Lifestyle
Las Vegas' new must-see show plays with animation, dance and what it means to be human
There are multiple dance duets in “Particle Ink: House of Shattered Prisms,” a mixed-media theatrical production that debuted last month on the Las Vegas Strip. They are highly acrobatic and borderline risqué — this is Vegas, after all — and they are also feats of wonder, for the dance partner is not another human but an animated character.
Particle is his name, and he’s a glowing white figure with a circular head and a rectangular body, a mix of simple shapes that can convey an array of human emotions via elastic, exaggerated movements. Animation, rooted in imagination, has long had the power to amplify human feelings and heighten reality. But in “Particle Ink,” animation enters our reality, as Particle, for instance, leaps from wall to pillow, dashes across a bed curtain and even cries into a physical bucket.
“I wish I was 3-D,” Particle scrawls at one point on the wall, but the show makes us believe that he is vaulting among us. Look into a mirror, and Particle sits and walks atop our heads, becoming essentially a virtual animated pet. At one point, a dancer contorts herself as she carries Particle, tucked in a birdcage, across a room. Actors appear to hold Particle’s hand, and Particle even does battle with metaphorical demons, his projected body bounding across a room and swirling in and out of a toilet bowl.
Animation, with “Particle Ink,” has entered its live-theater era. It’s doing so via an exploration-focused production, meaning guests wander from room to room following actors as the acts unfold — or, in the case of “Particle Ink,” guests may be trailing animated figures or a puppet.
Think of it, then, as a sort of next-generation “Sleep No More,” New York’s long-running immersive production that is set to close this year. Only here, the theme is an original fairy tale rather than “Macbeth,” one where animation and augmented reality tools are used to explore our inner world, bringing it to life on walls, floors and furnishings with whimsical, highly active drawings that appear born of light.
Created by an enigmatic three-person creative team known as the LightPoets, a group with roots in Las Vegas, “Particle Ink” dates to 2017, when a proof-of-concept installation was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. It caught the attention of entertainment industry vets Jennifer Tuft and Cassandra Rosenthal, who, with their mixed-reality company Kaleidoco, have been working to bring “Particle Ink” to life. The show had a brief run in 2022 in downtown Las Vegas, but pre-pandemic it was planned for New York, where Kaleidoco once had a 10-year lease on a five-story Manhattan building targeted for the show.
The character of Lilith (Dani Maloney) shares a dance with animated Particle on a bed in “Particle Ink: House of Shattered Prisms,” a new immersive show in Las Vegas.
(Particle Ink)
“We went big,” Tuft says, noting the group was about six weeks from loading when the COVID-19 lockdown began and altered the “Particle Ink” plans. Most of the initial costs proved to be recoupable or able to be redirected to a different space. “Particle Ink” now is committed to the Luxor Hotel & Casino for at least four years, residing in what used to be the hotel’s wedding chapel.
The inward-looking fantasy is set in multiple black-box rooms with minimalist furnishings — a communal, ritualistic hub, a library, a bathroom, a bedroom and a mini forest among them. The dancing is rigorous, with performers often seeming to be wrestling with themselves as they do battle with sometimes hidden (and sometimes not) existential demons. Fast-moving digital artwork comes alive on walls, much of it drawn via a wand, by a nameless artist, portrayed by Elenah Claudin, who serves as the show’s protagonist.
His rainbow-colored creations spring from a chest, and in one moment he turns a couch into a piano and in another sketches out a mystical horse and appears to gallop through his invented world. The images split the difference between something childlike and fanciful street art. Strategic use of projections among the sets allows the animation to appear tangible.
This merging of tech and animation into a believable landscape — what the LightPoets refer to as the “2.5 dimension” — is the triumph of “Particle Ink.” But it’s not the show’s heart. This is ultimately a story about loss, and searching to regain one’s footing after extreme grief. A black-lighted scribble on the wall in the show’s lobby spells it out: “Some of us are dead,” alluding to characters in the show that may live on only as memories or creative visions.
“It’s about everything from childhood wonderment to grief and loss, to really accepting yourself,” Tuft says. “It’s about striking a balance about reaching within and understanding oneself. These are concepts that don’t necessarily lend themselves to what people generally consider ‘Las Vegas entertainment.’”
Times Game Critic Todd Martens interacts with the animated character of Particle in the new Las Vegas immersive show “Particle Ink: House of Shattered Prisms.”
