
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Kristen (they/them) is an experience designer who creates emotionally evocative, narrative-based experiences that connect and shift people’s perspectives of themselves and their world. Their work is deeply inspired by the concept of einfülung, the emotional knowing of a work of art from within, and they apply that ethos to inspire empathy and transformation in audiences.
Accommodation
The Odyssey Works Master Class 2024 will be held at a charming French Farm nestled in the middle of a protected nature reserve in Haute-Saône. Located between the Vosges Massif in the North and the Jura Mountains in the South, the Farm is a magical place in the midst of nature, full of inspiration and creativity. We will share meals together each day and cook collaboratively using local produce.
Travel
The Master Class will be held Monday, May 20th thru Monday May 27th, 2024. You will be responsible for your own airfare or transportation. Vesoul is 150 km west of Basel (Switzerland) and we can arrange transport from Basel. Alternately, Vesoul also has a SNCF train station with a direct connection to Paris.
Tuition:
$3500 plus Room and BoardRoom + Board:
$900, including all meals and housing
(please note, all rooms are shared)A number of need-based partial scholarships will be available.
We are incredibly aware of the widening economic gaps around the world. It is our goal to make this Master Class as accessible as possible. On average, 75% of our students receive some support via our scholarship programs. Additionally, there will be two work study positions available. One is a Production Assistant and the other is a Meal Coordinator. Work study fellows pay a flat fee for room + board. 
It is no understatement to say that things would not be the same if Odyssey Works did not exist… if you’ve been to a fair amount of experiential theatre in the past twenty years, odds are you have been touched by their methods.
Noah Nelson, No Proscenium