The COVID-19 pandemic affected all of us in different ways. For Tiffany and Matt Donovan, lockdown gave them time to focus on family.
“This was back in 2020, when everyone was going crazy,” Tiffany said. “We’re looking for alternative methods for our son, who suffers from mental illness. We’re looking for something different to try to help him out.”
An exploratory trip to a rage room in Tulsa led to a total life shift.
“We were like, ‘This is the best thing. We’ve gotta bring this to our area,’” Tiffany said. “So with that, we decided to quit both of our jobs and just go in feet first.”
Within the first few months of operation at the Edmond location of Chaos Factory, 2215 NW 78th St., Suite A, Matt knew they had something rare in our area when a group visited from Arkansas to rage.
“They said, ‘We just came to see you,’” Matt said, “and it kind of gave me goosebumps.”
After that visit, Matt put a map on the wall asking guests to place a pin showing where they were from.
“We had Yukon, we had outside of Edmond and Oklahoma City, of course, and we had Norman, and we had Choctaw. Everybody was filling up,” Matt said, “and most people came from Norman.”
The second, larger Chaos Factory location in Norman has three rage rooms, a splatter room (think Jackson Pollack’s dream workspace), an all-ages Smash Alley and a party room that has seen birthdays, corporate events, graduations and divorce parties.
Smashing safely
Guests arrive and sign their waivers, then it’s on to the smashing good stuff.
“Each person that goes in the room gets a crate full of items,” Tiffany said. “Dishes, bottles, electronics, random knick-knacks from grandma’s house.”
In addition to the included crate of doodads for demolition, guests can grab experience enhancers like extra bottles, confetti bombs and ceramics. Those needing to release a bit more rage have some bigger add-on options.
“We also have TVs and windshields as well,” Tiffany said. “So if you’re thinking about an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend and you’re like, ‘I wanna pretend like I’m gonna hit their car,’ you can bring a windshield in the room and smash away.”
Guests are welcome to bring their own items to annihilate from home, but check with Chaos Factory first to make sure your item is safe to destroy on-site.
Heading into the Splatter Room, each guest receives three bottles of neon blacklight reactive paint, a 9×12-inch canvas, paintbrushes and plastic seat covers for the ride home.
Add-ons include white T-shirts and hats, extra protective gear, glitter tubes and splat balls, large cotton balls swimming in paint that you can dip and redip for extra splatting fun.
“You can squirt paint on your canvas; you can squirt it on each other, on the walls. I mean, just go crazy and wild,” Tiffany said. “Our paint is water-based. It will come out of your hair, skin and clothes really easily, and it is non-toxic as well.”
“And it’s gluten-free,” Matt joked.
In the Rage Rooms, guests are required to wear hard-soled, closed-toe shoes, and Chaos Factory provides the rest.
“We want to make sure that everyone is safe before they go into the rage room,’ Tiffany said. “We provide coveralls, a helmet with a face shield and some cut-resistant gloves.”
Each Rage Room is set up similarly with a large cable spool, a chain with a clip to hang breakables from, a Bluetooth speaker for your personalized rage playlist and a window for those who would rather watch the destruction than participate. The plywood walls are spray-painted with positive affirmations.
“We try to put little positive notes: ‘You’re amazing. Survivor. Just do it. Keep going. Rise above,’” Tiffany said. “There’s a lot of negativity in the world, so we just try to bring it up a little bit.”
While the Rage Rooms are strictly for ages 12 and over, all ages are welcome in the splatter room and Smash Alley, where guests get bottles and a small basket of breakables to throw at the wall and shelf targets.
“We only require you putting on some goggles in here, and then you’re able to throw things as hard as you can,” Tiffany said. “You can hear that loud crashing noise and still get the satisfaction from that.”
Though the Donovans said one of the biggest challenges of Chaos Factory is finding new and exciting items to smash, the rewards have outweighed any hurdles.
“Mainly people come in just to have a great time, but there’s also people that are hurting,” Tiffany said. “And so the blessing part, the good part about this, the rewarding part about our job is that we get to help people and we get to be the arena for people to come in and just let it all out, let loose, forget about their problems for a little bit.”
Visit chaosfactoryok.com.
This article appears in Summer Guide 2025.