Room Escape Artist

“Puzzles, props, plastic, politics, and prose.”

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Date Played: June 29, 2025

Team Size: 10 tickets per time slot

Duration: 45 minutes

Price: $10 each during the Hollywood Fringe Festival ($23.18 each for the August 2025 run)

Ticketing: Public

REA Reaction

Escape! The Great Specific Garbage Catch was an interactive stage show that explored environmental issues at an intimate scale. Created by two students and escape room employees, writer Tyler Neufeld and producer Ghino Lee, the show invited us to ponder the cycle of waste and our role within it.

After some earlier workshop performances, Escape! The Great Specific Garbage Catch evolved into its current form as an immersive theater piece punctuated by a handful of escape room puzzles. The puzzles weren’t a highlight of the show in their own right, but served to breach the barrier between the audience and the performance. 

The show took place on a simple handcrafted set made with repurposed trash. The bare-bones cardboard and plastic scenery was charming, and required us to use our imaginations to transport ourselves to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch alongside the protagonist.

The show itself was as patchwork as the set, cobbling together statistics, references, philosophizing, thought experiments, and fourth-wall-breaking monologues that periodically reminded us that we were watching a performance. We left without one clear message, but with a lot to think about.

The Hollywood Fringe Festival production is over, but Escape! The Great Specific Garbage Catch will be extended for four more performances in August 2025. If you’re in Los Angeles and you’re interested in examining your relationship with garbage through a scrappy indie theater production, now’s your chance to get a ticket.

Who is this for?

• Environmentalists
• Fans of immersive theater
• Any experience level

Why play?

• Varied approach to storytelling
• DIY vibes
• To think about our place in the world

Story

A mysterious climate activist was camped out on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and we were there to witness and participate in her sit-in as it unfolded.

Setting

The set was constructed from cardboard, plastic bags, and other repurposed materials. It was intentionally DIY and designed to put the focus on trash. With the help of a little theater magic, we could use our imaginations to picture the small stage as a little island of plastic floating in the ocean.

Gameplay

Escape! The Great Specific Garbage Catch was an immersive theater production with various interactions including a handful of relatively easy puzzles.

Core gameplay revolved around observation, cooperation, making connections, and watching the performance.

Analysis

➕ The props and set pieces were clearly constructed with care, thought, and effort. Details like the plastic shimmer of ocean waves and the cardboard puppet theater made the production feel more personal.

➕ The somewhat abstract set and story paired well with the subject matter. The roughness of the scenery and script also made any mistakes less obvious.

➕/➖ The circular structure of the show cleverly paralleled the life cycle of the objects we consume and discard. This created a narrative harmony, even when some recurring beats got repetitive.

➖ Speaking of circles, the layout of the audience seating felt intimate, but also prevented us from being able to see everything from every seat.

➕/➖ The interactions were fairly basic and didn’t offer much new for the puzzling crowd. The puzzles and tasks made us feel more present and involved with the experience, but they could’ve been more strongly tied into the story and the action on the stage.

➕/❓At times the show made us uncomfortable, for example by emphasizing the enormity of the climate crisis with dire imagery and suggesting we could do more to solve the trash problem. This angle seemed intentionally provocative, and it did indeed evoke empathy and help us grasp the creators’ point of view.

Tips For Visiting

• The August 2025 run of Escape! The Great Specific Garbage Catch will take place at 1919 3rd Avenue, the same building as Hatch Escapes.

Book your hour with Dorm Scapes & fear our invasion’s Escape! The Great Specific Garbage Catch, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.