(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)
And yet here it is, complete with nods to mysticism, as well as tarot and oracle art. “Particle Ink” ultimately strives to tell a personal narrative about the journey to regain one’s creativity, relying primarily on movement and animation to do so. There is little dialogue outside a wandering puppet, a sort of wise man who can exist between worlds (or fill in narrative gaps for those who choose to focus on one of the show’s touchscreen-like walls and handful of augmented reality devices that further the adventures of Particle and his pals).
“Particle Ink” is a story of heartbreak. It follows the artist, his partner, Lilith (Dani Maloney), and the world he conjures. It pulls from age-old tales of light and dark, and how our minds are factories of fascination but also places of imprisonment. It also wants to remix the theatrical experience, as it not only heavily relies on technology but also takes influences from the world of gaming. A projection of a sword being drawn emerges on a wall, and then it becomes a prop for a battle scene. Its narrative too is quest-based, a journey for Particle to recover pieces of his creator’s shattered heart.
Animation comes alive via light and projections in “Particle Ink: House of Shattered Prisms,” a show that explores how an artist (Elenah Claudin) harnesses the power of creativity in overcoming grief and heartbreak.
(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)
Jo Cattell, a Chicago-based theater director and one third of the LightPoets, sometimes even intermingles the word “player” and “audience member,” noting that immersive theater only works if attendees quickly understand the rule-set of the creative work. While there’s no real onboarding in “Particle Ink,” the first scene builds to a communal ritual centered around light-gathering stones, one that allows our distressed artist to briefly tap into his creativity only to quickly lose it again. Particle, then, prods the audience on a journey of recovering his splintered heart.
I saw “Particle Ink” twice, the first night focusing heavily on interacting with the animation. Throughout the theatrical space are tablets that are reconfigured to look and feel like magic mirrors, further glimpses into the so-called 2.5 dimension. The second night, however, I decided to zero in on the narrative, and found both charm and anguish in the way Particle strives to heal his creator’s broken heart — Particle’s tiny size, playful nature and purposefully hand-drawn feel created a sense of fragility. Grief can be a stubborn place, but I felt moved in the way “Particle Ink” used creative tools — painting, creating and animation — to show how what we lose continues to live with us.
Thinking about the future of theater, Cattell wonders about today’s younger generations weaned on smartphones and games. While she says this isn’t a LightPoets thesis, she’s eager to experiment with ways to make theater a more active experience. The tradeoff is that the experience is less controlled, but those who go along for the ride can home in on certain characters or emotions. In theory, it creates a more personal show.
“I don’t want to call it a playground because I think that has connotations,” Cattell says. “But we definitely want people to play and create and have fun and enjoy, but at the same time watch something that might move them. Depending on who they are, or what moment of their life they’re in, it might break their heart.”
‘Particle Ink: House of Shattered Prisms’
Manifestations of grief and inner turmoil here emerge as giant characters outfitted as ink blots. The metaphor isn’t terribly difficult to uncover: With depression, and a loss of purpose, life is depleted of color. But it’s how the story is told that matters, and with a mix of animation and highly athletic dance, “Particle Ink” is 75 minutes of unexpected theatrical interactions. Cattell, for instance, estimates that there are about 10 hours of original animation, and creating a show in which performers would be interacting with walls and objects was a challenge.
“When you go to theater school, you don’t get taught to play with the walls,” Cattell says. “It’s been interesting coming from a theatrical background. We’re going to break rules. We’re breaking rules in storytelling, in genre and format. But there’s a reason those rules exist. How do we still make sure the performer is connecting with the audience when the performer is now turning away from the audience?”
The solution: Find a way for those wall-bound animated characters to break free. And then let them dance.
Jane Austen ready to party for her 250th birthday at the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual General Meeting in Baltimore.
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In her six completed novels, Jane Austen excelled at love stories: Elinor and Edward, Lizzie and Darcy, Fanny and Edmund, Emma and Knightley, Anne and Wentworth, heck even Catherine and Tilney. As her fans celebrate the 250th anniversary of her birth, they’d like you to know it’s a mistake to simply dismiss her work as light, frothy romances. It’s full of intricate plots, class satire and biting wit, along with all the timeless drama of human foibles, frailties and resolve.
Tessa Harings (left) learns English country dance at the Jane Austen Society of North America’s 2025 Annual General Meeting
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“The basic reason why Austen is still popular today is because all of her characters are people we know in the world,” says Tessa Harings. She’s a high school teacher from Phoenix and one of the more than 900 attendees at the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual General Meeting, held in Baltimore this year. “We all know of someone who’s shy and aloof and needs to be brought into the crowd. We all know someone who’s quite witty, naturally. We all know someone who is a bit silly and always looking for attention.”
