We recently appeared on the No Proscenium podcast to discuss the current state of immersive theatre in London and look back at the big moments of 2024. The episode was hosted by No Proscenium's Noah Nelson, and also featured Katy Naylor (Voidspace), Franco Milazzo (BroadwayWorld UK), and Shelley Snyder (No Proscenium). Listen here:

Brand new immersive theatre company, Yippee Theatre, has announced the cast for the world premiere of Dead Hard, an immersive drag Die Hard parody pantomime which will turn the iconic Christmas film on its head. The show will run at COLAB Tower, the first fully DDA-compliant immersive venue in London, which will also open this Winter. Photo: Yippee Theatre Audiences will become part of the action as they follow this high-energy immersive parody that transforms the classic 80's action film into a hilarious, camp spectacle. The show has been created by Bertie Watkins, who has been the artistic director of COLAB Theatre for a decade. Bertie has written the show alongside Helena Raeburn and Lowell Bellfield. Audiences will follow drag queen Hands Grubber and the daring John McClean as they journey from their gym bro origins to exploring their sexuality through a series of explosive encounters and comedic twists, all set against the backdrop of a Christmas party gone wrong. The production promises to push the boundaries of traditional pantomime through a completely immersive environment. Photos: Yippee Theatre Taking on the role of the antagonist, Hands Grubber, is Toby Osmond (Game of Thrones, Summerland) who will perform alongside their counterpart, Alex Dowding (NewsRevue, Jack and the Beanstalk) as John McClean. Calum Robshaw (East 15 Acting School, Boomtown Festival) is multi-rolling as Theo/Neo when siding with Grubber and as Holly, McClean’s wife. Jacqui Bardelang (The Nevers, BATSU!) appears as Towel. Fans of drag, saucy humour and immersive experiences will be treated to a unique and lively night out, in which audiences can look forward to everything from lip-sync battles, thrilling heist scenes and unexpected romantic moments, all set to a soundtrack that will have you singing along. The show's Director and Creator, Bertie Watkins comments: The show is a first in so many ways. An 80s action movie pantomime, an adult pantomime, a new completely DDA venue – bring it on – I cannot wait! Photos: Yippee Theatre Dead Hard: A Drag Die Hard Parody Panto will run at COLAB Tower from 10th December 2024 to 12th January 2025. Tickets are priced from £32 and can be booked via colabtheatre.co.uk

With the final performances of Rhythm&Ruse at The Vaults in Waterloo on the horizon, we sit down with Morgan Howson (Executive Producer) and Abigail Smith (Associate Producer) to discuss the conception and development of the show, the communities that have developed around The Starling, and the challenges that come with producing independent immersive theatre. Photo: Rhythm&Ruse Hi Morgan and Abi, thanks for speaking with us today. For those who haven’t yet visited The Starling, can you explain what Rhythm&Ruse is all about? Morgan: I think the sentence we got to in the end was ‘Magic, music, cocktails, and conversation’. That came about through improv on stage, Sam [Booth] said it one night and it just stuck. The Starling is an underground club that you've been invited to, it's not a place where you can just get an invitation walking down the street. You enter through this kaleidoscopic corridor that separates the real world from the world we've created inside, which isn't the 1920s, but you're not in the now either. You're in this weird state of stasis, where you can't quite place the show and that's just how we want it. As guests come in and sit down they're serenaded by the incredible Naomi Banks, and our other singers, with a bunch of jazz and jazz recreations of modern pop songs as the evening progresses. Four of our secret society of magicians visit your table and showcase their sleight of hand throughout the show, and our society members visit you too to share some stories. Maybe they'll be giving a tarot reading, maybe they'll be taking you to one of the little back rooms or secret corners of the club to tell you a bit more about them and about what's going on, why you've been invited and the purpose of the gathering. How did the initial idea for the show first come about? Morgan: In December last year, Fania [Grigoriou] and I were sitting in a not-very-good cocktail bar in the middle of Chinatown spending £20 a drink on not-very-good cocktails while waiting to go to dinner. We were having a discussion about how experiences in London can be very poor value. You go to a bar, you have a few drinks, you spend £60 each, but you've not really got anything out of that, and it’s also not hugely communal. You're sitting at a table for two while there are all these other conversations and stories going on around you that you're not hugely aware of. We wondered if there could be a theatrical version of that night out where we could deliver value in buckets and we give people a good time, as well as encourage community. Obviously Fania’s background is with Punchdrunk. When you think about those great show bars that Punchdrunk have created like Manderley at Sleep No More and Peep at The Burnt City, they became these gathering places with entertainment and a real sense of world and story. I think for a lot of people, particularly people who end up going to their shows a lot, those watering holes became such a core part of the experience. While no reviewer is ever going to extol the benefits of spending a third of your time at the show sitting in Manderley and idly chit-chatting, it became a huge part of what makes those spaces feel like home. The question then became can that be a full-blown show? Can we build something that feels like it's a real world? A real immersive experience, that takes place in a cabaret club and includes drinks so it feels really