Wonderland was self-financed, self-produced, and built from nothing. No client, no safety net, no existing venue. Just a raw industrial space, a vision, and the conviction that Detroit deserved something it had never seen before.
Co-created, co-written, co-directed, and co-produced with Casey Miller, Wonderland brought together circus performers, burlesque artists, aerialists, contact jugglers, flesh suspension artists, break dancers, and a 10-piece live orchestra performing a fully custom-scored original composition. The entire theater was built from scratch inside the warehouse, including staging, lighting, sound, bar, modular scenic elements, and a custom live video projection system.
The cast was made up of performers, not actors. Rather than force them into a format that did not fit, we designed around it. The orchestra performed on a riser at the side of the stage alongside a small ensemble of voice performers working from scripts at music stands, lit from above in a single shaft of light. They delivered all the dialogue and narration as a live radio play while the performers onstage pantomimed the story. The result felt like a 1930s radio broadcast fused with a live variety show wrapped inside a theatrical narrative, an atmosphere that could not have existed any other way.
The original score was composed collaboratively by Drew Bardo and bandleader Rabia Latif, who assembled and directed the full orchestra.
Wonderland sold out. It was then revived by demand.
It remains one of the clearest examples of what happens when production design and creative direction operate as a single integrated system rather than two separate jobs.
