Troy Rainbow Unpacks Landmark Immersive Production THE DOOR IN QUESTION

Blurring the lines between memory, delusion and reality, THE DOOR IN QUESTION is a landmark of Australian immersive theatre, a visceral descent into the internal landscape of psychosis, told through a fusion of virtual reality, AI and live performance. Returning to Melbourne this May as part of SLEEPLESS FESTIVAL, the production transforms disused spaces across Footscray into portals of perception, where audiences experience fractured truths through multiple narrative lenses.

At the heart of the work is creator , whose own lived experience and family history with mental illness form the emotional backbone of this hauntingly intimate piece. Drawing from childhood memories, letters, and his late mother’s deeply personal writings, Rainbow constructs not just a performance, but a psychological architecture—a scaffolded hallucination through which audiences must navigate. Developed in collaboration with clinical psychologists and leading XR researchers, THE DOOR IN QUESTION is less about observing psychosis and more about implicating the viewer within it.

In this raw and revealing conversation, Rainbow speaks to the challenges of translating grief and trauma into a shared artistic language, the ethical responsibility of depicting psychosis, and the strange beauty of love expressed through an altered mind.

Your show draws heavily on your personal experiences with mental illness. What was the most challenging aspect of translating intimate, real-life memories into a shared theatrical and XR environment?

It’s always intimidating, as an artist, to share your work. Even when you don’t think it’s personal, it often is. But the recognition of what you were expressing might come much later. THE DOOR IN QUESTION is a direct way of translating intimate memories, a kind of black box where I (and others) can throw these experiences in and watch something else come out the other side.

Mental illness is challenging as all hell to live with or around. It creates traumatic memories, yes, but also moments of ecstasy, lucidity, revelation. Still, the hardest part is the sadness: the regret, the guilt, the shame. Recreating a world in which I partly lived, but more importantly, the one in which my mother lived, brings with it a wave of grief. Sitting with that is important. But the anticipation, knowing it’s coming as soon as I begin to create, can be paralysing. Like waiting behind the cave walls, knowing what’s on the other side.

You’ve mentioned that your mother’s diagnosis of schizophrenia shaped your childhood. How did you balance honouring the truth of her experience while also crafting an engaging narrative for a public audience?

The notion of “truth” is tricky. I was made a ward of the state when I was young and went to live with my aunt and uncle. My interactions with Mum after that were through access visits and supervised phone calls. But we could write to each other.

Her birthday cards would begin with a standard greeting, then spiral off into tangents, literal spirals, too, scrawled around the edges of the card. She’d include another twenty loose-leaf pages, detailing abused pigeons, conspiracy, which family members were “inhuman.” For my birthday, she’d give me piles of rubbish as presents: used dummies, and other things she’d salvaged which she felt had meaning. It was confusing, but I was never that confused by her. More by the system I was living inside.

After she died, when we cleaned out her commission flat, we found piles of notes. I’d kept the letters and birthday cards, but this was something else. It was a record of profound suffering. Vitriolic, yes. Sometimes threatening. But under all of it: pain. The pain of losing her first two children, then ultimately her third. Realising I hadn’t fully seen or understood that before was heartbreaking.

Her prosody is fascinating, her logic inscrutable unless you understand the internal references. That’s what inspired me to do something with the notes—even if it took years. She couldn’t tell her story in a way people could hear. She waved a white flag while doing circle work outside my sibling’s school. She told people I was the product of an illegal artificial insemination conspiracy between her ex-husband and my father. All tangled with echolalia and distorted phrasing.
There isn’t one “truth” to her experience. She suffered, and her behaviour caused suffering. Maybe that is the truth. I have the advantage of proximity, but also distance—enough to illustrate her experience while bringing in my own.
Mostly, the work asks: What does love look like from within schizophrenia? The answer: Very f—ing bizarre. That’s part of what makes it engaging.

THE DOOR IN QUESTION incorporates multiple technologies—VR, AI, immersive theatre. What were some key insights or surprises you encountered when blending these different mediums into a cohesive experience?

There are quite a few portrayals of mental illness across media – films like Through a Glass Darkly, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, or An Angel at My Table; theatre works like Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis; novels like The Bell Jar or One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Each of these gives us a window into altered perception – but even the most immersive of these still carry an “observer effect.” You’re watching someone else’s breakdown, someone else’s disintegration, often stylised, poetic, but distanced.

The challenge and opportunity with The Door in Question was to collapse that distance. Extended Reality (XR) lets us do that. It allows for fragmentation of perspective: first-person, second-person, even god’s-eye third. You’re not just witnessing psychosis, you’re implicated. You’re inside the phone call. You’re being followed. Or told that you’re the one doing the following. You’re handed a breath pattern as instruction, and you believe it matters.

