The playrooms

The work revolves around the dramatic tension between a romanticized “better past” and the vision of a promised future that may never have truly existed—conveyed through themes such as escapism, reflection, and acceptance.

Created in the direct context of today’s fast-paced and emotionally overloaded world, The Playrooms emerges from the human need to escape reality and reinterpret it. The production is directly inspired by The Backrooms, the internet urban legend about liminal and unsettling spaces that evoke nostalgia, unease, fear, and existential uncertainty.

Using this universe as an idea and starting point, the piece explores fears associated with routine, stress, emotional alienation, and uncertainty about the future. At the same time, it opens up space for reflection, hope, and transformation.

Conceptually and aesthetically, the work is influenced by internet-inspired genres such as dreamcore and weirdcore. Through distorted nostalgia, liminal imagery, and dreamlike atmospheres, a fascinating, darker, and more vulnerable parallel world emerges within the original universe of Umi no Hikari.