TAJ RAUCH

Taj Rauch (He/They) is an immersive game designer, theater maker, and filmmaker whose multidisciplinary practice centers the audience as the protagonist. Blending interactive design, narrative systems, and performance, he creates participatory environments that challenge perception, agency, and authorship.

His work explores how individuals navigate constructed realities, often placing audiences inside layered narrative systems where their decisions directly influence the experience. Drawing from game mechanics, experimental theater, and cinematic storytelling, Rauch builds worlds that evolve in response to human behavior.

At the core of his practice is a fundamental question: across shifting environments and imagined realities, how do we recognize ourselves, and what defines who we are?

Project Description
All Heathens Go to Heaven is a darkly comic immersive theater work that places audiences in quiet control of a constructed reality. Two young men believe they have returned home after undergoing neural implant procedures in a corporate medical trial. But the living room is not what it seems. It is a staged environment, observed from all angles by an audience that has yet to realize they are also participants.

Drawing from game design principles, including the use of randomization systems, the project treats human behavior as the most dynamic and unpredictable variable. Each audience shapes the unfolding experience through their choices, interactions, and presence.

Every performance becomes a record of who was there and what they did. Over time, these accumulated actions form a living archive, a layered imprint of human decision-making. Through this process, the work explores authorship, control, and the traces we leave behind within shared environments.