Tech firm Fever produces live shows worldwide, with local consequences | Critique | Entertainment

IF THERE’S ONE dominant cultural cliché about jury duty, the civic responsibility that has launched 1,000 excusatory little white lies, it’s that jury duty is very, very boring.

So why, on a drizzly January night, would I have opted into this famously dull endeavor?

Because it was, ostensibly, a play. And I love plays.

Instead, what happened in the Renton IKEA Performing Arts Center was one of the most baffling, artistically barren and culturally riveting hours of my life.

“The Jury Experience” is a play — or an “immersive theater show,” much as “cheese product” is to cheese. It’s been presented locally (and very intermittently) since June 2025 but produced by Fever, a global tech company that produces shows in more than 150 cities worldwide.

Here’s the gist: After a brief video introduction explaining the show’s rules of engagement, a five-person cast of underrehearsed actors on a generic set put a young man on trial for murder. Had he intentionally killed his ex-girlfriend or were they in a horrible boating accident?

An audience of hundreds played the jury. At regular intervals between testimony and arguments, we were told to get our phones out and vote digitally on some piece of legal administrivia, like whether we should be allowed to consider a piece of evidence that had just been challenged. Consider me immersed! Sixty minutes later we found the guy not guilty. Via QR code.

Artistically, I couldn’t have cared less. But culturally, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Who made this vapid thing? Why was it so well attended when so many theater companies in town are struggling?

Why did this live performance feel like AI slop?

Why was it giving me a weird, sinking feeling?

Instagram made me do it

If you’ll permit me a record scratch, here’s how I got here.

In the summer of 2025, I saw “The Jury Experience” listed on Seattle Rep’s calendar and casually wondered what it was, why it was scheduled on two random dates nearly a month apart and why there were no human names attached to it. But theaters rent out their spaces all the time, so I didn’t think too hard about it.

Then came the Instagram ads. Soft-focus images of generic, AI-looking candlelit spaces, promising me a transformative night of music in any possible style — Radiohead, Tool, Lauryn Hill, Taylor Swift, Hans Zimmer, ABBA — played by a string quartet. If you’re an Instagram user, you’ve probably seen them too. Again, no performer names.

Then I discovered that Candlelight Concerts, Fever’s flagship production, shared a parent company with “The Jury Experience,” fueling my growing obsession with untangling Fever’s inscrutable, artist-free internet presence. What even is this company?

Fever is a ticketing platform and a marketing engine. It’s “the world’s leading tech platform for discovering culture and live entertainment,” according to its own branding. The New York-based company was founded in 2014, and has, as of 2023, a valuation of $1.8 billion.

Fever is the “Netflix for experiences,” Fever co-founder and CEO Ignacio Bachiller, told TechCrunch in 2019. (That same year, Bachiller and his Fever co-founder Francisco Hein landed on Forbes Magazine’s 30 under 30 Europe: Technology list.)

Its mission, splashed on many official Fever web pages: “To democratize access to culture and entertainment.” A quick perusal of the Fever newsroom kicks up plenty of buzzwords one loves to see around art: “data-driven,” “brand opportunities,” “partnership with OpenAI.”

In addition to Candlelight Concerts and “The Jury Experience,” Fever’s original self-produced events include “The Jazz Room,” “Dining in the Dark” (which is exactly what it sounds like) and “Ballet of Lights,” which dresses dancers in LED-covered costumes to perform abridged versions of classic ballets. Until recently, these dance shows were branded “We Call it Ballet,” part of a bigger series that also includes “We Call it Tango” and “We Call it Flamenco.”

“When developing a Fever Original, we look at audience demand, local market trends, cultural preferences, discovery and booking behavior and gaps in a city’s entertainment offering,” says Dana Moutis, Fever’s Director of Scalable Concepts, Americas.

But Fever’s original shows are just one sliver of the company’s entertainment offerings. Trying to parse the differences between Fever Originals, Fever Partners (like Moment Factory’s “Astra Lumina” and Exhibition Hub’s “Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience” and “The Mind of a Serial Killer: The Experience”) and Brand Partnerships (like “Stranger Things: The Experience” and Squid Games: The Experience”) felt like a descent into madness.

