Interview: Chronic Insanity's Joe Strickland on Apple of Discord

Photo: Pexels

Later this month, Chronic Insanity will take over all five floors of Nottingham's People Hall for Apple of Discord, a multi-hour, free-roaming immersive experience based around the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the spark that set the Trojan war in motion.

Blending cabaret performances, puzzles and quests, one-on-one experiences and character interactions, the production brings large-scale immersive theatre to Nottingham audiences and will offer an accessible alternative to the London-based shows that make up the majority of the UK's immersive work.

Ahead of the opening of Apple of Discord, we spoke with Chronic Insanity's Artistic Director, Joe Strickland, about the production.

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Immersive Rumours: Hi Joe! Thanks for speaking with us today. Do you mind telling us a bit about Chronic Insanity’s approach to creating theatre of all kinds?

Joe Strickland: We’ve always been a theatre company that believes that anything can be theatre so long as that 'liveness' feeling exists within its exhibition. So for every traditional play we’ve done, we have many other forms we’ve explored, from immersive theatre, live music, magic shows, ARGs, virtual reality, spatial audio, play-at-home card games and digital art festivals. We’ve produced over 150 productions in the past 6 years, and Apple of Discord will be where we get to show off everything we’ve learned over the past half a decade.

Immersive Rumours: Later this month, you’re taking over People’s Hall in Nottingham with your largest show to date, Apple of Discord. What can audiences expect when they step inside?

Joe Strickland: We’re bringing a blend of all different types of immersive experiences to audiences in Nottingham. The ground floor, our wedding venue for the story, will host an immersive cabaret and event all evening. Our first floor will hold our looping promenade theatre stories. And all five floors of the venue will be home to one-on-ones, video game-like quests, and miniature scenes with varying levels of immersion and interactivity. It’s as much immersive theatre and culture as we can fit inside one building for 3 hours every evening!

Photo: Rachael Halaburda

Immersive Rumours: Greek mythology has served as the inspiration for a number of notable immersive productions in the last few years, from Punchdrunk’s The Burnt City to smaller shows such as Bacchanalia and The Shop for Mortals and All Fools. How did you settle on the wedding of Peleus and Thetis as the right story to tell for the show, and why do you think Greek mythology is such fertile ground for immersive theatre?

Joe Strickland: The Apple of Discord myth was such a lovely mixture of an event I think audiences would love to bear witness to, the marriage between a god and a mortal, and a lesser-known story from Greek mythology that allows audiences to meet a large variety of gods and figures from mythology they might have always wanted to meet, while also drawing a lot of parallels with our modern lives and politics.

I think the lack of a strict canon and the sheer number of different stories that it contains allow Greek mythology to be reinterpreted and retold in many different ways by many different companies, plus the oral storytelling tradition that it was initially powered by finds one of its homes in modern immersive arts, so I think there’s a shared DNA there stretching back thousands of years too.

Immersive Rumours: You’ve stated that one of Apple of Discord’s goals is to bring large-scale immersive theatre to a non-London audience. How has your approach to creating the show been informed by the fact that, for a lot of audience members, this may be their first encounter with immersive theatre?

Joe Strickland: We’ve been very aware of that and have tried to accommodate that at every step in our process. I think it helps that 'immersive' is such a wide term that you basically aren’t sure what you’re going to see a lot of the time even if you are a fan of the art form, so whenever we do an immersive show, it always has to have good onboarding, user experience design, welfare procedures for cast and audience, and flexibility to accommodate everyone’s needs and reasonable desires during the show.

We’ve also learned a lot about marketing the show, too, and how difficult it is to explain to people what it is you’re making when they have no reference point for what an immersive show might even begin to be. It’s been a fun challenge that, having overcome, will allow us to reach new audiences with immersive for this show and any others in the future we stage outside of the capital.

Photo: Kate Spencer

Immersive Rumours: As part of Apple of Discord, you’re taking over all five floors of The People’s Hall. Was there a certain space or feature within that venue that made you realise it was the right place to stage this show?

Joe Strickland: The building is Grade II* listed and is over 200 years old and is absolutely gorgeous, with original wallpaper, tiled floors, murals, fireplaces and staircases. Plus, the basement and caves below the venue have their own historic ties to rebellions throughout Nottingham's history. It was a massive space with the right energy to depict the slightly decaying world of an Olympus that is struggling to keep people’s belief, which is one of the main inspiration points for our production. There wasn’t a certain space or feature; it was the whole of it that inspired the show in a site-sympathetic way.

Immersive Rumours: Finally, this production brings together more than 30 collaborators, including artists from the Nottingham Shakespeare Company. How has Nottingham’s theatre community responded to the idea of creating a large-scale immersive production within the city?

Joe Strickland: With open arms, I’d say! Nottingham is one of the largest cities in the UK without a dedicated fringe theatre venue at the moment. The city has such a vibrant music, comedy, improv, literature and poetry scene that us in the theatre camp have been waiting for something exciting to sink our creative teeth into. The support for the project so far has been amazing, and I’m so looking forward to being able to show even more people what we’ve been up to once we open!

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Chronic Insanity's Apple of Discord runs at The People's Hall in Nottingham from 30th March to 5th April 2026. Tickets are priced at £30.00 for the three-hour experience and £20.00 for the reduced two-hour experience. To find out more and book tickets, visit universe.com