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Photo: World Experience Organisation World Experience Organisation (WXO) today announced a new venue for its forthcoming World Experience Summit (WXS 2025). The event will run from 29th April through to 1st May 2025 at Phantom Peak in Canada Water. This year’s Summit will see Phantom Peak’s enigmatic in-world corporation JONACO join as Official Corporate Partners, with the town’s residents offering up a host of surprises across the event's three days, including a keynote from Mayor Pocket himself. World Experience Summit debuted at Phantom Peak in 2023 before moving to New York’s House of Yes for its 2024 event. This year’s event will see over 500 of the Experience Economy’s leading professionals descend on East London - over double the number who attended 2023’s debut event.  Photo: World Experience Organisation In the two years since they last hosted the Summit, Phantom Peak has gone from strength to strength. Its average yearly audience has grown twofold, and its community now boasts almost 1,000 superfans with a 30% return rate. It's received multiple awards, including the TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice Award (top 10% of things to do worldwide), and a coveted blooloop Innovation Award , naming it the global best immersive experience for 2024. Speaking on WXO 2025, World Experience Organisation founder and CEO, James Wallman, comments: Phantom Peak is a living, breathing example of the Experience Economy in action. Not only is it an amazing immersive experience for an intergenerational audience, it's a financially successful operation that shows how experiences can be as profitable as they are awe-inspiring. Nick Moran, co-founder of Phantom Peak, said the following on hosting WXO 2025 for the second time: Phantom Peak is where it all started for the World Experience Summit, and we can’t wait to welcome back old friends as well as meet the new ones the WXO’s fast-growing event is attracting. Photo: World Experience Organisation World Experience Summit 2025 is part of the debut London Experience Week, which takes place between Monday 28 April and Friday 2 May 2025. As well as hosting the third iteration of the World Experience Summit, London Experience Week showcases the best of the UK capital city’s blossoming experience economy.  A citywide Experience Safari will be announced in the coming weeks, with a full roster of London venues and events that both WXS attendees and the public can visit free of charge. London Experience Week partners London & Partners are working with WXO to secure the very best in London venues, with an initial roster to include exclusive behind-the-scenes experiences at the likes of Monopoly Lifesized & London Tea Tour , Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience , Battersea Power Station , The Crystal Maze LIVE Experience , Bridge Command , Cahoots Borough , Frameless , Paradox Museum , Alcotraz , ExCel's Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition and the forthcoming Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue . WXO Head of Content, Mike Goldsmith, comments: Phantom Peak is a superb example of the capital’s experiential creativity and business smarts and thus the perfect venue for London Experience Week. As well as hosting the best speakers, talks and experiences, we are contractually obliged to announce that World Experience Summit 2025 will also see JONACO, the company that canonically runs the town of Phantom Peak, join us as Official Corporate Partners. That means the Summit will not only see the more ‘interesting’ townsfolk of Phantom Peak entertain WXS attendees over all three days, but Mayor Pocket has some ‘surprise announcements’ which he threatens to reveal in the keynote session he has insisted on giving. We here at WXO are a little concerned but have been told that an unwavering belief in the Cosmic Platypus and JONACO will guide us. Gulp. Photo: World Experience Organisation The World Experience Organisation Summit will run from 29th April to 1st May 2025 at Phantom Peak in Canada Water. London Experience Week will run from 28th April to 3rd May 2025 at various venues around London, with more details to be announced. To find out more about the events and book tickets, visit worldxo.org

Photo: Helen Murray The cast has been announced for the highly-anticipated immersive production STOREHOUSE, in which audiences will step into a 9,000-square metre underworld where humanity’s stories have been archived since the dawn of the internet. STOREHOUSE is the debut production from Sage & Jester, whose collective experience spans the likes of Secret Cinema, Punchdrunk, BBC Studios, and Warner Music. The show promises to be one of the most artistically ambitious, large-scale immersive theatre events ever to be staged in the UK, delivering a cutting-edge and thought-provoking journey. Leaving us questioning our role in today’s information ecosystem, a multi-award-winning cast of voiceover actors will guide us through the STOREHOUSE narrative as the four founding members. They will be joined by a cast of real-life performers in Deptford. The voiceover actors involved in STOREHOUSE include the multi-award-winning Toby Jones (Mr Burton, Tetris, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Mr Bates vs The Post Office) and celebrated Meera Syal CBE FRSL (Paddington 2; The Kumars at No. 42; Yesterday; The Devil's Hour), joined by the formidable Kathryn Hunter (Black Doves; Poor Things; Harry Potter; Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead) and rising star Billy Howle (Dear Octopus; The Perfect Couple; On Chesil Beach; The Serpent). They will bring to life a group of radical visionaries, who believed that by storing and analysing all human knowledge, they could ignite the dawn of a new digital consciousness. As their surroundings crumble and secrets unfold, the true cost of controlling the narrative will become clear as audiences are urged to examine their vulnerability in the face of power. Image: Sage & Jester Leading the physical company in Deptford will be Nina Smith (Britannia, Sky; Doctors, BBC), Dawn Butler (Doctors, BBC), Bonnie Adair (Here We Go, BBC; Innocent, ITV) and Zachary Pang (Disney Channel Asia; Julie: The Musical, The Other Palace). They will be joined by Nat Kennedy (Dorian, Reading Rep Theatre), Elizabeth Hollingshead (The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde, Maximum Effort), Chris Agha (The Marriage of Figaro, Royal Opera House) and Harriett O’Grady (Peaky Blinders: The Rise, Immersive Everywhere). As well as Rob Leetham (Little Red Riding Hood – A Trial, Alnwick Playhouse), Scott Karim (The Great, Hulu; Dracula, BBC), Grace Hussey-Burd (I’m Angry But Look At This Dog, Unbound Theatre) and Darrel Bailey (Shadow & Bone, Netflix; EastEnders, BBC). Composer Anna Meredith will provide the musical finale for the production, as audiences are thrust into a battle between the defenders of Truth and the keepers of Order. Immersed in an underworld of knowledge, audiences will explore a vast, ever-shifting digital archive stored by an underground collective—where every news story, message, and meme ever shared has been meticulously preserved in a quest for higher collective wisdom. As the final founder fades and narratives collide, audiences will become part of the story, navigating this epic digital labyrinth, making choices, and determining the future of this precarious world. Fusing art, technology, and cutting-edge storytelling, STOREHOUSE is set to be one of the UK's most artistically daring and large-scale immersive theatre experiences, challenging how we perceive truth, trust and the narratives that shape our world. STOREHOUSE runs from 4th June to 20th September at Deptford Storehouse. Tickets are priced from £27.50. For more information and to book tickets, visit sageandjester.com

Guests step into a war-ravaged world and take control of their own digital avatar in DARKFIELD's latest immersive audio experience, Arcade. Photo: Kate Edwards After only a few months away from the capital, DARKFIELD has returned with a short residency at Shoreditch Town Hall. Their takeover of the Town Hall basement venue, The Ditch, is made up of three in-person debuts for DOUBLE, VISITORS and ETERNAL, which all previously premiered under the company's digital DARKFIELD Radio banner, and their latest show ARCADE, serves as the 'headliner' of the event. DARKFIELD is best known for creating 360-degree sound experiences delivered through headphones such as FLIGHT, COMA and S É ANCE, which use binaural audio, intricate sound design, sensory effects and complete darkness to immerse guests in intense audio-based shows that typically take place in their trademark shipping containers. Photo: Kate Edwards For the first time in a DARKFIELD experience, guests now have the agency to decide how their story unfolds. Taking control of Milk, an amnesic avatar dropped into the middle of an ongoing war between the North Block and South Block, guests respond to questions and prompts by pressing the single button on the panel of their individual arcade machine to answer 'Yes', with no response signalling 'No'. In addition, there's a coin slot and return tray to facilitate 'paying' for items such as guns and access to areas that are otherwise off-limits. They're all pretty limited ways of interacting with the story as it develops, but for something so basic, the paths it leads you down are branching and varied. Within ARCADE, these 'Yes' or 'No' decisions can have drastic consequences. A wrong answer can result in your avatar being killed at a moment's notice (something we found out less than a minute into our