ETC–Drama Collaboration Brings Titanic to Life

Founded as a collaboration between the School of Drama and the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) has always maintained strong ties with Drama—ties that continue through ongoing interdisciplinary projects like Spring 2025’s Encore team.

“Both are committed to championing interdisciplinary collaborations, and exploring challenging and innovative forms of creative expression that combine artistic and technical skills,” said ETC faculty member and Encore faculty advisor Shirley Saldamarco.

“Before joining the faculty at the ETC, I was on the faculty in the School of Drama for about twenty years,” Saldamarco said. “The mutual respect and friendship we built over that time has only continued since then, and when I approached some of my colleagues in Drama about a joint project creating an immersive, interactive lobby installation for one of their productions, they were all in.”

That joint project became Encore, a team of ETC students—Jasmin Ali-Diaz, Anna Kim, Fay Li, Devika Santosh, Sarah Wille, and Jim Zhao — tasked with designing a lobby installation for the School of Drama’s production of “Titanic the Musical.” The Tony Award-winning show dramatizes the Titanic’s history while exploring themes of innovation, class division, and inevitable tragedy.

The installation was shaped in close partnership with the show’s dramaturgs — TJ Young, Lillian McDermott, and Madelyn Streisfeld — who served as the students’ clients and collaborators.

“The characters boast in the musical that the Titanic was born during a remarkable age of technological advancement, and so using technology to extend our story beyond the walls of the Philip Chosky Theater was only natural,” Streisfeld, assistant dramaturg on the production, said. “Our goal with the lobby experience was to prepare audiences for the first moments of a show. … With class being such a major theme of the musical, it was important to our team for audiences to gain insight into what a member of each class might have brought onboard, both physically — as contained in the suitcases — and ideologically.”

“We wanted it to feel like a meaningful extension of the musical,” said first-year ETC student and Encore co-producer Fay Li. “Our goal was to create an emotionally immersive and historically grounded experience.”

Drawing from the dramaturgs’ concept, the team designed an installation spanning multiple stations in the Purnell Center lobby. Each one featured unique luggage items and audio recordings tied to different passengers on the ship, allowing audience members to walk through and explore each character’s backstory by quite literally unpacking their baggage. They also gave the audience a chance to respond to what they saw. One station was a working telegraph booth where audience members could leave their own “final message” — automatically transcribed and projected into the space.

“We started by looking into both the musical and general history of the Titanic, but as we narrowed down our concept we spent a lot more time researching various characters,” said second-year ETC student and co-producer Sarah Wille. “Once we landed on the characters we were going to use, our narrative designer Devika put extensive thought and research into what each of them would have in their luggage.”

Sourcing authentic props — with support from a project budget — was both a creative challenge and passion project. Wille spent hours on Facebook Marketplace, Etsy and eBay, dug through thrift shops, and even turned to family for help. “I even got a good chunk of them through my grandma, aunt, and mom!” she said. “And I’ve spent a lot of time this semester painting various items, dyeing paper with tea bags, hot gluing boxes together, and the list goes on.”

The team also had to navigate the physical limitations of working in a space not built for interactive experiences as they developed the layered audio, light cues, and projections that were all part of the experience.

“The lobby isn’t really designed for installations or production work, so we’ve had to work around a lot of space and tech limitations,” said Li. “This whole process has definitely taught us to stay flexible, adapt quickly, and always have a backup plan ready. But there’s something about watching all these scattered pieces like lights, props, code, sound, start to form a real experience that people can walk through.”

The sold-out run of Titanic continues through Wednesday, with each performance accompanied by the student-designed installation. It’s one in a line of previous collaborations between the ETC and the School of Drama, and one of many to come.

“It’s a model for how we can use immersive entertainment to supplement theatrical environments. The blend of arts and technology is very CMU, and very 2025,” Streisfeld said.

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