Windy City Playhouse’s 2018-2019 production of Southern Gothic was not the first and not the only immersive theater production in town, but it is among the first to achieve a sustained high profile and perhaps the longest run at some 22 months. It earned Jeff Awards for its director, David Bell, scenic designer, Scott Davis, and properties designer, Eleanor Kahn. Its success helped put the then-five-year-old theater firmly on the map, and drew the attention of a wider audience to this form of theater loosely termed “immersive.”

It took some trial and error for Windy City Playhouse to arrive at their own form of immersive theater.

Then, by the time we got to our third show, Things You Shouldn’t Say Past Midnight [by Peter Ackerman], we said, “OK, we’re not doing what we set out to do.” This play was about three couples in three different bedrooms, so we said, “Well, this is our chance.” We stuck a bedroom over there, a bedroom over there, and a bedroom in the middle, and the audience was everywhere in between. They sat in chairs that swivel so they could turn to the scene and were able to get involved in a different way. But the audience’s focus was still on one thing at a time. So at that point, I went to see immersive theater everywhere I could find it. I saw a lot in New York and other cities, too. Some of my favorites were Fuerza Bruta, De La Guarda, Then She Fell, and Sleep No More.

CARL MENNINGER (associate artistic director, Windy City Playhouse): Then we had to figure out how these stories wove into each other, how they overlapped and how they could happen simultaneously. We felt a little out of our league, to be honest, but we knew that if we just kept forging ahead with this concept in mind, we would get there.

THE FIRST REHEARSAL

JACOBY: I found myself doing the very thing that our audiences ended up doing. I started out one place, and then I found myself, like: Uh, wait a second, something louder and more dramatic is happening in the other room. And I moved over there.

1/29-4/19: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3:30 and 8 PM, Sun 1:30 and 6 PM, Windy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving Park, 773-891-8985, windycityplayhouse.com, $75-$95.