(Above) A scene from Theater of the Mind. Photo by Matthew DeFeo. (Click on images to view larger versions.)

By Steven Dahlman

Nov. 27, 2025 – It took just two weeks to sell 3,000 tickets to Talking Heads co-founder David Byrne’s immersive theatrical experience opening next March at Reid Murdoch Building.

Theater of the Mind will take 16 audience members at a time on a 75-minute “journey of self-reflection, discovery, and imagination inspired by and grounded in neuroscience,” according to Goodman Theatre, which is producing the experience as part of its 2025/2026 season.

Performances will start every 15 minutes. There will be 124 performances each week. (Right) The disco scene in Theater of the Mind. Photo by Matthew DeFeo.

“Audiences will see, feel, taste, and hear this intimate and immersive journey of how we perceive and create our worlds,” according to The Goodman. “Led by a Guide whose stories are inspired from the creators’ lives, audiences will explore how they perceive the world through sensory experiments that reveal the inner mysteries of the brain.”

Tickets went on sale on November 7 and range in price from $66 to $96. Initial ticket sales, says Goodman Theatre, have “exceeded projections.”

Friedman Properties says the theater project has signed a lease for 19,000 square feet of space on the ground floor of Reid Murdoch Building.

Theater inspired by actual neuroscience

Byrne created Theater of the Mind with writer/investor Mala Gaonkar. Elmhurst native Andrew Scoville will direct it.

“It’s a different level of understanding, a different kind of knowledge – visceral, immediate, and profound,” said Byrne (left). Photo by Hugo Hentoff

“The film and theater adage ‘show, don’t tell’ became a guiding principle in discovering a way to include these experiences in an entertaining and engaging show,” he said.

Gaonkar says she and Byrne consulted with cognitive neuroscience laboratories “to see how some of the most basic human intuitions determine how humans react.”

They concluded the experiments and concepts “seemed as engaging as any piece of theater.”

Theater of the Mind premiered in Denver on August 31, 2022. It will open in Chicago on March 11, 2026.

Theater among five leases signed recently at Reid Murdoch

The theater space is part of 107,000 square feet of leases Friedman Properties says it has completed recently at the 104-year-old Reid Murdoch Building, now an official City of Chicago landmark. The Chicago-based real estate investment and development firm acquired the eight-story, 320,000-square-foot building in 1998.

The leases include a new tenant, Smartly, an AI-powered advertising technology company that signed for 5,000 square feet of office space. Storck USA, which has had offices in the building since 2002, expanded from 20,000 to 30,000 square feet. The Motion Agency, a marketing agency located in the building since 2018, expanded from 20,000 to 25,000 square feet. And River Roast renewed its 28,000-square-foot restaurant space that has overlooked the Chicago River since 2014.

“The steady leasing activity at the Reid Murdoch Building speaks to the lasting appeal of places that intentionally combine work, dining, entertainment, and retail experiences in a walkable urban setting,” said Albert Friedman (right), Chairman/CEO of Friedman Properties.

“In many ways, the building mirrors River North’s character, where a diversity of uses reflects the neighborhood’s balance of professional and social vibrancy,” Friedman said.

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