When audience members enter Ghost River Theatre’s The Room Sculpture Experience, it’ll be an interactive exercise in creating art in a way that is wholly unlike any other theatre performance currently taking place in Calgary.

Surrounded by objects of all types and sizes, fully lit by the magic of lighting designer Tauran, audience members will be guided into creating a sculpture.

All before being asked to deconstruct it piece by piece by the end of the experience.

The goal, said Ghost River Theatre’s Artistic Director and creator of The Room Sculpture Experience, Eric Rose, is for participants to engage in the creative process without being judged on what is created, or feel the need to leave something permanent behind.

“Judgment is the death of all art in some way. When you feel judged, it’s really hard to actually create things. So, the artistic act is kind of an act of love. It’s an active community. It’s a way for us to recognize and see each other,” he said.

“So often there’s these pressures or markers of like, what is like an artistic output, like, oh, I made a painting, a drawing, or whatever—there’s an end result to it. That end result somehow judges the the ability or the creativity… and I think in this case, what I’m excited about is that there is no end result.”

Rose said that the experience has been created such that anyone, even those who feel like they don’t have any artistic ability, will have a chance to participate fully.

Each performance has an experience guide, who will suggest different ideas and step back to observe as audience members create their own unique sculpture—before guiding the group in a conversation about what the pieces that make up the whole mean, before each are removed one by one.

“What I wanted to do is create an opportunity for people to be creative without any entry point of having to produce something. So, as an example, if you were saying, ‘oh, let’s do, you know, a still life class’ where we paint or draw still life, there’s a kind of barrier there. You need pencils, or canvas, or training,” Rose said.

“I’m not doing that with this. What’s nice about it is that anybody can do that. It’s a it’s an immersive environment that’s inspiring, and involves well over 1,000 different objects in the room, big and small. Every night, it will be different depending on who’s participating.”

The experience came about as a result of three days of school shows last season for Ghost River Theatre, which prototyped the concept for students.

This year, the concept has been expanded to include performances for 10 schools in addition to public performances.

Rose said that the spectrum of school ages and groups this year was large, and that students from grades five all the way to high school would be participating.

“As far as for adults, what’s exciting about it is you could come with a group of your your greatest friends or family, or a choir you belong to. What’s fun about that is idea that you can play with people that in an environment and context in which you may not know them,” Rose said.

The maximum group size for each performance is 35 people. Ghost River Theatre is also holding a relaxed sensory performance, and two deaf-led performances in order to increase the accessibility of the experience for audience members.

The Room Sculpture Experience runs from Sept. 27 through Oct. 7 at the West Village Theatre.

Tickets are on sale at www.ghostrivertheatre.com/theroomsculptureexperience.