playthrough), and the trajectory of your story can veer off in a wildly different direction from what other guests are experiencing without you even realising how it happened. Photo: Kate Edwards Violence is near enough guaranteed within the world of ARCADE, regardless of whether you try to be a pacifist or mercenary, and with every bullet fired comes some practical effects built into the arcade machine that remove the barrier between what you hear and what you feel. There's a tension and anxiety built into the show's sound design that only amplifies as you get deeper into the experience, and every decision begins to carry more weight. Across the board, the voice acting is well done - Milk's emotionless, simple replies raise questions around just how desensitised they've become to the world around them despite only just spawning in, and the wide range of creepy and opportunistic characters Milk meets along the way all carry an off-putting air to them. Photo: Kate Edwards It'd be redundant of us to give details on exactly what happened to our avatar during our time with ARCADE, as everyone's experience will differ greatly, but it's worth noting that the tone of this experience is much darker than any of DARKFIELD's previous work. Offhandedly, characters will offer up activities or new paths that'd turn heads and have the police called if said outside the confines of your headphones. The show's setting - a dystopian world in which the lives of people hold little value - goes some way to explaining why the characters Milk encounters are so void of empathy or compassion, but it's nonetheless surprising to hear people talk about shooting animals and children in the same way we'd suggest grabbing a coffee. Photo: Kate Edwards For completionists who want to explore every narrative diversion and unlock every possible situation, ARCADE might present a challenge with its limited run-time and expansive list of branching storylines. If you're happy to let your coins fall where they may and not stress too much about what you've missed out on, ARCADE is a unique and unsettling half-hour in a dystopian nightmare. Time will tell if DARKFIELD chooses to continue offering guests the same level of agency available in ARCADE, but if the choice were presented to us, we'd be tapping the button on our arcade machine. ★★★★ ARCADE is playing at Shoreditch Town Hall alongside three other DARKFIELD audio experiences until 17th April 2025. To book and find out more info, visit shoreditchtownhall.com For more reviews of experiences like DARKFIELD's ARCADE, check out our recent Reviews .

The smash-hit immersive exhibition depicting Tutankhamun's journey into the afterlife arrives in the UK for a 14-week run at Immerse LDN. Photo: Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter uncovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. That discovery - which is regarded as one of the 20th century's most significant archaeological finds - quickly turned the little-known pharaoh  into one of the most famous people in the world some 3,000 years after his death and sparked an interest in Ancient Egypt previously not seen by the general public - a phenomenon dubbed 'Tutmania'. Now, a little over 100 years on from Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition has arrived in London for a 14-week run at Immerse LDN below the Excel Centre. The exhibition has been on a world tour over the last few years and has already surpassed over 1.8 million visitors - a staggering number that shows the public's interest in Tutankhamun is as strong as ever. A mix of 360-degree immersive projections, virtual reality, and holograms alongside more traditional displays of replicas, Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition promises to transport visitors back to Ancient Egypt in a way those who have attended previous exhibitions on King Tut could only have dreamed of. Photo: Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition The opening rooms of Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition looks a lot like any other museum exhibition. Large wall-mounted panels provide information and context about Tutankhamun, their place in Egyptian civilisation, and their lineage; glass cabinets house numerous objects, and in the centre of the room is a golden funerary mask and sarcophagus. While nearly all of the items on display at this exhibition are, in fact, replicas (the originals are now part of a permanent collection at the Great Egyptian Museum in Giza), they give you an appreciation for the care and detail put into all the objects left to help the pharaoh on his journey into the afterlife. Further into the exhibition, the focus shifts to Howard Carter and explores his life leading up to and following the discovery of the tomb. Most of his excavations were funded by English aristocrat George Herbert, who had provided Carter with one final season's worth of funding just prior to the tomb's uncovering. Replicas of Carter's meticulous notes and sketches from that time are on display, which demonstrates just how methodically they worked after their discovery. Every item was catalogued, and blueprints of the tomb's layout and contents were documented with care and precision - something that was often far from the norm at the time. Photo: Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition The exhibition's main space, which offers 360-degree projections, lies behind a curtain at the far end of the traditional exhibition space. In stark contrast to some of the small trinkets and sheets of paper in the previous rooms, everything in this space is writ large. Standing 8 metres tall, the four walls of the space display an ever-changing series of bright, colourful, Instagrammable animations on a 30-minute loop. It's by far the most impressive part of Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition and will be the space visitors will likely spend most of their visit in, but it's worth noting that once visitors enter this room, the vast majority of the exhibition's educational information is now behind them. Broken up into eight chapters, covering everything from the origins of Egypt, the discovery of the tomb and the Egyptians' beliefs in life after death, the visuals constantly shift and evolve as they progress through each chapter. Nearly all of the content on offer in this room is abstract, and there's no storyline or dialogue to follow besides a brief chapter made up of footage from archival British Pathé newsreels . While the highlight of this section is Tutankhamun's journey into the realm of Osiris, in which the camera rapidly flies along the River Nile as the pharaoh journeys into the afterlife, we'd recommend staying in the space for the full 30-minute loop to get the most out of it. The room's size is quite stunning and truly engulfs your vision, absorbing you into the experience. Photo: Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition Later in the exhibition is the first of two virtual reality scenes. With visitors wearing their own headsets and seated on a swivel chair, they're free to look around as they again follow Tutankhamun's journey into the afterlife. Anyone familiar with the VR sections of Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience will notice some similarities, with constantly shifting vantage points and scenes on offer as you soar through the sky. After narrowly avoiding rivers of molten lava, the climax of this scene has Tutankhamun having his soul weighed against a feather - a judgement that will decide his fate in the afterlife. VR headsets later return for another scene, which allows visitors to step into the Metaverse and explore a virtual space on foot. Starting in Howard Carter's excavation camp, they're soon transported into the tombs below. This scene works in the same way as Horizon of Khufu, a VR experience that allows visitors to explore virtual renderings of the Giza Plateau and the Great Pyramid of Giza. Walking around this space alongside a dozen or more Howard Carter avatars, all gliding around without an expression adds some light-hearted humour to this portion of the exhibition, even if it's unintentional. Photo: Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition For many years now, London hasn't been short of immersive experiences that use projections. Long before the likes of Lightroom and Frameless opened, Immersive Van Gogh showed that there's a continued appetite for these kinds of experiences. In recent years, there's been a notable shift towards more educational immersive projections, with the likes of The Moonwalkers: A Journey with Tom Hanks at Lightroom and the BBC Earth Experience in Earl's Court leading the way. This exhibition feels like the next step in that journey, with history being presented on a scale not often seen. While there's constant debate around just how 'immersive' these kinds of experiences really are, they undoubtedly offer a modern, engaging way to learn about the world around us that's not always possible in traditional museum spaces. T utankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition manages to strike a balance between being both educational and entertaining and is an enjoyable couple of hours for families and groups looking to learn (a bit) more about Ancient Egypt, their views on eternal life, and the legacy of the boy king. ★★★ ½ Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition runs from 28th March to 29th June 2025 at Immersive LDN, Excel London. To find out more and book tickets, visit tutankhamunexperience.com/london For more coverage and reviews of experiences like Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition, check out our recent Reviews .

