Kaidan Project: Walls Grow Thin
Creative Director, Puppet Designer
Rogue Artists Ensemble • 2017 • Los Angeles, CA
An award-winning immersive ghost story inspired by Japanese folklore. Set inside a six-story warehouse, the experience guided audiences through haunting environments filled with puppetry, illusion, and sensory storytelling.
REVIEWS
Winner of 6 LA Stage Ovation Awards, Nominated for Production of the Year, 2018
“A MASTERPIECE… 10 out of 10…. My mind is still reeling from the experience.” — LA Theatre Bites
“So well-crafted and artistically satisfying is the entire experience that I can't rave about it enough. This hybrid form of ghostly storytelling plunges you into the past from a today that precariously dances on a line somewhere north of reality and south of madness. In that realm, the possibilities are endless.” - Broadway World
“Sean T. Cawelti's direction manages to pull together a number of technical and artistic talents to create an impressively detailed experience” - Talkin Broadway
“A THOROUGHLY ENTERTAINING TRIP… part haunted house, part art installation, part performance-art piece... increasingly wondrous… lovingly designed to engage a variety of senses” — Los Angeles Times
“Under the direction of Sean T. Cawelti, the interaction of this seventy-minute magnum opus produces an urgent intimacy between players and audience that sweeps to a stunning climax.” — Paul Myrvold’s Theatre Notes
Kaidan Project: Walls Grow Thin is a groundbreaking immersive theater experience that drops audiences into the heart of a living ghost story inspired by Japanese folklore. Concieved and directed by Sean Cawelti, the production took over a 10,000-square-foot, six-story warehouse in Los Angeles, transforming multiple floors into richly layered, otherworldly environments.
Audience members journeyed alone or in small groups through a shifting series of rooms, corridors, and hidden spaces — each infused with puppetry, live performance, scent design, large-scale illusions, and multimedia storytelling. Guided by flickering clues and ghostly presences, participants uncovered the story of a woman who becomes lost between worlds, haunted by memory, trauma, and ancestral spirits.
Praised for its cinematic design and emotional depth, Walls Grow Thin was nominated for a record number of LA Stage Alliance Ovation Awards, and quickly became one of the most talked-about immersive theater events in Los Angeles.
Sean Cawelti served as Creative Director, Director, and Puppet Designer overseeing every layer of visual and narrative design — from conceptual development to final execution.