Colin Firth, properly memed from the 1995 BBC miniseries. His Darcy is a big favorite with the JASNA crowd.
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Shy and aloof? That could be Darcy. Naturally witty? Lizzie Bennet. Silly and looking for attention? Take your pick: baby sister Lydia or maybe the haughty Caroline Bingley or the unctuous Mr. Collins, all creations from what might be Austen’s most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice.
Her characters have permeated modern pop culture, even among people who’ve never opened her books. Harings says that’s one reason her students want to read these Regency-era novels. They want to understand the jokes in all those short videos and memes, like Mr. Collins making awkward dinner conversation.
He wants a wife, he compliments the potatoes. In Mr. Collin’s head, it makes sense.
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Her students enjoy the tension between Darcy and Lizzie: he’s very rich, so besotted by her against his will that he can hardly dance, glower and talk at the same time. Lizzie initially cannot stand him and refuses his first proposal, as shown in this soggy scene from the 2005 movie adaptation.
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Harings says Lizzie is her favorite Austen character. “She has such sharp, sarcastic wit and she’s so self-confident, despite the fact that she’s constantly being put down by the people around her for her supposedly lower position in life as the slightly less pretty of the mother’s two oldest daughters.”
Milliner Dannielle Perry (right) and her assistant Mia Berg of Timely Tresses in their Regency-era togs.
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“When I was a teenager, I loved Lizzie and I wanted to be Lizzie,” says milliner Dannielle Perry of Oxford, N.C. She’s read and reread all of Jane Austen’s books and she loves how they change for her as she’s gotten older. She’s now more sympathetic toward Mrs. Bennet, Lizzie’s mom: a woman desperate to get her five daughters married, least they be penniless since they can’t inherit their father’s estate. “I feel sorry for her in a way I never did before,” Perry says. “She is sort of silly, but she’s lived with a man for 20 years who largely dismisses her and thinks she’s frivolous.”
Doctoral student Katie Yu, of Dallas, has this analysis of Mrs. Bennett and her husband, who seems mentally checked-out at best: “He’s not a great father. He’s always putting his wife down in front of his daughters, he’s putting his daughters down in front of his daughters.” Yu says Mr. Bennet married Mrs. Bennet because she was pretty, treats her as an inferior, and often ignores her. This is why Mrs. Bennet goes on about her nerves and “has the vapors” whenever she’s stressed: she’s trying to get his attention.
“But,” says Tessa Harings, “she still has a level of street smarts that she has to get her daughters married. And yes, she’s sincerely concerned about their future … she actually, of the two of them, is the more concerned and involved parent.”
Tom Tumbusch explains 19th century dance moves to JASNA members.
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Dance instructor Tom Tumbusch, of Cincinnati, says men can learn a lot from Austen. “Modern men struggle to find good role models,” he says. “Reading Austen’s works can help them see the places where men can go wrong.” Mr. Bennet, for example. Or the libertine George Wickham who lies and runs off with the flighty Bennet sister, Lydia. Or maybe Willoughby from Sense and Sensibility, who leads Marianne Dashwood on, ghosts her and is later revealed to have abandoned an unmarried woman who gave birth to his child.
Oh, Marianne, he’s so not worth it!
On the other hand, Tumbusch says Jane Austen’s heroes can show men “how to be masculine in a constructive way,” like owning mistakes, taking responsibility and treating women with respect. It’s not just Darcy, who works behind the scenes getting Wickham to marry Lydia, it’s also Captain Wentworth from Persuasion. Tombusch says Wentworth does what men of his station should: he uses his own resources to help someone less fortunate, the poor, partially disabled widow Mrs. Smith. And in Sense and Sensibility, there’s the steadfast Col. Brandon. Hoping to make Willoughby’s rejection of Marianne less devastating to her, he exposes the libertine’s behavior. He rides hours to retrieve her mother when Marianne is near death. He patiently, oh-so-patiently, waits for her young, broken heart to mend.
All this while wearing a flannel waistcoat because he’s on the “wrong side of five and thirty” and needs to keep those ancient bones warm.
Before he rocked worlds as Snape, Alan Rickman made the earth move for viewers of the 1995 movie adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.
