2nd Annual UP CLOSE Festival – an immersive theater event modeled after the community organizing principles of Jane Jacobs – invites its audiences (ages 5 and up) to navigate a 360° pre-show installation, then engage in a series of 10-minute pieces devised by some of NYC’s most adventurous theatre artists. This year, the program includes a life-size game of chess inspired by the ‘90s-era conflict between two local chess shops; a laboratory with sound scientists from an imagined experimental wing of the famed Bell Labs; and a historical dig into the soil of the urban sanctuary that is St. Luke’s in the Fields’ community garden.