Experience Required

Rogers is visibly proud of the enduring wow value of the "Mystery Lodge," which debuted at Knott's in 1994. Knott's press materials call it "the park's most technically advanced project ever." In the show, an ancient storyteller (played by a human actor) materializes from behind a bonfire and essentially tells the story of his life, with an emphasis on the importance of passing on knowledge and traditions to future generations before he dies. "The show deals with the notion of death," Rogers says. "Inevitably, we all die. Churches deal with death, but theme parks don't." The storyteller interacts with phantom owls, ravens, and, in an arresting image, salmon swimming upstream to spawn. At the end of the show, the old man disappears -- though his walking stick is left behind, still standing. After a second, it falls.

Rogers smiles as the audience, which is still trying to suss out how the tricks are done, exits. We visit the actor (who is actually a twenty- something woman) backstage and then watch the show again from a catwalk above the theater, where props and projection screens make it easy to see how the illusions are achieved.

After the second show, we follow Harold Johnson, 30, who is in charge of "Mystery Lodge," to the control room. Surrounded by the cannonlike projector and racks of show-control technology, Johnson tells Rogers how much he enjoys listening to audience members "try to figure it out in the exit tunnel. They think it's a robot, or a hologram. They ask me if there's a trap door, or if we hoist the actor up. I just say, 'Good guesses.' "

Over lunch in an Old West saloon at Knott's, Rogers says, "A project like this turns everyone who works on it into a magician. Harold sounded just like Harry Blackstone IV, letting the guesses go with a smile. That's exactly what a magician would do."

"Story Is What Changes Lives"

Back at BRC, the second floor is humming with activity. A team is just back from Greece with several panoramic photos of possible sites for Mythos. Illustrations have just been FedExed to the Franklin Institute, in Philadelphia, where BRC is trying to create a show that will bring the museum's Baldwin 60,000 steam engine to life.

The group working on the special-effects theater for the Texas State History Museum is in neutral; after submitting three successive concepts, it is trying to interpret the latest round of client feedback. The Lincoln crew is conferring on the phone with an oil painter in Montana who is helping to flesh out the design of the central plaza. One problem: In the most recent sketch, it looks as if Lincoln is hoisting a martini glass (he's supposed to be giving the Gettysburg Address).

BRC is ready and able, it seems, to theme the world, wrapping everything up in a cohesive narrative, engaging visuals, and a soaring musical score. On the way back from Knott's, Rogers toyed with the idea of theming a hospital. "We've proven that you can build a hospital that makes people feel worse," he said. "What if you could design one that helps people feel better?"

The day before, Rogers had showed me a book of concept drawings for "Behind the Badge: The LAPD Experience." Maybe I've been steeping too long in the fantastic world of brick-and-mortar virtual reality, but it actually seems to me that inviting visitors to go through the same shoot -- don't shoot training that police officers go through might in some small way increase their understanding of just how tough an officer's job is. Scott Ault, 34, BRC's vice president of creative development, argues that the project could "help bridge the gap between the LAPD and the public" that recent department scandals have created. If nothing else, flying over the city in a chopper simulator with infrared vision sounds like fun.

Still, I can't help asking Rogers whether he thinks that there's a danger of overtheming our cultural landscape. Could there come a time when we wish for the somber quiet of the Petersen House, where Lincoln actually died, rather than the sound-and-light show of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library? Judging from Rogers's response, it seems as though he has confronted this issue before.

"The 20th century was a century of machines -- the airplane and the telephone and the computer and the satellite," he begins. "Those things got us going faster than ever before. So in the 21st century, we're faster and we're bigger and we're smaller and we're taller. The question is, Why?

"The 21st century will be a search for meaning," he continues. "We're going to find meaning in stories that tell us who we are. Story was the principal tool of Jesus Christ, the Bible, the Torah, Abe Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt. Story is what touches people. Story is what changes lives. And that's what we do here."

Scott Kirsner (kirsner@worldnet.att.net) is a Fast Company contributing editor. Contact Bob Rogers (brc@brcweb.com) by email.