Then there are the DroneArt shows, VR experiences, a bubble-themed event and a wine-centric comedy night. Through Fever, you can buy tickets to movies, sports watch parties at Dave & Busters and a self-guided “Mystery Picnic” experience on Bainbridge Island created by the global venture-capital backed AmazingCo. And so, so much more.

Perhaps you’ve heard of them from an Instagrammer (with an affiliate link) promoting events as a #feverambassador?

Or perhaps Fever’s content factory, the Secret Media Network (aka Secret Seattle, in our neck of the woods) ensorcelled you with an SEO-optimized listicle recommending fun nights out, most of which contain at least one Fever-produced event and plenty of which are written by people who do not live in Seattle?

So many “experiences,” so few artists

In hunting for the edges of this massive, recursive company flooding our city with shows, I searched for local artists who work with them.

At “The Jury Experience” I didn’t recognize anyone on stage — which is not nefarious but is unusual; I’ve been covering Seattle theater since 2013 — and no printed or digital programs were on offer, so I had no idea who performed in or directed the show.

Even finding the names of the show’s creators took some online spelunking. I eventually figured out that choreographer/tango artist Agustina Videla and filmmaker Pablo Destito are credited with the show’s “creative direction, scripting and staging,” though my spelunking unearthed no other theater credits for either of them.

My investigation continued under the vault of the Northern Lights Dome Room at the Arctic Club Hotel in downtown Seattle, where a string quartet played the songs of The Beatles surrounded by hundreds of fake flickering candles. Those talented musicians — all of whom have rich professional lives, locally and nationally — were at least allowed to introduce themselves aloud and point us to a QR code with more information about them, but the hall of mirrors feeling persisted. The artists felt like an afterthought.

Finding Fever-connected artists was hard; convincing them to talk to me was even harder. Request after interview request was met with polite rejection or total silence.

As a longtime arts journalist and critic, I cannot stress how unusual this is in my profession: Artists want to talk about their work.

A few artists who’ve worked with different Fever Originals in different capacities were willing to talk off the record. Many expressed frustration with the company’s lack of production infrastructure; some said they had no one local to field questions or problems, and their company point of contact seemed to change constantly. Some also felt artistic indifference from Fever, via benign neglect. It wasn’t that their Fever contacts didn’t care if a show was good, one artist said, it’s that they didn’t really seem to think much about that.

Most of all, these artists expressed anxiety around potentially souring their working relationship with Fever, lest they lose a revenue stream.

Making a living as an artist is hard, and protecting cash flow makes sense. So Zack Reaves was nervous when he posted a carousel of text-based images on Instagram in January:

“Candlelight musicians deserve better: Why I’m stepping back from Candlelight arrangements,” the first image reads.

Fever had announced a change in its wage structure, the following images explained, that eliminated rehearsal pay and reduced overall compensation for Candlelight musicians.

Reaves, a Los Angeles-based cellist and composer, began working with Candlelight in 2021, first as an arranger, writing string quartet cover songs to be performed around the world, and then as a musician.

At first, the experience delighted him. “There was excitement that we were tapping into audiences and demographics that classical musicians have struggled to reach for eternity,” he says. “It was really remarkable what Fever had done with their marketing strategy, and opened up a vastly new concert experience for people and allowed us to really connect with a lot of new audiences, which is very exciting.”

Over time, he says, he and other musicians noticed a gradual decline in the quality of the arrangements. Concerts also got longer and vague recording policies set off alarm bells, but the change in pay structure was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Candlelight musicians in LA banded together and calculated their fees from the previous year, and what those fees would have been using the new pay structure. “It was a cut for everybody,” Reaves says. 

The idea that the proposed change was designed to simplify Fever’s books, as Reaves says Fever presented it to the musicians, “was insulting to us, because we knew that it was a cost-saving measure, so that’s when I went public.”

