The Listening
An intimate supernatural theatrical experience combining immersive audio, live performance, original music, lighting, and storytelling for audiences of just 30 guests per performance.
The Listening transformed the AKS Immersive fiction podcast DRAMA: An Aural Experience into an intimate live theatrical event. Conceived and directed by Aaron Salazar, the limited 2026 New York engagement combined live performance, immersive sound, original music, lighting, and supernatural storytelling for audiences of just 30 guests per performance.
Sam Doty served as Lighting Designer, working at an unusually intimate scale where subtle changes in light could directly affect what audiences saw, where they looked, and how they experienced the story unfolding around them. His design worked in close relationship with the production’s sonic environment, using darkness, focus, atmosphere, and carefully controlled reveals to move the audience between reality and the unexplained.
Executive Producer: AKS Immersive & Aaron Salazar
Director/Conceiver: Aaron Salazar
Book: Jeffrey James Keyes & Aaron Salazar
Creative Producers: Matthew Solomon & Kate McLeod
Producer/Production Lead: Tony Mayes
Original Score: Manuel Pelayo & Giancarlo Bonfanti
Lighting Designer: Samuel Doty
Costume Designer: Matthew Solomon
Marketing: Madeline Corcoran & AKS Immersive
Sam’s Role:
* Lighting Designer