good value for money. I remember finishing the evening having had a lovely meal and going to another cocktail bar. We were quite drunk, and I remember thinking that maybe I wouldn't think of it again. My background is in product creation, mostly in the digital and tech sectors, and my curiosity got the better of me. Within a month the show existed on a spreadsheet. It was like ‘Oh here's how you could do it and here's how the numbers would potentially look’ and then we just grew it from there. A lot of people wanted to back it knowing the risks because immersive theatre is hugely risky, and independent theatre is hugely risky, but they wanted to help us to give it a go, so we sort of built we built off of that. But the idea literally started in a little bar in Chinatown on the eve of my birthday in the depths of winter last year, which is very quick for an immersive show like this. Abi, how did the two of you first meet and what was your reaction to the concept that Morgan and Fania had when you first heard it? Abigail: Well, I first met Morgan after she came to an event I put on four or five years ago through my TikTok. We kept this little friendship going where we would go out for dinner once a month. I would tell her all the drama that's going on in my life and she would tell me what an idiot I am. Because I had built this community, and as Morgan said, so much of this show is about community building and about creating a communal feeling, which is something I’d done via social media, she approached me and said ‘I want to make this show’. I was like ‘Babe, you work in tech. What are you talking about?’. Like so many people, my initial reaction was 'Who would want to do a magic show?'. She explained it to me more, and I then went ‘Oh no, actually that sounds amazing’. There’s a perception of magic that it's not cool or sexy. Morgan: Like it's a children’s birthday party kind of thing... Abigail: Yeah, children’s birthdays and weddings... there's a perception that it's an annoying guy who comes to your table while you're just trying to have some champagne, but when we talked more about the show and the idea of it having an Alastair Crowley-style secret society of the occult to it, I thought it sounded really cool. This woman - she’s honestly a mastermind in making things sound amazing. With that initial concept developed, you then approached Sam Booth and Mallory Gracenin who helped devise the show. How far into the process were you before they became a part of the project? Morgan: I'd say we had a framework. We knew roughly what we needed the show to look like to make it work operationally. What people forget when you're building a concept like this is you're not just building a show, you're also effectively opening a bar, and have to figure out all those service windows and things like that as well. The full story and full concept were definitely fleshed out once we got them on board, and it's a dream team right? These are great powerhouse performers, really doing what they do best and being given the opportunity to do that in such an intimate environment, as such a close-knit group and to move fast and develop fast. I’m really grateful for their decision to come on board and that happened very early on. Their names were attached during the funding process. I think the goal really was to demonstrate that we had the credibility to build an experience of this nature and then bring it to market. Photo: Rhythm & Ruse We created a place where it was okay to come as you were and to discover other people coming as they were as well. After stepping through the doors of The Starling, I think it's fair to say the place has an inviting and friendly atmosphere. You mentioned earlier wanted to create a show with a sense of community. Can you tell us a bit about why it was so important to create a welcoming space? Morgan: You've been to the show a couple times and have seen what happens. Yes, there is magic at our tables in terms of magicians performing, but I think there’s social magic there too in how people feel able to connect with others on a deeper level. I've been in London for a decade now and I grew up in the North, I come from Scarborough in Yorkshire. In Yorkshire, you see someone on the street and they say hello, and you say 'How’s your day going?', you have a little chat. You get in a lift going from floor one to floor fifty and you have a conversation. The thing that is starkest to me about London is the lack of community, and the lack of conversation. You can go through, and I did go through when I was living alone, weeks where you've not talked to another human being. Particularly over the pandemic when we were just talking to screens. I think a big part of what we wanted to accomplish with Rhythm&Ruse, is a true sense of community and a sense of belonging for people who visited our tables. I think that's been created with such brilliance by our creative team because you have to have the right environment to do that. It has to feel intimate enough. Our set designer, Issy, did such a great job of making those tables feel intimate and warm. Skylar, our lighting designer also made sure that people are lit enough to talk, but not too lit, so it feels like a confessional where you can say whatever you want and you can communicate with others and not feel too self-conscious about it. The inebriation provided by our guest services team helps that too, but there's a sense that you're in a world of possibility where anything can happen, I think it really opens people up to the experience of getting to know each other. We created a place where it was okay to come as you were and to discover other people coming as they were as well. The show’s got a huge revolving cast of magicians. What was it like trying to assemble that group? Did you find yourself getting sick of card tricks? Morgan: I tell you what, one of the weirdest experiences of my life will be conducting interviews