Stephen Shelley brings immersive theater to the High Country

By Nathan Ham nathan.ham@ashepostandtimes.com

Shelley was an all-conference and all-region golfer at Beaver Creek and played basketball under legendary head coach Marc Payne. It was also during his high school life that he built a passion for theatrical experience.

“The summer of 1990 I was in ‘The King and I’ and we did that at the Beaver Creek gym. That was really fun. Then in consecutive summers after that I was in plays with the Ashe County Little Theatre. I went to college at UNC-Chapel Hill but came up here to be in some performances at the old West Jefferson gym. Those were my first experiences on stage and I really fell in love with it,” Shelley said.

Shelley graduated from UNC with a degree in dramatic art and then moved to New York in 1994. That was when he got to experience a much larger performance scene than what North Carolina had to offer.

“One of the main things I did was that I worked for a leading modern dance company for years. I traveled and toured the world, managed the company on the road and went to every continent basically. It was a real exposure for me to art on a big scale,” Shelley explained.

This was also the first time that Shelley got to experience the concept of immersive theater.

“Basically with immersive theater, the audience members are in the world itself. They are not necessarily interacting with the actors, sometimes they are and sometimes they are not. A great example of an immersive theater experience would a haunted house. It’s a great example of going into a world where things are happening around you,” Shelley said.

After traveling the world and spending over 20 years in New York City, Shelley moved back to the area about two years ago as his mother was dealing with changes to her health. This fall, Shelley decided to bring immersive theater to the High Country with “Portal” that takes people on a journey through different parts of downtown Boone.

“What we did was create a world within the world of Boone. Essentially it is a moving treasure hunt through Boone. You are looking for a hidden artifact that this local professor that is fascinated with antiquities believes was stolen years ago from a famous collection in Baltimore that is going to resurface in the Boone area. He needs help from people to locate and identify this item,” Shelley said.

Participants get clues as to where the artifact is and there will be characters and actors that come into their paths that will give hints to where the artifact is. It is up to each person whether they want to trust the hints that they are given from each character.

“Those that discover the artifact unlock a whole new experience with characters. There is a lot of magic and mystery involved. It’s sort of like a choose-your-own-adventure type thing,” Shelley said.

This weekend is the final week for Portal in downtown Boone. Tickets can be purchased online at https://www.portalexperience.live/.