We grab our Orbs of Interaction and step into the Nether for Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue - a new immersive experience based on the best-selling video game. Photo: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue Minecraft, the open-world sandbox game adored by kids worldwide, is far and away the best-selling video game of all time. In 2023, it was confirmed to have crossed over 300 million sales, massively outselling its closest rival, Grand Theft Auto V, by around 125 million sales, and despite being 14 years old, it has a monthly player count larger than the population of most countries. While fans of Minecraft around the world had been eagerly anticipating the opening of A Minecraft Movie, those in London had another reason to be excited: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue has also just opened. Following a successful run in Dallas last year, this immersive Minecraft experience has its UK & European premiere at Corner Corner - a new venue in what's quickly becoming one of the defacto locations for new immersive experiences in London - Canada Water. Photo: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue Aimed primarily at families, Villager Rescue invites guests to step into the Minecraft universe, where they're tasked with saving a group of villagers who have been infected by a zombie horde. Taking on the role of heroes, guests must work to craft a cure before time runs out while going through seven different rooms that are lifted directly from the game's diverse world. It all begins with the Orb of Interaction - a glowing handheld device that acts as a multi-tool throughout the experience. With the flick of a wrist, it's able to chop down trees, craft items, open chests, fight mobs, act as a bow and arrow and sword, and transport resources. Following an introductory video featuring a duo of Minecraft characters, Tobin and Dayo, guests enter a woodland-themed training room to learn how to use their Orbs first-hand. Photo: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue With 360-degree projections on the walls and floor being rendered live in Unreal Engine, guests interact with the environment by waving or shaking their Orb of Interaction when standing on marked spots and can pick up items projected onto the floor by stepping on them. What these actions do depends on which item on the projected screens becomes highlighted - a tree will be chopped down for wood, an enemy knocked onto their back and despawned. The responsiveness of this project game world is pretty good, though sometimes you'll find yourself waving the Orb with nothing happening as a result. In what would soon become a running theme of our visit to Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue, the younger visitors in our larger group were running around collecting wood and stomping on projected apples with speed and dedication while the adults in the group took a more laid-back approach to resource gathering, likely aware that we'd need to preserve our energy for what was to come. With training complete, Tobin and Dayo guide guests through crafting tools and weapons by tapping their Orbs on chests or furnaces to collect resources and then placing them into the correct crafting table slots. It's a frantic game in which each crafting table is scored individually, allowing some light-hearted competition between guests. All of those resources are later used to expand and grow the village, which is presented on touch-screen displays in the following room. Photo: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue Those already familiar with Minecraft will likely be aware of what happens to the village once nightfall comes - a zombie siege spells disaster for the village population and gives guests their quest for the remainder of the experience: save the villagers (hence the experience's title..) Moving through different Overworld biomes, including a forest, tundra, and mines, guests continue to gather further resources by using their Orbs of Interaction to open chests, chop down sugar canes and beat up spiders. At the show's midpoint, the most complicated room (for those unfamiliar with the game) has guests crafting Obsidian to build a portal into the Nether by combining water and lava. The Obsidian is transferred onto a portal until it fully lights up, which allows us to move out of the Overworld. Throughout the experience, there are a dozen or more real-world objects - like the portal - that respond to guests Orb's, which adds a much-needed element of tactility to the otherwise projection-heavy experience. Photo: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue From there, it's a hop, skip and jump across a floor made of lava to fight a mob in an arcade-style game that has guests throwing felt 'snowballs' at a projection of Wither Skeletons, Zombie Pigman and finally, Blaze, in a fire-filled landscape. Regardless of people's familiarity with Minecraft, this portion of the experience is the most engaging and fun - it's also the only section that the Orb's are needed for. The previously mentioned energy conserved by the adults in our group was all but expelled following this section, with numerous comments about the experience being like a workout between older visitors. The younger guests showed no signs of flagging though... Rounding off the experience, all of our gathered resources are brewed into a potion to save the villagers, with a practical Brewing Stand letting off smoke to show its complete. All visitors to Villager Rescue, regardless of age, are given a unique 25-digit code to redeem a Minecraft Experience Digital Cape in-game, which is a nice souvenir of their visit for Minecraft players. Photo: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue Judging by how much fun the younger members of our group were having, Villager Rescue delivers exactly what it promised: an opportunity for fans to step into the world they've spent countless hours exploring digitally in real life. While the experience might not convert non-gamers, it's packed with dozens of nods and small references to the original game that will delight long-time players. The opportunity to run around and play within such a faithfully crafted environment will also have a lot of younger die-hard fans smiling from ear to ear. If you have kids who love Minecraft, you probably don't need this review to tell you if they'll enjoy it - as they almost certainly will. For adults who are unfamiliar with the game and are without kids, the likes of Immersive Gamebox or Escape Arcade will likely offer a more rewarding (though equally exhausting) experience. Photos: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue ★★★ Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue runs at Corner Corner in Canada Water until 29th June 2025. Tickets are priced from £27.00 for Adults and £22.00 for Children. To find out more and book tickets, visit minecraftexperience.com/london For more reviews of immersive experiences like Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue, check out our recent reviews .

Voidspace Live , the two-day festival focusing on interactive arts, installations and exhibits, returns to Theatre Deli near Liverpool Street in June following a sold-out 2024 edition. Taking over the venue across the weekend of 7th and 8th June 2025, Voidspace Live will feature over 30 shows (including four LARPs, three one-on-one shows, one self-guided audio piece and two Jubensha games), over a dozen installations and four workshops. It's also been confirmed that 15 pieces of work will have their public premiere as part of Voidspace Live. Voidspace Live 2024. Photo: James Lawson For the 2025 edition of Voidspace Live, the festival will feature work from the likes of Deadweight Theatre (creators of 2024's The Manikins: a work in progress), Seth Kriebel and Zoe Bouras (who performed The Unbuilt Room at Voidspace Live 2024) and Emily Carding (actor, writer and theatre maker who specialises in Shakespeare, responsive immersive theatre, and the horror genre). The Voidspace is an organisation that explores and platforms interactive arts that focuses on performances, texts, games and multimedia pieces that invite their audience to participate in some way, in addition to watching, reading or listening. Think interactive theatre, fiction and poetry, performance art, arthouse games, audio-visual work, LARP, and playful media of all kinds.  Voidspace Live 2024. Photo: James Lawson Speaking on the line-up announcement, Voidspace's Katy Naylor said: We are absolutely thrilled to be bringing Voidspace Live (in association with Theatre Deli) back this year, bigger and better than ever. It's so exciting to be able to fill Theatre Deli with such an incredible range of performances, games and installations. Expect to get stuck in and try out something new, as we bring you new work from familiar faces, incredible work from artists you've never met before, and a lot of surprises. The full line-up for Voidspace Live 2025 is listed below, with additional shows to be announced in the future. Tickets are on sale via this link . SATURDAY AND SUNDAY Untitled By Deadweight Theatre Deadweight are a London-based experimental theatre company specialising in interactive performance. Their multi-disciplinary approach to making work draws on their backgrounds in scenography, dramaturgy, filmmaking, and visual art. Their show The Manikins: A Work in Progress was a sell-out hit in 2024. Jury Games Photo: Jury Games Friends of the Void Jury Games return to the festival this year! Jury Games are award-winning interactive experiences that dive into thrilling criminal mysteries. A blend of crime-solving and immersive theatre. Look through the evidence of a case, interrogate the defendant, cast your verdict. Hamlet (An Experience) By Emily Carding After breaking new ground with award-winning Richard III (A One Person Show) , which was a hit at last year’s Voidspace Live, Emily Carding brings us a new interpretation of Hamlet and you, the audience, are the players arriving at Elsinore. Hamlet needs your help to take on the roles of his friends and family and resolve the great questions of life. Journey through the play together and become immersed in the story like never before. Hamlet has the questions. Do you have the answers? Cafe +44 By Maria Jose Siminez Silva In this moving audio piece, which takes place in and around Deli’s cafe, the artist invites you to see her history through her eyes by exploring the history of immigration in her own family and how she found a home away from home. for better [or] worse By Yiannis Pappas Maria Ambramovic Institute performance artist Yiannis Pappas presents a brand new long durational participatory performance, conceived especially for Voidspace Live. Come along and join in making something very special together. Uncle Barry’s Birthday Party by Mia Foster and Ariana Aragon You are invited to share an evening with us in celebration of our dear Uncle Barry… Our guests ought to know that interactions will occur at this party, as they do at any, and ours will involve some light touch. If this will make you uncomfortable, please feel free to decline this invitation. However, if you want to hug cake and eat friends, please join us! We would love to have you, and know Uncle Barry would too. SATURDAY ONLY FAUST By Seth Kriebel and Zoe Bouras Photo: Emma Bailey. Image: Elsa Kriebel Seth Kriebel and Zoe Bouras bring us Faust , a new version of a very old story, an interactive twist on the classic tale of the infamous doctor and his deal with the devil. Seth and Zoe performed The Unbuilt Room at Voidspace Live 2024 and are theatre makers, performers and devisors. ‘The intersection of our Venn diagram: We both make unusual performance!’ The Unbuilt Room started nearly 14 years ago and has been performed all over the country, one of many other interactive shows the pair have created and toured. Where We Meet By Unwired Dance Theatre Photo: Unwired Dance Theatre What if you could hear others’ inner thoughts? Immersive dance theatre meets XR tech to spark human connection in an increasingly digital – yet divided and lonely – world. Step into the minds of three unique characters, and join them as they embark on individual and uplifting journeys of self-discovery. Where We Meet is an interactive and immersive dance theatre performance, where you’re in control to reveal the hidden stories behind each character. We invite you to rediscover the joy of human connection, as an antidote to today’s increasingly digital – yet divided and lonely – world. Devil In The Details By Hazel Dixon and Usva Inei A family comes together to perform a powerful ritual; in order to keep living their extravagant lifestyle, they must pledge themselves to a dark and mysterious power. Using an ancient first edition of the Picture of Dorian Grey, they’ve found a way to store hardships into a portrait. However, with any boon comes dangerous consequences. Audience members will switch between playing members of the family and playing the devils that emerge from their portraits. As family members, participants will interact with one another, while as devils, participants will engage in art-making. The progression of the art will reflect the progression of the characters. Who – or what – will you become? No Wet Socks By Ella Raymont and Arlo Howard Become a happy camper and take part in activities and crafts, guided by your camp counsellor! No Wet Socks is all the best bits of summer camp – with no wet socks; an interactive experience that transports us back to the joys of camp, condensing two weeks of activities into just one hour. This unique journey is designed to remind adults of the importance of slowing down, sparking their imagination, and reconnecting with their inner child. Only Exit By Camden Barrett and Angela Rauf ONLY EXIT is a performance practice/installation which looks at the collision of found space and public space in performance, and the utilization of wearable apparatus in performance. Anarchy, anarchitecture, and pleasure in transgressive protest are all themes in this mischief-making participatory piece. Interact with signage available in the found space, as well as visual and audio ephemera/apparitions, and challenge learned spatial behaviour as you commune and collaborate with each other and the space… or make a mess and/or simply watch the joyful chaos unfold. Spy of the Year By Tom Black, Arlo Howard, Chloe Mashiter, Hannah Raymond-cox Bringing Jubensha – the hit Chinese murder-mystery/RPG/theatrical hybrid – to the UK for the first time, Spy of the Year, set at the eponymous awards ceremony, is a playful and melodramatic game that puts the audience at the centre of the action. Audience members take on the role of spies from the same agency, whose celebrations are interrupted by terrible news – shady organisation InCog is leaking information about them, with a grand reveal of all their secrets when the winner of Spy of the Year is announced! It’s up to the players to uncover which of them is the mole before the final award is presented. Will you get there in time? Accept The Cookies By Accept The Cookies Team This is an electrifying and fully interactive exhibition about our rights and freedoms in the digital future. In the age of surveillance capitalism, we ask: how much of your mind are you willing to give away to algorithms and big tech? A cyberpunk-inspired, immersive sci-fi story, sprinkled with glitch, digital fairytale, and online tropes like blue ‘verified’ badges, persistent cookie requests, and opt-out boxes that are impossible to find; the audience are the main character in their own odyssey in data ethics. Playfully camp, this show offers a performative panel discussion with a rollerblading host, a tongue-in-cheek ritual that looks at cringe culture and gets people to archive and recreate their social media content IRL, and a deep level of reflection on our own relationships with data ownership, surveillance, and big tech. Afterwards, audiences will have the choice to join our secret Telegram group and await further instruction to keep going down the rabbit hole… If You Think I Should Make Beter Life Choices, Turn To Page 42 By Hakan Akgül An interactive monologue play in the style of choose your own adventure books and TTRPGS, the story follows a man after a night out, sneaking away from a hook-up, who realises he’s lost his one emotional keepsake—and any sense of direction. Drunk and disoriented, he tries to retrace his steps but spirals into panic, unable—or unwilling—to decide his next move. Now, the audience must take control, guiding him through the night’s chaos. Can they steer him home safely, or will they get him into trouble? Navigate puzzles to help him retrace his steps, roleplay encounters with strangers on the street or in the club, and manage his dwindling emotional and physical resources – ultimately shape his final reckoning, in this experience balancing control with the weight of responsibility. Meet Me At The Tavern by Rebel Rehbinder and Kol Ford The first in a series of TaverQuest games that were developed during lockdown; Inspired by Terry Pratchett and J.H. Brennan the world is light-hearted, whimsical and fun. Participants will each take on one role inspired by common fantasy tropes. As adventurers gather in the Olde Tavern to prepare to bring The Dread Wizard to justice they discover that all is not as it seems…. My Favourite Path/Route By Mahshid Alavi A deeply interactive show about the deep emotional connection we have to certain roads, pathways, and places—especially when we are far from home—Alavi explores memory, nostalgia, displacement, and shared experiences of movement through storytelling, live music, technology, and audience participation. Beginning with Alavi recounting their experience of driving down Valiasr Street in Tehran, watching its iconic plane trees and feeling the pulse of the city, the show slowly shifts focus to the audience and makes them co-creators of the experience. Audiences will connect to the space, reflect on their favourite routes, and share their experiences if/when they feel ready. The outcome is a collective, imagined road, built from many voices and memories. The Sixth Subject By Liz Cable The Sixth Suspect is a Victorian-set murder-mystery escape room, and a highly interactive workshop where the audience will first solve a murder, and then create their own narrative-based mini-escape game, by introducing their own suspect… The Legend By Juice Cui An interactive shadow puppetry experience that transcends time and media. Blending sound art, drama, traditional shadow puppetry, and digital interaction, it breathes new life into ancient myths, inviting the audience to co-create a living legend guided by sound and animated shadows. In this project, each note represents the soul of a mythological character. They serve as catalysts for transformation – when the audience triggers different sound keys, the artist manipulates the shadow puppets behind the screen, bringing the story to life through a mesmerising dance of light and shadow. Come and bring the myth to life, as it unfolds as an audible, visible, and ever-evolving narrative. SMITE (Shadows Must Intervene To Endure) By Ed Davies A telephone rings…Answer the call from another time. Follow the whispered fragments and the paths between reality. Discover, deliver, decide: The Fate of those who reside. All will be lost should you not step inside. The drum beat sounds, in confidence confide. Gaslamps alighting, memories fracturing, shadows searching, and love letters burning. The veil between worlds is thinning.SMITE is returning. Be the cure, with hearts pure. Shadows Must Intervene To Endure. Workshop: An introduction to Ambient Lit By Tom Abba In this workshop, Tom will be talking all things Ambient Lit – writing that responds to the reader’s physical environment & surroundings. Tom’s work on the Ambient Literature Project – a collaboration between UWE Bristol, Bath Spa University, and the University of Birmingham – brought us experiences such as A Hollow Body , These Pages   Fall Like Ash  and On Bitter Ground . Join him today to get an insight into this exciting work, and an opportunity to make a small Ambient Lit piece of your own. Voidspace Live 2024. Photo: James Lawson SUNDAY ONLY The Crow Club by Dean Rodgers The Crow Club is a Soho nightclub. It is frequented by the highest and lowest of London society, and famous for one thing: murder.  