What surprised me was how normal that felt, once you entered it. Psychosis isn’t just wild visions or hearing voices, it’s the overwhelming internal logic of the experience. The bureaucratic voice that sounds kind enough but keeps talking in circles. The sudden conviction that the microwave is tracking your breath. The hallucination isn’t the experience – the interpretation is.

The mix of mediums – VR, AI voice, live performance, recorded fragments – allows us to build a world that behaves like a delusion. Things repeat, contradict, trigger you unexpectedly. It’s scaffolded madness, not just madness depicted. That’s the real power of immersive work, you don’t get to sit back. You step through the door, and suddenly it’s your name in the file. You’re the one who forgot the breath.

As the production deals with psychosis, did you worry about unintentionally reinforcing stereotypes or misconceptions?

Absolutely. The word “psychosis” still makes people nervous. It gets conflated with psychopathy or violence. But someone experiencing psychosis is far more likely to harm themselves than anyone else. Still, when people see someone muttering on the street or foraging in a bin, fear takes over.

Yes, people experiencing psychosis might hear hundreds of voices, believe the government is poisoning the water. The stereotype is true but also deeply reductive. Madness has highlights and pitfalls. It holds ontological clarity: moments of knowing. Deep, mystical knowing.

And then it collapses. Watching your inner world collapse is transformative. Crawling back out changes you. When I’ve shared that I once felt like I was a set of programmed thoughts, people say, “Oh, like The Matrix?”

And I say, “Sure. But what do you think it feels like to be inside the Matrix?”

Your collaboration with clinical psychologists must have offered invaluable guidance. How did their input alter your original vision, and in what ways did your artistic goals remain non-negotiable?

It’s important the work engages with psychiatric and psychological research. But I’m not making something clinical. I’m not trying to treat people.

That said, I talk with psychologists often. They recommend books, articles, studies. One colleague is researching the neuroscience of the inner voice. Fascinating stuff. He looks at brain activation; I look at the felt disruption. What does it feel like when your inner voice breaks?

It doesn’t change the core vision, but it roots it. It expands what’s possible, artistically.

Immersive theatre often relies on audience interaction. How do you manage participants’ comfort levels, especially when portraying distressing aspects of psychosis?

We want people to feel safe. But discomfort is part of it. If we sanitise the experience, we betray it.
That said, we don’t go for shock. The work is experienced in isolation. No phones. No friends nearby. That isolation helps build the world.

We build in safeguards. Interactions are gentle narrative prods, not attacks. And there are moments of levity, peace, humour. Psychosis isn’t one-note. It can be glorious. It can be boring. It can be hilarious.

We have counsellors on hand, and I work as a mental health support worker. Last season, we had no issues. Audiences engage because they want to feel something. We stay connected to that.

Stigma around mental health can silence people. In your view, what role does immersive art play in reshaping the conversation?

There’s been progress. Anxiety and depression are more visible now, more openly discussed. But psychosis is still the outer edge. It’s where conversation tends to stop. “Reshaping the conversation” is sometimes a platitude. Art allows us to feel someone else’s world. To enter it. Sit inside it. That’s where transformation happens.

At the end of THE DOOR IN QUESTION, a lot of people say: “I need a week to think about this.” That’s the best compliment. It means something shifted.

VR allows audiences to inhabit multiple viewpoints. Can you share a moment that captures the tension between what’s real and what’s delusion?

Without spoiling too much: what VR enables isn’t just immersion. It’s the between-space. You exit reality and re-enter it. Over and over. The Door in Question doesn’t just break the fourth wall. It forgets it was ever there.

You’ve staged THE DOOR IN QUESTION in different locations, including disused spaces. How does site impact the work?

The title comes from an incident where my mother walked through a forbidden door in a church. Afterwards, she kept calling it “The Door in Question.” Doors are literal and metaphorical here. We don’t know what goes on behind most of them.

Putting this work in an abandoned shopping centre lets people feel like they’re slipping between worlds. One minute you’re holding your phone, the next you’re navigating soul dust in a cupboard full of wires. You carry it with you. That’s the point.

As both the show’s creator and someone with lived experience, what do you hope audiences carry with them after stepping back through the door?

That the two worlds aren’t mutually exclusive. That they can walk through this experience and come out changed—but not disconnected from what they saw. I hope they become a little less afraid of the person mumbling in the street. I hope they stop and wonder: ‘What if what they’re saying makes perfect sense, if only you knew what they’d lived through?’ My mum once wrote me a children’s book and said, “I thought you might like to illustrate it.”
So that’s what I’ve done. This is that book. Strange, sad, full of love. I just had to learn how to read it first.

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THE DOOR IN QUESTION season

Where: Multiple locations as part of SLEEPLESS FOOTSCRAY FESTIVAL
When: May 8 – May 17
Tickets: CLICK HERE