Pittsburgh Fringe 2026
Doohickey!
Orange Steel Theatre Company
Genre: Devised, Immersive, Multimedia
Venue: Assemble
Festival: Pittsburgh Fringe
Low Down
Doohickey! is an immersive makerspace experience, where audience members are invited to join the intergalactic resistance group Caomei in their struggle against shadowy land developers whose greed is inflicting untold damage to the world. Audience members are dropped into the intergalactic universe aiding the resistance through the powers of creativity, community, and (of course) arts and crafts.
Founded in 2025, Orange Steel Theatre Company is a new ensemble-driven theatre company currently based in Pittsburgh. Through a highly collaborative, devised theatre practice, we seek to create unique theatrical experiences that help you squeeze the juice out of life.
Doohickey! is directed by Cam Webb, produced by Sophie McClung and Orange Steel Theatre, and devised in collaboration with Amari Shakir, Audrey Klein, CG Squire, Maggie McClelland, and Emily Loecken. The initial concept was created based on interactions with families in the Makeshop at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.
Review
Theatre performance through the art of play is not a novel concept, but it is rare to find in the wild aside from theatre for young audience shows. Doohickey! is just that, an immersive production focused on creativity and exploration, taking audiences on a journey both through an intergalactic warzone and their own reconnection with the freedom that comes from making without rules. At the start of the show, the intergalactic rebel group of Caomei enters the scene, the audience thrown immediately into their story. After some introductions and expositional information on their plight against the mega interplanetary corrupt corporation of Angel, the rebels share the key to winning the war: building doohickeys to help protect the planet. And for this task, they need everyone’s help.
Doohickey! can easily be described as a craft makerspace with the bare minimum of rules in order to force every audience member–age five to ninety-five and beyond–out of the strict pattern of “here is the task, this is the goal, follow the directions” that we are all taught to live by. This creates a welcoming environment that meets audience members where they are at, slowly urging them out of their comfort zones over the duration of the performance. The actors maintain their characters and the world during this time too, although aside from the expositional beginning, a dynamic symbolic “fight night” interlude, and the dynamic conclusion there is not too much story to this performance. That being said, I would never call this a positive or a negative, as this is simply not a plot driven piece. Instead, it communicates its themes and morals through improvised audience interaction and hands-on experience. Since this piece is so character driven, my only wish was that the entire audience was able to learn more about each of the characters and their backstories earlier on in the performance. These details did arise through conversation while crafting, and they overall helped the world feel that much more developed to me once I learned them, but it is of my opinion that the placement of these details may have the capacity to elevate the performance side of this part-performance part-crafting production.
Due to the nature of this show, I have found myself calling Doohickey! “baby’s first immersive theatre,” and the more I describe it as such, the more I do believe in this moniker and its importance. As immersive theatre grows in popularity, inching into the mainstream, I understand how it can be daunting to the average rigid theatre-goer. For many years now, I have encountered colleagues more advanced in their careers that love the fringe scene… for me and support it… from afar. Shows like Doohickey! are deeply important for all of the aforementioned reasons, but additionally for the work they do to show audiences of all backgrounds that nontraditional theatre can be equally as effective at communicating complex themes and leaving thought-provoking impacts on audience members. Moreover, Doohickey! proves that not all immersive theatre need be site-specific dramatic pieces where audience members are transported into dramatic worlds with high stakes and large budget technical production. This performance was easily the most accessible, sensory friendly, and fulfilling for all ages immersive theatre production I have seen, and I am thoroughly excited to see what else Orange Steel Theatre Company has in store for the future, both on this planet and beyond.