An immersive murder mystery game inspired by the Chinese Jubensha format, and bringing in elements of immersive theatre and escape games, The Crow Club is a Soho noir, which sees players locked in a nightclub with a murder to solve… and one of them is the killer. This is a game of social deduction and deception. Players must uncover the secrets hidden in the Club – and in their fellow players – to solve a murder. S(t)olas by Thomas Jancis This hilarious and earnest participatory show sees the audience meet and converse with a demon confined within a circle.  But it’s not all just giant owls and favourite rocks. Drawing upon 17th-century English folklore and biblical mythology to talk about modern-day loneliness and isolation, S(t)olas examines connection, companionship, and community (and maybe covens) as the audience learn about the demon and perhaps help him to escape. Will you help the hapless demon, or seal his fate? Continuum by Et Al. Performance Continuum is a durational performance celebrating the unseen labour of stagecraft. A mix of cabaret, clowning and live art, audiences will be presented with a series of tasks transforming mundanity into a spectacle with sound and music. Break traditional theatre etiquette, talk, answer your phone, take photographs, interact with the props and see what you can uncover in this joyful and reflective piece about community, control, repetition and surprise.  Mind Control Disco by But Why? Theatre Mind Control Disco is an immersive, participatory audio adventure where guests experience the thrill of a party guided by O.M.N.I., an AI designed to create the ultimate night out. The show combines synchronized instructions, epic tunes, and a playful exploration of AI control versus free will, offering a unique blend of entertainment and social interaction. Funny, playful, and profound, Mind Control Disco is a dance party of epic proportions. Will you follow O.M.N.I.’s control or rebel against it…? Support Group for the Newly Human by Chloe Mashiter This show casts the audience as members of a support group entirely filled with those who, whilst now human, used to be something else – werewolves, vampires, zombies, immortals, ghosts, etc – and must now navigate common limitations (ex-zombies’ loss of purpose/clarity/simplicity in their lives, ex-werewolves’ comparative fragility/weakness/vulnerability, etc) through a mix of conversation and therapeutic activity.  Using role-play as a way to reflect on real life, Support Group … is about how we engage with limitations, frustrations, the things we wish we could change about ourselves, and how creative framings for this can be a release.  MIA by Cross-stitch Theatre A single room. No set. No costumes. No actors. A single envelope lies on the floor. When stripped back to its roots, what do you need for a mystery to be solved? MIA invites you to solve a mystery within a mystery. Who killed David Fischer? What does the colour red have anything to do with it? And where on earth are all of the suspects? Secrets of Barrenbrook by Bunbury Banter Secrets of Barrenbrook is a darkly comic, interactive theatrical event centred around a social deduction game. Inviting audience to actively participate, and fostering a sense of community and imagination through shared storytelling, Barrenbrook has received glowing reviews for its engaging narrative and multi-sensory design. Step into the centre of the action, as you become a vital contributor to the storytelling process. Dig In by Caro Murphy and Arlo Howard In Dig In, you play as a member of a family around the holiday dinner table. Every person at the table has a bone to pick with someone else, and conflicts will arise… This LARP explores common family tensions and frustrations along with what makes a good apology.  Arsenic and Lies by Karolina Soltys It is 31 December 1919 and the party at Weatherby Manor is in full swing. The guests exchange furtive whispers of intrigue, blackmail and forbidden love. At midnight, a glass of poisoned champagne shatters, dropped from a dying hand. The family has to find – or frame – the killer before the police start looking too closely into their secrets. A beginner-friendly LARP inspired by Downton Abbey and Agatha Christie novels, focussing on emotions, relationships, secrets, and blackmail. Save the Raccoon by Yudi Wu Save the Raccoon is a live game show aiming to find the best “trash artist” to save the raccoons, as the species becomes homeless and endangered in a zero-waste future with no bins. To earn the title of best trash artist, the “raccoons” (you the audience…) will have to go undercover and beat a system ultimately rigged against them. Inspired by Wu’s experiences navigating the UK funding & awarding system as a rural-based first-gen immigrant artist, the game design has been adapted from the application process and requirements for the Global Talent Visa.  Reflecting on their journey, the show not only presents the ridiculousness of navigating a system that is unfair for the “raccoons”, but also the privilege that “elite raccoons” have over the others under this system, along with their exploitation of the “loser raccoons”. Find Your Superpower by Loy You’re a high-flying exec, and business means business. You’ve signed up for this workshop to maximise your productivity and 10x your financial returns. Oh yeah, and maybe there can be some afterthought about the environment or something. Looks good on paper, innit.  The thing is, something doesn’t feel right today. You had your double macchiato and it just didn’t go down like it usually does.  And this workshop host… they seem a bit..odd. Are you about to get more than you bargained for? Join this workshop with a difference to find out.  Zine making workshop: Cosy Weird by Assemblage Collective Assemblage Collective are a group of young creatives who take a hands-on approach with a focus on making and doing. They express unity through physical manifestations of creative intent. In this workshop you will learn to make your own zine, using a collage of found words and images, and anything else you want to bring to the table. The theme: Cosy weird. Voidspace Live 2024. Photos: James Lawson Voidspace Live runs at Theatre Deli near Liverpool Street/Aldgate on the 7th and 8th June 2025. Tickets for each day are priced at £55.00. To book and find out more info, visit voidspacezine.com

The exceptionally well-crafted Phantom Peak delivers another outstanding season of open-world adventures with JonaCon. With JonaCon, Phantom Peak has entered its 12th full season since opening in Summer 2022. An open-world immersive experience that invites visitors to engage with the numerous residents of the town, interact with off-kilter pieces of tech and solve puzzles while completing any or all of each season's 10 new trails. It's pretty much the closest thing you can get to stepping into a real-life video game and it continues to one-up itself season after season. With probably their strongest set of story trails yet, Phantom Peak has never been better (though we've been saying that with basically every season since it first opened..). Photo: Alistair Veryard While Phantom Peak's Autumn and Winter seasons have always been tied to the real-life events we have 'over the ridge' with Hallowed Peak and Wintermas, Spring and Summer are when the show's creative team can let loose with their own, original overarching themes. Previous seasons have featured the Platypus Parade, which saw the opening of Platyworld, a platypus-themed exhibition (which was actually a front for JonaLabs) and The Festival of Innovation, which had the town's residents presenting bonkers inventions such as The Fear Finder and ProstleBot in a science fair-style competition. JonaCon may be their most out-there theme yet... After tense negotiations and after bidding well over the odds, Phantom Peak has been chosen as the host town for JonaCon, a convention-cum-celebration of JONACO's head honcho, Jonas. There's a lot worth celebrating too - with JONACO recently having mounted a successful mission to space, mended relations with Wintermas demigod Father Platmas, and seemingly thwarted an attempted uprising from anti-JONACO group The Resistance in recent seasons. Huge banners adorn the town's main square, paying homage to the Sun Daddy himself, and groups of tourists have taken to cosplaying as Jonas to really get into the spirit of the convention. Photo: Alistair Veryard By way of summary for those new to Phantom Peak, the town used to be home to a local company, Miramine, which mined for a powerful substance called Diamant below the surface of the town. Following the unexpected death of sausage-fingered Mayor Furbish in a blimp crash, Jonas and JONACO swooped in and ousted Miramine. With them came a series of innovations and changes throughout town that are still present today. While some townsfolk love Jonas and all he's done for the town, others remain sceptical. There's a boatload more backstory we could explain, but this review would be 15,000 words long, and that's all you really need to know if you're a first-time visitor. As previously mentioned, Phantom Peak's new set of story trails are some of the strongest they've ever created. Thanks to the regular changeover of available trails with each new season, Phantom Peak's writing team are able to incorporate and build upon the elements of the previous season guests loved the most. The standout new character from last year's Wintermas season, Sherlock Bones - a dog puppet parodying Sherlock Holmes (though surely you realised that by the name alone..) - makes a welcome return in the trail 'Bad To The Bone', which sees Sherlock battling their nemesis, Meowiarty on the cliffs of the Reichenbark Falls in dramatic Punch and Judy fashion. Fans of Wicked will find great delight in 'Unpopular', which features a full-length parody of the musical's song that's aimed directly at one of the townsfolk, Perigate, who has long grappled with their position in the town's social hierarchy. Photo: Alistair Veryard Elsewhere in town, Phantom Peak's Videomatic machines, which play pre-recorded video content when a valid 4-digit code is correctly entered, have some exceptionally well-crafted films. We're introduced to the grandfather of long-time fan favourite Dr Winter (who looks suspiciously like Dr Winter, just in a bald cap) in 'Too Fast, Too Furrious', and a tense recreation of a basketball game made with a cast of puppets and a selection of the show's gift shop plush toys as a crowd in 'Winner Takes It All', delivers some of the season's biggest