Practitioner
Megan Markham
Writer-performer, Phoenix Tears Productions
Interviewed 27 July 2026, 3:30 PM
Works The Ritual · Perfect Partner (200 performances) · Co-Witching
Experienced for this research Perfect Partner, 19 July 2026, performed by Markham herself · Co-Witching, 26 July 2026
This page is provisional until Megan Markham has reviewed it for error. That undertaking was given at the outset of every interview and it stands.
Compliance is the default state
People will do an easy yes almost every time. They want to follow directions and do a good job. It is genuinely difficult to get someone to refuse the social contract of a call: you have to offer three to five opportunities to refuse before anyone actually takes one. In Perfect Partner, asked whether they were prepared to be open and honest, roughly ninety-nine percent said yes. Across a hundred calls, one person said no.
The failure it implies
“If you are asking a question and expecting the answer you want, that’s a failure of immersive design.” She finds it frustrating as a participant herself.
Designing for the saboteur
One participant pretended to perform every step of the ritual and then revealed at the end that she had done none of it. Markham rewrote the refusal ending so the character is tricked rather than defeated. She now prepares for people not doing what they say they are doing.
Six seconds, arrived at separately
Emotional build breaks with too much silence; six seconds is her maximum most of the time, because the participant cannot see her face. The exception is a deliberate sigh, with silence either side of it, around a question she wants them to actually think about.
Protecting the performer
Phoenix Tears will cancel a call rather than let an actor take it in a bad headspace, on the grounds that a one-on-one medium gives the participant no protection from the performer’s day. Callers have always been fine about it. She frames this as a design question: if the performer cannot run the A play, is there a B and a C?