with magicians in a WeWork on a Saturday afternoon. We had a huge amount of interest from a whole bunch of magicians, but the one thing that was really important to us was that our cast reflected the world. I think magic is a profession that is 97/98% cis white men and it's quite easy to fall into the trap of only casting cis white men. As a trans woman, I believe very vehemently that you can't be what you can't see. I transitioned fairly later in life because you figure out who you are once you see other people doing it. Obviously, this is not the same thing, but if you're an aspiring female magician or you're an aspiring Southeast Asian magician, I think it's so important that you can see people like you getting opportunities and working in a professional environment for an audience. Our magicians I think do our show for the love of magic. There's a reality that no producer can pay a close-up magician what they would get for a wedding or a corporate booking, because magic, like many self-employed professions, is one where you get three days of work a month, but the three days that you get work are big paydays, then you spend the other 27 days trying to find work. That is the standard. Magicians don't get as often as they would like the opportunity to perform close-up. When you ask most of the magicians we have what their favourite kind of magic is, they'll say close-up, but there’s no environment in which to perform close-up magic. We set out to create an environment that let magicians do the thing they want to do in as near to optimal conditions as you can get economically in terms of giving them the right sight lines, casting the light in the right way against the tables so what is seen is seen and what shouldn't be seen remains unseen. Also, we've created an environment where they can work with other magicians, which is so rare, because being a magician is a hugely solitary profession. Other than catching up at The Magic Circle, most magicians work alone and are booked alone. Every night for the past three months, for us to have had eight magicians in a room together performing as a team and networking and communicating with each other, that's a really big deal. Abigail: It's so cool seeing them all backstage. One of them will come in and go ‘I'm gonna do something new tonight’ and everyone goes crazy and they all nerd out together. You’ll be walking backstage and you’ll just see people levitating things and people slicing things into their head. You're just like ‘What's happening? Am I in a dream world?’ Photo: Rhythm & Ruse Naomi Banks comes out and starts singing, suddenly everyone goes silent... In that moment I was like ‘Oh my god this show's amazing’. What was it like having the doors of The Starling open for the first time and having guests enter? Morgan: We call that first preview Black Thursday. I'll tell you why… there is a truism of immersive theatre, which is that as much as you prep and plan, you cannot know how it will go until you sit 192 people in 192 chairs and find out for yourself. What we quickly found out is that trying to get 192 people to read a 12-page menu and make drink choices in a very quick and very dimly lit environment leads to service challenges. The first night, my recollection of it was that I was running around like a crazy person and at some stage going into the bar and shouting, not in a negative way, but just shouting at our guest services manager Lois, who has done an incredible job, ‘Just put wine on the tables! Just put bottles of wine on the tables!'. Lois was going ‘Are you sure? I think we can recover this’ and I went ‘Nope. You cannot recover this. The oldest order in the system is from 40 minutes ago, just put wine on the tables!’. That first night, I presume a show happened? My mind was mostly on the operational challenges. As I mentioned earlier, opening an immersive show is only partly about the show. We sat down, we regrouped and moved to the concept that you're familiar with, where we significantly cut down on choices and instead have this eclectic, ever-changing menu of alcoholic and non-alcoholic pairings as the show progresses, and that worked much much better. Thank goodness for that because otherwise, I worry we wouldn't have had any bar staff on the second night. Abigail: Morgan came up to me because I jumped behind the bar, and she said ‘How are you?’ and I was like ‘I feel like I'm in a war’. Morgan: Once we'd stabilised from that challenge, I think you feel an immense sense of pride. There are moments that were really important to me as the show was being built where I thought ‘This is going to be a really beautiful audience reaction moment’. The theatrical unveiling of the space after you get the welcome speech from our society members, you see the golden wings of The Starling. You see that, you see the room, you see Rosie sitting there writing her premonition ready for later in the evening. The moments where you're sitting at a table and the other side of the room is consuming magic, the lights are shining down on the tables, you look across and it feels a bit otherworldly on the other side of the room. I think it was little moments like that that told me we had made the right decisions and done the right things along the way, but you can only really see that with an audience. Abi, any strong memories of seeing the show being performed in front of an audience for the first time? Abigail: This is terrible of me, but I had never heard Naomi Banks sing until Rhythm&Ruse. Morgan was like ‘She's amazing, trust me, she's incredible’. The third preview we ever did was open to my TikTok audience only, so we had an audience of just the queers in for one night. It was such a great community atmosphere, it all felt very alive and vibrant in there. Naomi comes out and starts singing, suddenly everyone goes silent. What a voice! Where has that voice come from?! In that moment I was like ‘Oh my god this show's amazing’. I've seen the show many times now and every time she sings I think ‘Oh my god. A siren walks among us.’ Morgan: You start to see flash points and moments as you're wandering around the space. There's a rhythm to it that you start to feel, which is a privilege to be able to experience. There's a lot of joy in that, knowing the pace of the show. When you're actually sitting watching it I think it goes so fast it doesn't feel like a two-hour-long experience because there is always some kind of stimuli. Photo: Rhythm&Ruse Some people latch on straight away to what we're going for, some people have no idea what's going to hit them. I'd love to dig a bit deeper into the occult elements that are bubbling under the surface of Rhythm&Ruse. There are a lot of bird references within the show. 'The flock' is mentioned a lot by Tom and Rosie on stage, and the club is of course called The Starling. Can you tell us about why these elements were all integrated into the show? Morgan: It's always interesting isn't it, to have something brewing under the surface even if it doesn't really matter what it is? It's nice to have that sense of layers in the piece. It was really important to Fania and the team to build a sense that there was something else going on. A lot of the themes that you mentioned are explored in the more private intimate moments of the show - they're explored in 1:1s and they're explored at the tables. To some extent, that's how we wanted it because 97% of people are there for an evening of magic and music and fun. If you overwhelm them with story, it can detract from that, particularly if they're four drinks in, so it's a delicate balancing act. Our goal at least for this initial season of The Starling was to do our best to hit that balance and to not go too far in the other direction. I'm going to give you a funny story… the range of reactions you get are very diverse. Some people, like you, latch on straight away to what we're going for and maybe where our inspirations lie, some people have no idea what's going to hit them. There was a couple early in the run who were taken to one of our side rooms and invited to join the flock, which is an interaction that, as with all of our interactions, is scripted and ends in the same way regardless of what the audience member does or doesn't do. These audience members were so surprised by the interaction to the point that they made an official complaint about the fact that perhaps our cast members were going ‘off book’ and were trying to convince them to go and do things with them after the show that we might consider to be unsavoury. They said the cast members should get a talking to. The next day I got an email in my personal email inbox, from a police officer. All it said was ‘Hi, we would like to talk to you regarding a potential crime. When can we call you?’. I had the back and forth with the police officer to arrange and schedule a time which was arranged for a couple of days after, and the whole time I was like ‘Am I going to have to explain the nature of immersive theatre to this police officer?' Abigail: As if they were convinced we were soliciting sex in the middle of Waterloo! Morgan: As it happens, the call was just about a phone that I'd had stolen from me several months prior, but for 48 hours, just because of the timing, I had the joy of game planning in my head what my official response would be to a police officer if I was asked if two of our cast members were indeed inviting people to some kind of unsavoury gathering which I had not approved of after the show. Abigail: My favourite part of the complaint, there was an addendum at the end that said ‘If the request had been made outside of the show, perhaps afterwards, maybe my response would have been different’. So they were like ‘I maybe would have gone for the foursome had it not been during the show.' Morgan: I think it speaks to the challenge of trying to produce a piece like this. Because people are coming in just expecting a fun night out with some magic and some music and cocktails, if you are too overt with that stuff it can be quite alienating and potentially even scary to your customers, so finding that balance has been something that I think Fania and the team have really had to reckon with. I think it is quite easy to go too far, particularly in an environment where we know that people would be somewhat inebriated. That’s quite the reaction to a 1:1 scene… Morgan: It demonstrates that the acting was very good! It's probably the best review the cast could ever hope to receive. Morgan: If people believe that they're actually being invited to an after-party, then clearly it was convincing... Photo: Rhythm&Ruse Alongside the main Rhythm&Ruse show, there was also a series of Rhythm&Ruse Lates performances in which The Starling was used as a more traditional cabaret venue. How did you go about finding acts that would be a good fit? Abigail: I think we wanted to take a few risks on people. The Vaults as a venue was previously known for hosting really cool new writing and new performers. That space doesn’t exist as it once did, but as someone who grew up with new writing and found my feet in this industry with original new work, I wanted to create a space where people could explore that. We did a risk-free deal for people, we did a straight box office split, we paid for the techie, we paid for the tech time, and we helped them with marketing. I really wanted to create a space where it felt very equitable on that front so we could support cool new artists. We found some really fun drag queens, we had some great names like Elf Lyons, Flat and the Curves, and people who we knew would bring in a nice audience, but maybe wanted to try some new work. We went to the Edinburgh Fringe, went to see stuff all around London, and just looked for things that felt new, cool, and different. Sadly we're now a couple weeks out from Rhythm&Ruse having its final