laughs. Phantom Peak also doesn't shy away from lampooning and commenting on the world outside the show throughout its trails, touching on everything from the emotional manipulation of television show contestants in a video package for Phantom Peak's version of Great British Bake Off, to calling out the likes of Mr. Beast for their use of young children's attention for monetary gain. Photo: Alistair Veryard Every trail zips along at an enjoyable pace, providing plenty of opportunities to interact with Phantom Peak's various townsfolk, who are the backbone of the experience. With a cast fully committed to improvising and responding to whatever they're being asked by tourists, every interaction with the town's residents is a delight. As with so many immersive experiences, the more you put into it, the more you'll get out of it, so don't shy away from interacting with the show's cast whenever you get a chance, even if they're not directly tied into the trail you're working through. With a very generous 4+ hours to explore the town every session, Phantom Peak allows guests to take things at their own pace. There's no danger of missing any big set-piece moments while in the town, as each trail's pace is driven entirely by however fast or slow any given group decides to work through the storylines. There are also plenty of distractions to pull guests away from the main storylines, with a fully functional arcade, a trio of carnival games, a bar with an extensive menu of cocktails and numerous food options courtesy of RoboChef, and add-on experiences including a Cocktail Experience and Puzzle Hunt. Photo: Alistair Veryard Late last year, when the pre-sale for this Spring season of Phantom Peak first opened, it was announced as the final season of Phantom Peak at their current Canada Water home. Since then, they've managed to secure an extension at their massive 30,000 sq. ft venue, with the previously planned final season now on hold for a little while longer. The team behind the show are currently working on locking in a new location for the show elsewhere in East London, seemingly confirming that the world of Phantom Peak has a lot of life left in it yet. Regular readers of Immersive Rumours will know our feelings on Phantom Peak have never wavered. It's the best immersive experience London has to offer and is the crown jewel in the city's immersive scene. An unrivalled experience that continues to deliver season after season, Phantom Peak is deeply rewarding for both first-time visitors and die-hard fans. Praise Jonas! ★★★★★ Photos: Alistair Veryard Phantom Peak's JonaCon season runs until 11th May 2025 in Canada Water. To find out more about the show, and to book tickets, visit phantompeak.com For more reviews of immersive experiences like Phantom Peak, check out our recent Reviews .

Photo: Race Across The World: The Experience CityDays has announced plans to launch the first-ever playable experience based on the hit BBC series, Race Across the World with Race Across the World: The Experience, which is set to launch in London this Spring. Pre-sale tickets for the experience will be available at 10am on Wednesday 2nd April, with a general sale following on Friday 4th April 2025. Tickets are priced from £25 per person.   This high-stakes experience will offer players the chance to live out their  Race Across the World  dreams by navigating the streets of London, working as a team, outwitting their competitors, and unlocking hidden secrets of the city in a race to the finish line.   The experience will require strategy, teamwork, and quick thinking, as players are given a budget to manage as they race through the city. This budget can be spent on valuable clues to help navigate the next leg of the journey, giving players the freedom to decide how daring they want to be. Players can also complete “work” tasks to earn extra funds. A high-stakes race against the clock, where every decision counts, and influences the race. Players will be scored based on their time and how much budget they have left, with their final score ranked on a live leaderboard throughout the day and week. The team that completes the challenge in the fastest time with the most budget remaining will earn a shot at being crowned the daily or weekly champions. The race takes participants on a 4-5 km mission through the capital, typically spanning 2-3 hours. Like Race Across The World , this experience highlights the treasures people miss when speeding beneath London on the tube. Passing through key partner venues, including renowned pubs, cultural hotspots, or famous landmarks, each serving as a 'checkpoint' where teams must solve escape room-style puzzles. These puzzles will guide them toward the next leg of the race, offering clues that unveil new parts of the city, all while providing a true taste of London’s hidden gems. Those who sign up for the waitlist can access discounted presale tickets from Wednesday 2 April, with 20% off and 48 hours of exclusive booking before the general release on Friday 4 April. Tickets are priced from £25 per person. Photo: Race Across The World: The Experience  Tom Rymer, Founder of CityDays, said: We are beyond excited to bring the Race Across The World experience to life in London. It’s a dream come true for fans of the show, offering them the chance to dive into the heart-pounding action and strategy that has made the show a hit. What makes this experience truly special is the unique combination of exploring London’s hidden spots while working together in a race against time. We can’t wait to see who comes out on top!   All3Media said : It’s thrilling to be able to bring this iconic TV show from Studio Lambert to life in one of the most vibrant and culturally rich cities in the world. We’re beyond excited to partner with CityDays, true pioneers in urban adventures, making them the perfect team to turn this unforgettable experience into a reality. Together, we’re giving fans the chance to immerse themselves in the heart-pounding action of Race Across The World, and it’s going to be nothing short of spectacular! Race Across The World: The Experience will launch in London this Spring. For more information, and to sign-up for the presale, visit raceacrosstheworldexperience.com

The critically acclaimed immersive sci-fi adventure will launch its next instalment this Spring Cast of Bridge Command Season 2 Photo: Zoe Flint Bridge Command, the immersive sci-fi experience that brings together the best of live theatre and gaming technology, has announced today that its next season will open in May. Audience members will take on new challenges, tackle fresh dilemmas and navigate even higher-stakes scenarios than before as they transform into the crew of a starship travelling through the galaxy on a mission to save humanity from an emerging existential danger. Following on from the first instalment’s 22nd Century setting where years of conflict had led to the launch of the United Confederation Navy (UCN) and a new era of space exploration, this next chapter plunges crews into uncharted peril with mysterious incidents in deep space putting humanity in the path of a dangerous new enemy. With an extinction-level threat looming, members of the UCN must confront the unknown before it’s too late. Beth Jay, Arathi Suresh, Ewan Bagshaw and Christopher Styles in rehearsals for Season 2 of Bridge Command Photo: Gabriel Burns Artistic Director Owen Kingston said: Bridge Command really is the closest you can get to being the star of your own sci-fi tv series. The episodic nature of the show allows us to sustain an ongoing story for our audiences over multiple visits, where they get to shape the story as it progresses with real consequences for the decisions they make. This new season of stories lets us take that to the next level, providing fresh antagonists and new plot points for returning visitors, and an even more refined experience for those coming for the first time. Though the current season of Bridge Command will close in May, the core elements of the experience will remain with participants able to choose from four distinct mission types: Military, focusing on ship-to-ship combat; Exploration, in which players tackle the mysteries of space; Intrigue, involving espionage and investigative challenges; and Diplomacy, which will find players navigating high-stakes political situations. Participants can take on one of up to fourteen unique roles — ranging from Communications Officer to ship’s Captain — within four specialised teams: Operations, Science, Engineering, and Command. Participants will encounter characters played by professional actors from Parabolic Theatre, who will help to drive the action forward. Owen Kingston and Christopher Styles in rehearsals for Season 2 of Bridge Command Photo: Gabriel Burns Bridge Command blends live theatre and gaming into an immersive experience where participants become the stars of their own sci-fi adventure. Set in one of two custom-built starships, the experience is powered by bridge simulation software. Every event, from enemy attacks to system malfunctions, affects the physical set, creating sparks and chaos. Audiences are fully immersed without the need for VR or wearable tech. Each visit's data is recorded and carried over to future missions, allowing crews to shape their own evolving sci-fi adventure. The experience opened last March to critical acclaim and recently marked its one-year anniversary. Chief Operating Officer Tom Black said: The story continues, the world gets bigger, and the best part is that even if you haven’t played the previous missions, the new ones will bring you into the story so you won't feel like you missed out. There’s truly nothing else out there like this Tom Black in rehearsals for Season 2 of Bridge Command Photo: Gabriel Burns As well as the new season, Bridge Command’s Mess Bar is currently open to anyone looking for an other-worldly evening. The £10 entry fee includes a free house cocktail worth £15 or other drink and a chance to dress up in one of the show’s flight suits. Also recently launched was a corporate away-day package for companies looking for the ultimate test of teamwork, communication and problem-solving. Parabolic Theatre was founded by Owen Kingston in 2016 to push the boundaries of interactive and immersive storytelling. Since then they have been creating dynamic, audience-driven experiences that go beyond spectacle, tackling social and political upheavals through innovative, participatory theatre. Their productions place audiences at the heart of the action—whether influencing a government in crisis, responding to a large scale invasion, or investigating a drifting starship. Interactivity is central to their work, giving participants real agency to shape narratives, engage with performers, and explore the world around them. Cast of Bridge Command in rehearsals for Season 2 Photo: Gabriel Burns Bridge Command is currently booking until 30th September 2025 in Vauxhall. For more information about the show, and to book tickets visit bridgecommand.space