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JASNA president Mary Mintz, of McLean, Va., says though Jane Austen is largely known for her marriage plots, it’s really the human need for connection that grounds her stories. “She writes about the relationships between parents and children, between siblings or among siblings, she writes about relationships with friends. And she is really insightful. When you combine that with her knowledge of human psychology, it’s a great formula for success.”
Mintz is fascinated by Emma’s pivotal character, Miss Bates. She’s a spinster and member of the gentry class who lives with her elderly mother on an extremely limited income. She’s also a nervous chatterbox, “someone who can’t stop talking,” says Mintz. “I’ve known a lot of Misses Bates in my lifetime… people who seem insecure and feel as though they have to fill up silence, but are really good-hearted people.”
When Emma is rude to Miss Bates, she’s firmly chastised by her neighbor, Mr. Knightley. It becomes a turn-around moment in the story. Humbled, Emma apologizes. She also sees how she’s been wrong to meddle in the love life of Harriet Smith, a pretty teenager whose parents are unknown.
Mintz says there’s an interesting link between Bates and Harriet, if you put two and two together.
“In Jane Austen’s actual life, mothers and daughters often share the same name,” she explains. That pattern can be seen in many of her novels. “We don’t know who Harriet Smith’s natural mother is, but at one point Miss Bates is referred to as ‘Hetty,’ which could be a diminutive for ‘Harriet.’ “
That’s the first clue. The second clue occurs during that scene where Knightley sets Emma right. He says of Miss Bates, “she has sunk from the comforts she was born to.” He then draws a contrast between the spinster’s current station and her former one: “You, whom she had known from an infant, whom she had seen grow up from a period when her notice was an honour…”
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Emma’s father is quite wealthy, so why would Miss Bates’ notice have once been so esteemed? Mary Mintz asks, “Is because she had a child out of wedlock?”
And could that child be… Harriet Smith?
The mind: it boggles! A Jane Austen Easter egg! It’s just one example of how multi-dimensional her novels are and why so many people will continue loving, analyzing and discussing her work well into the next 250 years.
Jacob Fenston and Danny Hensel edited and produced this report.
Rob Reiner And Wife Michele
Throats Slit By Family Member
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Updated
Rob Reiner and his wife Michele had their throats slit by a family member, possibly after an argument inside their Los Angeles home, leading to their tragic deaths … TMZ has learned
It’s unclear what exactly triggered the violence, which went down Sunday afternoon in Brentwood … but we’re told one of Rob’s daughters found her parents dead and told police a family member had killed them. PEOPLE reports the couple’s son, Nick, is being questioned in connection with the murders.
Our sources also say the daughter told police the family member “should be a suspect” because they’re “dangerous.”
TMZ broke the story … Rob and Michele suffered lacerations consistent with knife wounds and LAPD’s Robbery Homicide Division is investigating the case.
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Dispatch audio captures a firefighter calling for backup to the Brentwood mansion around 3:30 PM … though it doesn’t provide any further information about the circumstances in the abode.
Rob was 78. Michele was 68.
Sunday Puzzle
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On-air challenge
I’m going to read you some sentences. Each sentence conceals the name of a major U.S. city in consecutive letters. As a hint, the answer’s state also appears in the sentence. Every answer has at least six letters. (Ex. The Kentucky bodybuilders will be flexing tonight. –> LEXINGTON)
1. Space enthusiasts in Oregon support landing on Mars.
2. Contact your insurance branch or agent in Alaska.
3. The Ohio company has a sale from today to next Sunday.
4. The Colorado trial ended in a sudden verdict.
5. Fans voted the Virginia tennis matches a peak experience.
6. I bought a shamrock for decorating my house in Illinois.
7. All the Connecticut things they knew have now changed.
8. Can you help a software developer in Texas?
Last week’s challenge
Last week’s challenge came from Mike Reiss, who’s a showrunner, writer, and producer for “The Simpsons.” Think of a famous living singer. The last two letters of his first name and the first two letters of his last name spell a bird. Change the first letter of the singer’s first name. Then the first three letters of that first name and the last five letters of his last name together spell another bird. What singer is this?
Challenge answer
Placido Domingo
Winner
Brock Hammill of Corvallis, Montana.
This week’s challenge
This week’s challenge comes from Robert Flood, of Allen, Texas. Name a famous female singer of the past (five letters in the first name, seven letters in the last name). Remove the last letter of her first name and you can rearrange all the remaining letters to name the capital of a country (six letters) and a food product that its nation is famous for (five letters).
If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Thursday, December 18 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.
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