Hound of The Baskervilles - Lobby Experience
An interactive pre-show environment that blurs spectator and sleuth, extending The Hound of the Baskervilles into the lobby and positioning guests inside the unfolding investigation.
“If you’re looking for a silly escape from the troubles of the real world, delivered with comic panache, you’re barking up the right tree with ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles. m”
– Orlando Sentinel
Role, Scope, and Responsibilities
Design Lead and Experience Strategist
- Budgeting, procurement, fabrication, install & strike
Multidisciplinary team coordination
Production budget management
Fabrication
Full lobby transformation (design > install > strike)
Two-week install under live-theater constraints
I led the experiential and spatial direction of the project, defining the thematic spine, guiding major design decisions, and serving as the primary voice in stakeholder meetings. From concept through installation, I protected the narrative integrity of the experience, coordinated budgeting and procurement efforts, and exercised on-site creative authority to adapt the design in real time under operational constraints.
Statement of purpose:
The Hound of the Baskervilles lobby experience positioned guests inside the investigation before the curtain ever rose. Extending the production’s fast-paced, meta-theatrical comedy into the lobby, the environment embraced theatrical illusion, absurdity, and controlled chaos.
Rather than fully recreating Victorian realism, the design intentionally “deconstructed” immersion, fragmenting space, exposing artifice, and inviting guests to fill in the blanks. As the story wrestles with good and evil, logic and fear, control and unpredictability, the lobby mirrored that tension through playful spatial disruption and participatory mystery.
Deconstructed — Illusion suggested rather than completed; space intentionally fragmented
Participatory — Guests positioned as detectives within the unfolding narrative
Meta-Theatrical — Artifice revealed; humor rooted in exposed mechanics and subverted expectations
Absurd and Physical — Slapstick, transformation, and exaggerated theatricality
Controlled Chaos — A playful tension between logic and disorder
Narrative Framework
Every design decision was guided by a central premise:
What would the theater intentionally stage to prepare guests for the world of the play?
Rather than creating a seamless immersive environment, the lobby functioned as a constructed set, an overt theatrical apparatus designed to ready the audience for the comedic logic of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Spaces were suggested rather than completed. Scenic fragments, exaggerated transitions, and playful environmental cues signaled that guests were not entering Victorian realism; they were stepping into a performance already in motion.
This framework mirrored the production’s self-aware humor and meta-theatrical structure. The experience did not attempt to conceal artifice. It embraced it. Guests moved through the train, the moor, and Baskerville Hall as if passing through scenic rehearsals, learning the rules of the world and letting guests play in it before the curtain rose.
By treating the lobby as a set, not a simulation, the design aligned with the show’s comedic mechanics while positioning the audience as active participants in the theatrical illusion.
Initial Concept sketches
Key Story Moments
