heidi j. boisvert

Theater of the Mind

Technology Director & Designer

Theater of the Mind is an immersive journey exploring how our minds see and create the world around us as participants traverse unique environments and try a series of sensory experiments. The production was co-created by David Byrne and Mala Gaonkar and commissioned by the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Off-Center. A story of a life-lived backwards which poses questions about memory, identity and our perceptual reality. 16 audience members are taken on a journey with one guide, David, to experience 8 delightful neuroscience experiments. 

Heidi was responsible for designing and developing the technology that supports the show, including the live streamed, networked VR inside Unity. She ensured that sets, lights, sounds and physical objects demonstrating scientific effects work. She also built a custom show control system to trigger all environmental cues and architected the network infrastructure to run the show, which includes 20 raspberry Pis, 10 iPads, and over a mile of cable. Theater of the Mind just remounted the show in Chicago for the Goodman Theatre’s centennial year.