Haley E. R. Cooper and J. Cameron Cooper are the artistic directors of Strange Bird Immersive, based in Houston. 

Their inaugural production, “The Man From Beyond: Houdini Séance Escape Room,” has ranked as the #1 game in North America by TERPECA three years in a row for its union of escape room and immersive theatre. Somewhere between playing “Sleep No More” and “Trapped in a Room with a Zombie,” the Coopers saw the opportunity to revolutionize live entertainment and have since devoted their lives to the cause. They spoke at the Immersive Design Summit 2019 with “When Game and Theatre Collide,” and at RECON Global 2020 with “Make It Immersive,” both available on YouTube. 

During the height of the pandemic, they produced “The Strange Secret of Mr. Adrian Rook, “a virtual immersive theatre mystery that expanded the Strange Bird universe and was featured in The New York Times. 

After earning a master’s in Intellectual History, Haley now uses her intellectual talents for Immersology.com, her blog for practitioners of immersive entertainment. With a background in computer science, Cameron built much of “The Man From Beyond,” including image recognition and interactive synchronized light, sound, and video systems totalling some 10k lines of computer code. 

If you see the Coopers at RECON, tell them “the password is magpie.” Together they believe in the ability of immersive storytelling to transform audiences in a personal and lasting manner.