The musicians’ concerns, Reaves says, were well received and, like other artists I talked to, he speaks highly of his personal contacts within Fever. “Fever, I would say, is trying to make things right,” he says, though a new contract hadn’t yet been finalized when we spoke. Asked for comment, a Fever press representative said: “We are not able to confirm or comment on an individual’s characterization of internal discussions. As a general policy, we do not discuss financial or operational details publicly.”

Through more internet spelunking I found James C. Stewart, a cast member of Seattle’s “The Jury Experience,” who was told by the Fever press office that the only thing he shouldn’t discuss with me about “The Jury Experience” was pay — but a local casting notice from April listed the pay rate for rehearsals as $21.30 an hour (Seattle’s minimum wage), with a show-day rate (most are two-show days) of $325.

If a small, independent company pays artists less-than-professional wages as it tries to get off the ground, that’s understandable — artists often work toward a personal or shared creative vision without considering compensation. A billion-dollar company paying minimum wage, for performers in a show that (at least in Renton) sold hundreds of tickets in the $40-$70 range, says “this is what we think artists are worth.”

Stewart says he’s happy to be back on a stage (his recent work has been primarily in film), but that the experience has had its confounding moments.

In one cast for the show, he says, two of his fellow actors had never been on stage before. And earlier this year, he says he found out about new performance dates when he saw them pop up online. No one had told the actors.

Maybe that’s why there are no programs for these shows: Because at a corporate level, Fever doesn’t really care who is in them? Strict and specific casting policies would certainly be harder to scale.

When asked, Moutis said digital programs are in the works for the show, which is already running in more than 150 cities. “‘The Jury Experience’ for us has only been around for a bit over a year now, so as that starts to get more scalable we’ll definitely be honing in operational stuff like that,” Moutis says.

“We don’t get a lot as artists, right?” says Hailey Henderson, a local performer/director and the director of “The Jury Experience” in Seattle. “But normally, at the very least we have a name.”

Strategic scalable initiatives

Who needs artists when you have a PowerPoint presentation with a step-by-step guide to producing a show anywhere in the world?

An onboarding document for “The Jury Experience,” whose opening slide reads “Strategic Scalable Initiatives,” breaks down the paint-by-numbers instructions for presenting the show, from rehearsal schedules to which props, costumes and set pieces should be ordered from Amazon (most of them). In their limited rehearsal time, Henderson, who I connected with through Stewart, strives to create as fulfilling a process as possible for her actors.

“I told everyone up front, ‘I’m glad we’re all in the room together, let’s do our best to make something out of nothing, and my hope for you as actors is that you can have a lot of fun and play to a big crowd,’” she says. Working with other artists is always a joy, she says, and that’s been the highlight of her Fever experience.

“Never before have I been in a position where I’m directing something and sitting there in a sold out house just pissed off, like, what are you guys doing here?” Henderson says. “I just want to get up on the stage and be like, ‘Everyone follow me! Let’s go see a real play, it’ll change your life!’ But real plays don’t have the algorithm and the money and the resources to flood your Instagram in such a perfect way.”

According to my email inbox, I have received at least 244 marketing emails from Fever since first buying a ticket from them in October 2025. “Don’t overthink it” the subject lines command.

Is this what “democratizing access to arts and culture” looks like? Because it’s not about affordable prices. As of June 17, the July 31 “Jury Experience” tickets were running $44-$70 (plus booking fees), which is pretty standard for Seattle theaters.

Tickets for Fever’s upcoming Ballet of Lights “Sleeping Beauty” in Seattle are $58-$74 (plus booking fees). During Pacific Northwest Ballet’s 2025-’26 season, with its professional casts and production values,mainstage ticket prices started at $44 ($39 for “The Nutcracker”), with an average ticket price of $83.57, discounted tickets available for kids as well as rush tickets and pay-what-you-can-performances.

“By bringing performances and cultural events directly into communities, and making discovery and booking seamless through technology, Fever is able to reach audiences who may not otherwise engage with the arts,” Moutis said in an email.

Through a press representative, Fever declined to confirm if it has data on how many Fever event attendees are first-time arts-event participants.

