Marina Gershon's "The Escape Room"!

Totally Awesome Grantee Spotlight: Marina Gershon creates "The Escape Room."

An interdisciplinary artist, Marina Gershon (pictured) is known for her collaborative puppetry, storytelling, and immersive performance work. She lives in Freeville with fellow artists in the Dacha Project collective.

Marina received a 2026 CAP Strategic Opportunity Stipend (SOS) to develop The Escape Room, an imaginative classroom arts-education project she conceived that was launched at Freeville Elementary School this past June. 

Working alongside her fellow artist-pirates Lily Gershon, Isaac Sharp, Marietta Synodis, and Annette Spearman, a first grade classroom was transformed into an immersive world of pirates, puzzles, and discovery that blended creative problem-solving, advanced thinking skills, and teamwork

So what specifically happens inside The Escape Room?

Marina says: A mischievous troll stole my pirate treasure chest and locked it away, so I enlisted an entire class of brave young pirates to help me win it back!

My crew and I transformed the classroom into a swashbuckling pirate adventure, complete with a pirate ship, a cheeky parrot, and hidden treasures waiting to be discovered. Before officially joining the crew, each aspiring pirate solved a clever riddle to earn their pirate hat and bandanna.

(Lily Gershon pictured) Once their pirate training was complete, the immersive adventure began! The pirates used LED flashlights to reveal invisible-ink messages, chilled clues with ice cubes to uncover hidden words on cold-sensitive paper, and used the warmth of their foreheads to reveal secret messages on heat-sensitive vinyl. They cracked colorful ciphers, pieced together jigsaw puzzles, and followed each clue to the next challenge.

With every puzzle solved, the pirates grew more confident, strengthened their teamwork, and moved closer to the final prize. At last, they unlocked the treasure chest, reclaimed the stolen pirate booty, and celebrated their success together.

Marina credits the Strategic Opportunity Stipend with helping turn the ambitious idea into reality: Every great pirate needs a little wind in their sails, and the SOS Grant provided exactly that. I am deeply grateful for their generosity, which brought this adventure to life and will continue to inspire curiosity, creativity, and imagination as many more young pirates set sail on future learning adventures.

Editor's note: Marina please create a pirate escape room for adults. I want to do this! —Robin

Photographs by Marietta Synodis.

Strategic Opportunity Stipends (SOS): Tompkins County artists with a consistent recent record of producing art can apply for a very specific and strategic opportunity that will take their career to the next level. Funding comes from three sources: a local private foundation, CAP's fundraising, and the Tompkins Today and Tomorrow Fund & Maralyn W. Fleming Fund of the Community Foundation of Tompkins County.