Participants in VR headsets (Photo: Courtesy of The Black Mirror Experience)
The Black Mirror Experience
by Deb Miller on July 20, 2026
The all-new attraction The Black Mirror Experience, conceived by Banijay Live Studio in association with the VR company Univrse, is making its US debut for a limited engagement at The Shed. Set in the near dystopian future of sci-fi technology, and inspired by Charlie Brooker’s hit British TV anthology series Black Mirror, the immersive interactive experience combines artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and digital spaces with physical movement and actual rooms and galleries. It’s also an original narrative that is not a recreation of an episode from the show and doesn’t require any previous knowledge of it. Here, you are the central protagonist making your way through the story and shaping it.
Cody Winters’ video introduction (Photo: Courtesy of The Black Mirror Experience)
At the start of the hybrid experience, groups of up to six participants are invited into the showroom of the futuristic tech company Phaethon Labs. We first watch an introductory video of inventor Dakota “Cody” Winters (voiced by Karina Matas Piper), who explains how she developed her creation, LifeAgent – a digital clone designed to do our tasks, to understand our goals and desires, and, thereby, to amplify our lives, allowing us to “Do less, live more.” We then read a text panel about the invention’s chronological history, from 2025-2030 and beyond, see the component parts in display cases, and watch additional videos describing the technology, all intended as background information that culminates in the main virtual segments.
It should be noted that willing participants are required to fill out a permission form, including personal information, on a computer screen. We also give permission to have photos taken of our faces, which will be used to create our virtual LifeAgent doubles (and will be retained by Univrse for four weeks), and to have the guidelines orally explained to us, before being fitted with our VR headsets. Once inside our new virtual space, we are subjected to a neural scan and instructed to read another consent form aloud, providing the additional biometric data of our voices for our AI doubles.
Robot (Photo: Courtesy of The Black Mirror Experience)
If you agree to the terms, you will be led by an adorable robot into a future world, and then by your generated LifeAgent through a series of experiences designed to reveal your inner thoughts, goals, and ethics. Among them are spinning a game-show wheel, playing virtual musical instruments, disco dancing, and having a recent dream you share analyzed by Sigmund Freud.
What initially makes for some visually engaging playful fun, then turns dark and ominous, surrounding us in a cutting-edge 3-dimensional dreaded virtual dystopia, from which we must try to escape. Will we make it out through the interconnected tunnels, rising platforms, and crisscrossing laser beams, or will AI and its generated humanoid figures succeed in taking over our lives? It’s a resonant question in our increasingly tech-based world, and in The Black Mirror Experience – where we’ve agreed to release our private information and personal biometrics for use by an international VR leader.
While the production explores – and raises – some significant issues, its format is more in keeping with a virtual-gaming escape room than a fully fleshed-out narrative or professionally enacted theatrical drama. If you decide to go and to experience something a world apart from a traditional play, your ticket also includes admission to Doug Aitken: Lightscape, a concurrent multimedia exhibition on The Shed’s second floor.
At the Shed
545 West 30th St., 4th floor
Running time: One hour, no intermission
Through September 6, 2026