Seattle has, for many years, had plenty of centrally located arts and culture events, in myriad genres and price points. It’s a fallacy to suggest that arts access here needed democratizing, except financially, which Fever is not doing. If Fever was interested in providing high-quality arts and culture that speaks to Seattle-area audiences, there are plenty of local organizations they could support with money and marketing, rather than producing its own shows.

What Fever is doing is making it easy to attend Fever-supported events. In a 2023 interview on the podcast Future of StoryTelling, Bachiller described Fever as “a destination platform to really understand what’s happening in your city, what are the high quality experiences that are attracting a lot of attention, and also the platform where you can not only discover but also buy those experiences.”

All-in-one platforms reduce our cultural competence. Looking for arts events in a new city on a platform like Fever is like calling an Uber instead of figuring out local transportation: It teaches you nothing, and separates you from people and places.

An app with a financial agenda can’t help you “really understand what’s happening in your city.” A press representative for Fever explained that “any organizer is welcome (on the Fever app) as long as they can demonstrate professionalism and a proven track record in producing and operating high-quality live experiences.” As of this writing, no local theater, dance or music organizations were selling tickets through the Fever app.

A local arts leader remembered their one collaboration with a Fever event as bizarrely well-attended because the marketing was so powerful, but the event itself was unimpressive and they had no illusions that attendees would come back to see their company’s real work.

That leads us to a more amorphous question, and one frequently left unanswered in this anti-gatekeeper era: What if the art is just … bad?

Classical music has some quality control built in — you’d never see a string quartet member who’d never been on stage before — but producing work on a global scale is the definition of quantity over quality.

Fever’s “continuous performance monitoring,” says Kevin Madden, Fever’s Head of Regional Production, relies primarily on audience feedback, particularly when it comes to the company’s longer-running shows. But his examples of audience comments that would create action focused on things like wait times and space neatness, not artistic quality. Can’t we have both?

A cure for Fever?

Yes, Fever is paying local artists — corporate gigs are a time-honored boon for freelancers — but is it really helping them? Or is it preying on a scarcity mentality to coax them into taking jobs they don’t even want to talk about, while undercutting the local arts organizations that could give them steadier employment?

Untangling this web feels important. If you go to and enjoy any Fever show, event or experience, that’s marvelous, truly! Artists getting paid work is good! Audiences seeing art, especially in forms new to them, is good! So why does Fever’s overall influence feel so bad? Because shopping local matters, and viewing live performance as “content” has consequences.

If, on the same night, you can see the same gimmicky show in Madrid, LA, Seattle, Auckland and other cities, what makes that show different from a chain restaurant, which sends a meaningful portion of profits out of the local economy? Are we being tricked into feeling like we’re supporting local art because we’re watching local artists?

The negative effects of corporatization often aren’t quantifiable until it’s too late, until we have numbers to say: “Hmmm, why yes, this company has badly impacted the creative sector.” So let’s start thinking about those effects now, even if just in a personal, emotional or anecdotal way, by listening to people who see them from the inside.

One Fever collaborator I spoke with described the company as “very much like fast fashion or fast food. They’re not trying to contribute to the culture, they’re just trying to make money.”

Live performance isn’t like film, books or video games, designed to be created once then distributed far and wide. It needs to be made over and over and over again. If newcomers to a live art form see boring, unambitious work — as so much “content” is — they may very well never seek that art out again, and that hurts art companies that survive on reputation, not marketing.

When local arts and culture organizations make money, they hire more local artists and artisans, year after year, season after season, giving those artists opportunities to learn and grow and hone their skills. They hire grant writers and marketing folks and box office reps, many of whom are also artists. Sometimes they even give them health insurance! (That’s another story for another day.) When nationally touring shows of any genre come through Seattle, they share an artistic vision with our city — that vision may or may not speak to you, but good art needs a human point of view.

When even live art gets overtaken by the all-seeing algorithm and watered down into data-driven oblivion, will anyone still be interested?

Art should mean something, make you think in a new way or, at least be a lot of memorable fun. If that sounds revolting and pretentious, so be it. I don’t want to live in a city where the best-attended events are the cultural equivalent of pre-chewed gum with a trademark symbol attached. So shop local, and remember: Everything you do is an experience, whether or not it’s sold to you as one.