Parabolic Theatre’s new immersive starship simulator delivers an exhilarating and unique experience for visitors that rewards exploration and, above all else, good communication. Our review of Bridge Command... Photo: Alex Brenner Bridge Command, the latest immersive experience from Parabolic Theatre, officially opened its sliding doors in Vauxhall this past week. A reworking of the company's 2019 production, the show places visitors in charge of their own spacecraft, allowing them to navigate the vastness of the galaxy, engage in combat and negotiate with enemy factions. It's one of the most technologically advanced immersive shows to open in London in recent years and takes the decision-focused, responsive style of immersion Parabolic Theatre has always been best known for to new heights, far exceeding anything they've previously produced in terms of both complexity and scale. Back in 2019, Parabolic launched the original version of Bridge Command at COLAB Factory in Borough. Produced on a sh oestring bud get, using whatever props and set dressing they had lying around, the show was, by their own admission, pretty rough around the edges from a set design perspective. Appropriately, the show’s budget had instead largely been invested in the technology and backend systems that powered the experience, enabling them to produce a show that guests loved and found incredibly engaging. Allowing people to pilot their own starship and set off into the vastness of space made it the fastest-selling show in the company's history at the time. During this run, Bridge Command attracted the attention of investors, who helped fund the reworked, supersized version of the show now open in Vauxhall. Photo: Alex Brenner Warp forward to 2024, and in the few short months since the show soft-opened in March, it's clear Bridge Command has developed a loyal fanbase. Outside the venue, attendees introduce themselves to each other and connect over discussing their previous missions aboard both the UCN Takanami and UCN Havock. More than perhaps every other immersive show open in London right now, Bridge Command demands you get to know everyone else is in your group in order to succeed, with an upcoming mission to space serving as a pretty good icebreaker... Once inside, you're instructed to select a flight suit to wear for your mission. Everyone taking part in the experience is offered either a Bridge Command jumpsuit or bomber jacket to wear, which has room set aside for everyone’s current rank and ship name to be velcroed onto. First-time visitors sport the patches denoting that they’re Ensigns, the lowest rung on the United Confederation Navy ladder, while more experienced guests can have higher ranks and other patches denoting specific achievements. This is the first introduction to the multi-level progression system that Bridge Command has built into it, which is designed to reward repeat visits and encourage exploration of the show world. With everyone suited up, you're ushered into the teleporter, a huge white circular room that takes you from 2024 Earth to 2180 Space in a matter of moments. We won't reveal what tricks are being used here, but it's a wonderfully designed transitional space that makes it clear Parabolic Theatre isn't messing around when it comes to delivering on the promise of a high-budget immersive space experience. Photo: Alex Brenner Emerging in The Mess, the UCS Warspite's on-site bar, which is decked out with interactive terminals and relics of previous UNC missions, you'll find yourself alongside fellow pilots, engineers, and communications officers eager to celebrate their recent successes or calm their nerves before being deployed. In total, there are four different mission types on offer within Bridge Command: Diplomacy, Intrigue, Military and Exploration, all of which will see guests acting on behalf of UCN in one of the numerous Officer roles visitors must select from. Ranging from Helm to Weapons, Radar, Engineerings and Comms, as well as, of course, Captain or First Officer. All of them are important in their own way, and things can easily go wrong at any one station, leading to a knock-on effect across the ship. For our visit, we were taking on an Intrigue mission that on the surface sounded simple enough. All that was required of us was to deliver a military officer onto a nearby ship nestled inside a cluster of asteroids, assist them in retrieving a datapad, and then leave the area without being seen. Given Bridge Command takes inspiration from episodic sci-fi series like Star Trek, and dropping someone off at a ship just to take them home would be a very dull episode of TV, it's little surprise that things got a bit more complicated and action-heavy as our mission progressed, with alarms blaring, sparks flying and enemy ships coming at us from all directions. Both the UCN Havock, and UCN Takanami have complex systems that need constant attention and careful resource management. Besides the touchscreen consoles at every station, the crew must interact with numerous physical elements to keep the ship running smoothly. If the ship's overall energy levels run too low the Fuel Cells need removing and replacing, the Crystal Resonators that maintain the ship's shields can become destabilised, leaving the ship defenceless, and the Overcurrent Protectors may also need swapping out. With resources being used up faster in situations like combat and travelling at warp speed, it's a delicate balance to manage them all. Photo: Alex Brenner On paper, all of this may sound incredibly overwhelming. Thankfully for first-time visitors, there’s time set aside for explanations of every role before things kick off in earnest. You won’t be experts in your roles by any means, but the UCN seems to encourage on-the-job learning and embracing your mistakes - even if your crewmates might not. While the added pressure of knowing that if you can’t respond quickly and do what is needed, you may well become the weakest link ramps up the tension as you begin your mission, all of the roles are manageable and on the right side of challenging to stay on top of. As previously mentioned, one of the biggest parts of Bridge Command, and honestly the hardest thing to stay on top of, isn’t the numerous consoles, terminals, and screens, but the communication between players. When your crew is all on the same page and the group's instructions to one another are clear, progressing through the show's story is an exhilarating experience. Information and updates will fly across the room constantly as everyone operates as a cohesive unit, and obstacles like enemy ships are soon little more than debris.  On the flip side, these moments can easily spill over into disaster if communication falls apart. At one point during our visit, we collided with a large asteroid despite numerous shouts of 'Asteroid!' from all corners of the bridge. On this occasion, it took too long for the Helm to react, and our ship's hull took such a large amount of damage that the Engineering team had to leap into action to mend it. While it was drilled into us in the briefing that everyone’s actions will affect what happens in our mission, this collision with the asteroid confirmed that point in a very real way.  Photo: Alex Brenner Parabolic Theatre has always focused on creating experiences that give audiences agency and respond to visitors' decisions. These decisions - both good and bad - have lasting impacts on the narrative, with the show designed to respond and bend around players' decisions, however left-field they may be. While in previous Parabolic shows, most notably with Crisis? What Crisis? and For King and Country, this was largely confined to each individual visit. In Bridge Command, these decisions have longer-lasting implications. Each mission within Bridge Command has no set path to follow and gives visitors a huge amount of freedom to decide how best to approach any situation. The show then responds to those choices on the fly, meaning every version of a mission can have wildly different outcomes. All of this information is logged and will later inform what happens in subsequent visits. If, like us, you decided not to hand over important intel to UCN Intelligence at the end of your mission, that decision may well have consequences in the future for both you and your team. Photo: Alex Brenner Additionally, the show's individual progression system allows you to rise up the ranks of UCN over time. While we remained Ensigns with single-stripped shoulder patches after our first mission, those in the same position will in time progress to higher ranks based on how much time they spend aboard the ship and how well they perform while on the bridge. During our mission debrief, our Radar operator received their first promotion, prompting cheers and applause from the rest of the crew - it was a surprisingly emotional moment for not only them but the rest of the group that they’d just worked alongside.   For fans of interactive storytelling and sci-fi adventures, Bridge Command is an essential experience. With a level of freedom that is almost unparalleled, there's little else out there anywhere in the galaxy that comes close to what Bridge Command offers. We'll no doubt be reporting for duty again in the not-too-distant future to continue exploring the outer reaches of space and get the promotion that's so far eluded us... Photos: Alex Brenner ★★★★ ½ Bridge Command is currently booking until 30th September 2025 in Vauxhall. For more information about the show, and to book tickets visit bridgecommand.space For more reviews of shows like Bridge Command, check out other recent immersive reviews here .

