Photo by Daoud Moon

(PHILADELPHIA, PA) -- Philadelphia-based and worker-owned Obvious Agency premieres its newest production, Space Opera, a "playable theater" and sci-fi/fantasy game for building empowered community. The groundbreaking interactive theatrical experience blending immersive role-playing, live performance, and collaborative storytelling debuts to audiences and participants Saturday, June 14 and continues on Saturday, June 21 and Saturday, June 28, 2025 at Arch Street Meeting House (320 Arch St, Philadelphia).

Obvious Agency is seeking players, gamers, and theater lovers to gather over three Saturdays and collaborate in an interactive story where the audiences, with the help of trained performer-facilitators, determine how the societies they create will survive, navigate, and dream amongst the stars. Space Opera is not just a show—it’s a living, evolving universe where participants play an active role in shaping the story and collaborate with game masters and performer/facilitators in a unique combination of gameplay and theatricality. Participants develop relationships with fellow players and performers as they join forces to determine the fate of the universe, which carries over into each weekend of play.

Drawing from traditions of both tabletop role-playing games and theater, Space Opera participants will craft the story of fictional societies attempting to survive an oncoming cataclysm over multiple days. The event uses Dungeons & Dragons-style dice rolls and audience role-playing, combined with facilitation tools inspired by the theatrical form Theatre of the Oppressed, to place participant creativity and collaboration at the forefront of the experience. Throughout Space Opera, a team of professional game masters, performers, and designers guide and amplify the audience's choices, making the story of their galaxy come to life, inspired by Adrienne Maree Brown’s writing in Emergent Strategy where “science fiction is simply a way to practice the future together.”

Photo by Daoud Moon

The result is a dynamic, ever-evolving narrative that changes with every performance, reflecting the unique imprint of each player group. The story is non-linear, meaning no two performances are the same. Decisions made in one session will ripple through the following weekends, creating an interconnected narrative across multiple performances. Players are encouraged to attend for all three weekends to see how their choices have shaped the world—or take on a new role entirely.

Performers improvise and react in real time to the participants’ choices, making each session a completely distinctive theatrical experience. The shows evolve through player interaction, making audience participation essential to its creative DNA. Technologists and digital artists will find Space Opera a compelling case study in game design-meets-theater.

Space Opera’s director and lead producer, Cat Ramirez (they/them) is an award-winning Philly-based theater Director and performance Producer specializing in new plays, devised work, multidisciplinary performance, and event production. They have worked with Theatre Horizon, Tiny Dynamite, Simpatico Theatre, Power Street Theatre Company, Temple University, Mel Hsu, Villanova University, Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival, Orbiter 3, InterAct Theatre Company, Lightning Rod Special, and Asian Arts Initiative. In addition to their work at Obvious Agency, they currently serve as the Creative Director for Philadelphia Asian Performing Artists, a Steering Committee Member of the Philadelphia Death and Arts Festival, and a board member of the Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation.

“Each performance builds off each preceding shows all created by the community of collaborators who exist in the world of Space Opera,” Ramirez said. “During each performance the players must collaboratively respond to crises that will affect generations to come, adding layer after layer of a story that they have created in real time through the relationships they have developed with the other participants and the performers. In doing so, they co-create the artistic experience.”

In addition to Ramirez, other members of Obvious Agency’s cooperative staff are Arianna Gass (they/she), Joseph Ahmed (he/they), and Daniel Park (he/him).

Photo by Daoud Moon

The Space Opera world premiere in June follows a series of playtests conducted over the last two years. Unlike a piece of theater that might undergo workshops or previews, Space Opera is an interactive game that requires frequent playtesting. The feedback from play testers help create a better, more accessible game.

Space Opera has openings for a total of 40 players and 100 observers for each session, which begin at noon and end at 7:00pm and includes a catered meal.

Obvious Agency’s interactive live performances blur the lines between audience and performer, theater and game. The cooperative partners with cultural institutions and universities to attract new audiences and create unique ways for their existing audience to engage more deeply in the work that they are already doing, and shares their wisdom on democratic practice across the arts ecosystem.

Past work by the Obvious Agency includes the Barnes Foundation-commissioned Barnes Jawn(t)s, a series of improvised jaunts through the Barnes Foundation collection guided by fascinating local personalities.

Other works include Game the Gallery, in which Moore College students and artists from Obvious Agency teamed up to transform the 2019 Faculty Triennial into an interactive gaming experience; The Diamond Eye Conspiracy, created on commission for Temple University Library’s Beyond the Page Festival by Drexel University Entrepreneurial Game Studio in collaboration with Daniel Park and Joseph Ahmed; and We Need To Talk, an awkward, hilarious, and deeply human improvised performance that could best be described as Dungeons & Dragons for relationships.

Serving as Space Opera’s Performer-Facilitators are Joseph Ahmed (he/they), Matthew Armstead (they/them), KC Legacion (they/them), Anthony Martinez-Briggs (they/them), Samantha Rise (they/them), and Jackie Soro (she/they). The Game Masters include Game Designer and Production Designer Dain Saint (he/they) and Game Designer Stage Manager Daniel Park (he/him).

Space Opera’s Stage Manager is Kel Fleming) (they/them). Space Opera’s additional Game Designers are Ari Gass (they/them); and John Bezark (John), who also serves as a Production Designer.

The production design team also includes Harbour Edney (they/he), Taj Rauch, (he/him), Doug Greene, (he/him), and Evelyn Langley (she/her).

Members of the Hospitality and Care Circle are Marisol Rosa-Shapiro (she/her), Karren Orrick (she/her), Uriah Bussey (they/them) and Vanessa Obueghi (she/her).

Tickets to participate in all three weeks of the Three Episode Saga of Space Opera are $360 with a minimum of $90, all on a sliding scale. It includes three full-day sessions of Space Opera gameplay and three catered meals; One Episode Experience tickets for a session are a minimum of $50 based on a sliding scale and includes one full-day session of Space Opera gameplay and a catered meal. Galactic Witness or Slot-based Observer tickets are a minimum of $15 based on a sliding scale. It includes entrance to Space Opera as an observer for two-hour sessions. Tickets are available for purchase online. All participants must be masked. Covid tests are provided.

Frequently asked questions and additional information, including an early notification ticketing form, is available at this link.

Obvious Agency will hold a final playtest for Space Opera Sunday, April 13, 1:00pm – 7:00pm at Arch Street Meeting House. This gameplay preview will be the last chance to experience Space Opera before players gather over three epic weekends in June to save the universe.

Photo by Marisol Rosa-Shapiro 

Obvious Agency creates interactive, experiential art that ranges from the personal, to the institutional, to the ridiculous. Blending theatrical and digital arts, they create spaces where participants can co-create their own experiences through first-hand exploration of the worlds they create. Always serious, always silly, Obvious Agency believes that by helping create and define culture, it can create systemic and interpersonal change. Obvious Agency starts from the assumption that people innately have both artistic impulses and the capacity to create art, and that art is enriched by both their impulses and capacities.

In Space Opera, Obvious Agency piloted a production “Circles Model” in which artistic and producorial staff work with each other in a non-hierarchical system inspired by “holacracy.” It is a decentralized organizational structure that gives everyone involved in the production, including performers, a direct say in the high-level decisions of the piece, all the way up to budget allocation and hiring decisions. Inherent in this imagining of new ways of being and creating is Obvious Agency’s governing and administrative structure. The company is a worker-owned cooperative grounded in anti-capitalist, anti-racist, non-normative, liberatory, and feminist frameworks. Obvious Agency’s work is collectively authored and owned.