Helen Hayes Award nomination for “Healing Wars” (Arena Stage)

▲ 2015: 2014: Craig Noel Award nomination for “Time and the Conways” (Old Globe)

2011: OBIE Award special citation for design for “Sleep No More” (Punchrunk / Emursive)

2011: IRNE nominee for best costume design for “Cabaret” (American Repertory Theater)

2011: Broadwayworld nominee for best costume design for “Cabaret” (American Repertory Theater) ▲ 2010: Elliot Norton Award winner for best costume design for “The Comedy of Errors” (Commonwealth Shakespeare) ego,” he said. “There were remarkable theaters here, and I wanted to be a part of that. When I moved here, I had no connections. I did cold calls at every theater I could.”

The Old Globe snapped him up for its costume shop, and in 2013 he got his first design offer to create costumes for the Globe’s West Coast premiere of “Be a Good Little Widow.” Since then, he has worked continuously as a lead designer at both the Globe and the Playhouse.

It was through the Old Globe that Optika Moderna was born. He mentioned his idea for creating immersive shows to Old Globe costume designer Charlotte Devaux, and officials at the Globe agreed to sponsor his application for a Creative Catalyst Grant from the San Diego Foundation. His grant-winning idea was to take a famous character from Mexican folklore and tell her backstory in a walk-through multi-sensory installation.

La Llorona is a character of Latin American legend who drowned her children and roams the earth mourning their loss. In “Waking La Llorona,” which Reynoso created with several colleagues from “Sleep No More,” guests explored La Llorona’s life, her unhappy marriage and her madness. At the beginning of the 30-minute walk-through bilingual show at Bread & Salt in Barrio Logan, each guest met with an Optika “optometrist” who fitted them with a set of goggles that either blacked out their vision or provided only a limited field of vision. The surreal and sometimes uncomfortable experience recreated La Llorona’s warped mental state.

The workshop production was so successful that Christopher Ashley, La Jolla Playhouse’s artistic director, asked Reynoso to remount it a month later for its 2017 Without Walls Festival (WOW). Ashley then invited Reynoso to mount another Optika Moderna show at the 2019 WOW festival at Liberty Station, “Las Quinceañeras.” Now Reynoso, who is an artist-in-residence this year at the Playhouse, is back for a third WOW fest with “Portaleza.”

Ashley said he loves Reynoso’s work because it “changes the lens you’re looking at the world through.”

“I’m very excited by it,” Ashley said. “He walks you through and controls what you hear and what you see, and you end up as an audience member giving yourself over to trust,” Ashley said. “It’s so evocative and personal, you just say, ‘take me where you will, show me what you will.’ ”

Different paths

Like “Waking La Llorona,” “Las Quinceañeras” dealt with another famous Mexican tradition, the over-the-top coming-of-age parties for 15-year-old girls. Two audience members entered the walkthrough show in the blackout goggles but traveled different paths for two very different observations of a quinceañera that mysteriously ends in tragedy. Only after the two audience members exit the building can they compare notes and piece together the whole story.

Reynoso said quinceañera parties represent the time when girls are leaving behind one season of life and entering a new one. Art mirrored life for Reynoso because as he was writing the show, his marriage was breaking down as he came to terms with his sexuality. He feared the loss of his wife, who is his best friend, and his separation from their children, ages 3 and 6. Fortunately, they are now co-parenting their children in a positive way he’d never imagined, and he is now embracing his new life as a gay man.

This interview marks the first time he has ever spoken publicly about his coming-out process, which was yet another time in his life where he took a risky leap and found a safe landing on the other side.

“It’s beautiful to see that something so scary and so impossible at the time has led to possibilities,” he said. “Imagination is what is the requirement for possibility. I think if we can imagine that something could be possible and feels uncomfortable and outside our realm of understanding, it can lead to some wonderful discovery.”

pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com