Deadweight Theatre debuts an immersive show that defies categorisation. Performed for an audience of just one, The Manikins: a work in progress is an extraordinary experience for those lucky enough to attend. Jack Aldisert in The Manikins: a work in progress. Photo: Rebecca J. Windsor. Scene 1. We receive an email with nothing written inside. Attached is a script describing us opening the email. "They open the attachment and begin reading. It is the first page of a play in which they are the protagonist. The stage directions describe the moment they are currently experiencing. They don't know how to feel about this." Scene 2. Weeks later, we are sat in the garden of St. Peter's Church in Bethnal Green. A man in a black turtleneck enters the courtyard and introduces himself. We follow him inside the church and descend into the basement. Two chairs are positioned in the middle of the space, facing each other. We take a seat opposite the man in the black turtleneck and ███ ████ ███████ . --- Usually when reviewing an immersive show, we're very conscious of how much to reveal about the experience. Often you need to mention certain elements of what happens in order to discuss and dissect it properly. It's a delicate balance between revealing enough to get people's interest, but not so much that there are no surprises left. With The Manikins: a work in progress - which has just started its sold-out six-week run at Crypt in Bethnal Green - explaining anything that happens in the show would ruin it. Even if we were to describe it, it'd make very little sense anyway - you need to experience it first-hand for it to have meaning. What we can say, though, is that The Manikins: a work in progress is a singular experience that defies categorisation and is unlike any other show we've ever attended. Serena Lehman in The Manikins: a work in progress. Photo: Marc Tsang Every performance of The Manikins: a work in progress is for a single audience member, who also serves as its protagonist. There's no hiding for those who attend the show - they're front and centre for the duration - and end up being as much a performer and collaborator in creating the experience as the two cast members (Jack Aldisert and Serena Lehman) alongside them. Knowing that you're the sole focus of the show when you're in it is a daunting prospect. The closest comparison most immersive theatregoers will have to the opportunity The Manikins: a work in progress offers are the 1:1 scenes in Punchdrunk's large-scale shows. While on the surface it's an apt comparison to make, this show is an entirely different beast. For much of its duration, it's unclear where the show ends and the real world begins. It exists in the liminal space between dreams and reality. There are contradictions, improbabilities, and moments so confounding that your understanding of what is and isn't real anymore is destroyed. It’s a disorientating experience that has you questioning everything around you, including the words coming out of your own mouth. The choices thrust upon you hold so much weight that they're almost crippling, and it's hard to remember if the decisions you made were chosen by you or another version of yourself. After a certain point, you're so far down the rabbit hole that it's impossible to see the light at the surface. Serena Lehman and Jack Aldisert in The Manikins: a work in progress. Photo: Marc Tsang In the days since we attended, the show has burrowed itself into our subconscious to a degree we didn't know a piece of theatre could. We'll be processing it for weeks to come, and it's not something that we'll ever forget. In the simplest possible terms, this is the best immersive show of 2024, and it may take many more years for anything else to come close to it. ★★★★★ The Manikins: a work in progress runs at Parabolic Theatre's Crypt in Bethnal Green from 3rd June to 13th July 2024. Tickets are currently sold out, but you can visit themanikins.com to find out more about the show.

This Spring,  Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition , a new hi-tech experience will open its doors at Immerse LDN at Excel London Waterfront on 28th March 2025. Photo: Tutankhamun - The Immersive Exhibition After hugely successful runs in twelve other cities around the world, the exhibition invites visitors to step back in time and immerse themselves in an exhilarating journey, discovering ancient Egypt, and the myths and mysteries surrounding Pharaoh Tutankhamun as never before.   Endorsed and supported by the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo and created in collaboration with Egyptologists and historians,   the exhibition is set over a vast 26,909 sq ft space and features one of Europe’s largest immersive video mapping rooms with 8-metre-high projections. Blending cutting-edge technology with Egyptian history, the London exhibition will transport visitors through six creatively designed galleries that delve into the fascinating lives of the ancient Egyptians.  Photo: Tutankhamun - The Immersive Exhibition   Guests will enter via an infinity room with a walking Anubis before being presented with captivating background stories about Egyptian civilization alongside carefully curated replicas and artefacts. The experience continues into a huge immersive video mapping room which recounts the rich history of Egypt, its natural landscapes, cultural heritage, the life of Tutankhamun, his tomb, and its groundbreaking discovery.    During the 30-minute immersive movie, the moment of the discovery of the tomb is described in a recorded interview of Howard Carter, the famous British archaeologist, adding a layer of authenticity to the experience. Visitors will also embark on a 360-degree seated virtual reality experience, journeying into the mystical Egyptian afterlife before entering yet another hi-tech space where they will witness a hologram presentation, bringing to life the entire mummification process of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.  Photo: Tutankhamun - The Immersive Exhibition   Finally, the experience invites visitors to step into an interactive digital metaverse walk-through of the Valley of the Kings, exploring Howard Carter's basecamp, and reliving the monumental moment of the 1922 discovery in its full glory. At the end of the experience, every visitor will be able to capture a memento of their day with a photograph in the AI photobooth where they will be transformed into a citizen of ancient Egypt.     The approximate 90-minute journey through ancient Egypt's rich history and mythology features a wealth of educational and informative displays, historical documents, original artefacts and replicas from ancient Egypt, and has been designed with children, families, schools and history enthusiasts in mind. The soundtrack has been composed specifically for the experience and is performed by an orchestra, immersing visitors further into the magic of ancient Egypt. Photo: Tutankhamun - The Immersive Exhibition   Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition has had over 1.8 million visitors in cities including Madrid, Hamburg, Cairo, Sao Paulo, Barcelona, Vienna and Malmö.   Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition run from 28th March - 29th June 2025 at Immersive LDN, Excel London. Adult tickets will be priced from £20, with children priced from £15.50. Tickets are on sale from 31st January 2025, and the waitlist is now open.