performance. Can you tell us about the challenges of sustaining a show like Rhythm&Ruse in the current climate? Morgan: It’s a hard market and it's been a very difficult year for all theatre, not just immersive. We saw what happened with Cake at The Other Palace and the early closure announced for Why Am I So Single? I think the reality is that there are a few different market forces at play. People are going out less, they spend less when they go out, and they are less likely to try new experiences if there isn't a brand name attached, maybe even less likely than ever before. I think when you look at the range and diversity of immersive experiences in London, going from the escape room style immersive experiences like Monopoly and the Taskmaster experience to the narrative-driven experiences like Paddington, and even The London Dungeons, to the two magic concepts that are currently open in London and that would be considered immersive, there is a huge diversity of options for consumers in London right now. I think there is a possibility that we are starting to reach a stage where there are too many options. and where there's a lot of capacity for the market to support at a time when people are tightening their purse strings. Something I’ve thought about a lot over the last few weeks is that technically, every time you open an immersive experience you're creating new capacity for theatre in London, often in places that wouldn't usually have any capacity for theatre, at a time when even our West End houses are struggling to fill. I think there are some incredible things out there, produced by hugely talented creative teams, and produced with clear intent and goals to deliver something sustainable, that unfortunately are just failing. Not to capture critical attention, not to capture audience attention in terms of the feedback that they receive, but just to capture enough audience consistently at a high enough price point to make theatre sustainable. The vapid criticism of shows like The Manikins or The Key of Dreams is that the price points they are charging aren’t accessible, but the commercial reality is that this work is expensive to produce and if we want it, we have to support it, and we have to buy tickets. If we don't, it just becomes impossible to deliver. It's very difficult for all theatre companies to get any kind of Arts Council Funding, but particularly so for immersive theatre. The risk is if as a community, and I'm speaking really as a consumer of immersive theatre now, as much as a producer, aren't able to pay sustainable prices and aren't willing to take a risk on things that don't have a brand name attached, it will lead to a homogenised version of immersive where everything is branded, everything is linked to some kind of existing IP or property, and producers will feel even less able to take risk. You need small-scale commercial productions as a stepping stone from indie productions to get large-scale commercial productions right? This middle sector has to exist and has to be able to survive. At the moment it's just very difficult. Photo: Rhythm & Ruse You're not the first producers we've spoken to who have mentioned the lack of Arts Council funding available for immersive theatre. Morgan: Arts Council funding or foundations and grant programs have an opportunity to fill the gap, but at the moment that funding is very directed towards conventional theatre. The way you have to build the business case is built around conventional theatre, and that's just not the reality for small-scale commercial immersive theatre which has a very different problem set and very different challenges associated with it. In many ways, this country is a birthplace of modern immersive theatre if you consider Punchdrunk to be the impetus of this industry, and I think it is a shame that the only commercial immersive theatre producer that doesn't rely on IP and that does seem to be able to get Arts Council Funding is Punchdrunk. There are so many opportunities out there for different producers to build really exciting and interesting projects, and we just need apparatus to support them, wherever that might come from. The challenges are huge, not just in terms of getting an audience and getting to a price point but also in finding venues and building them in a cost-effective manner. There’s so many challenges in trying to produce really interesting stuff and very little support. Abigail: I used to do conventional theatre and the first thing that everybody told you when you're getting advice about planning for funding is ‘Can you do it with fewer people?’ It's always ‘Can you halve the cast size?’. I was applying for a four-hander, and everyone was like ‘You’ve got to make it a two-hander. That’s the only way you’ll get funding for it'. There are some really cool immersive shows with tiny casts, but the vast majority will have chunky cast sizes to make it work. That's the beauty of it, isn't it? You get that 1:1 or 1:2 small-scale interaction that you’re just not going to get if you’re one of a thousand in an audience. Unfortunately, that does mean big cast sizes, it means big money needs to be invested, and big payrolls. There’s got to be some kind of flex when it comes to arts funding, and recognising the value that the immersive theatre industry has. Think about the incredible amounts of political art and groundbreaking stuff that could be done with this beautiful art form, that can’t always be done with your traditional proscenium set-up. I wrote an immersive show about LGBTQ activism during the AIDS crisis, and I was very lucky to get some mentorship for it, but they were like ‘It's a beautiful show, but it’s unproduceable because you couldn't have a bar.' Unfortunately, that's the reality of it. Morgan: I think the question ultimately becomes how do we bridge that gap? For every hugely ambitious independent immersive theatre project that fails, there's a bunch of investors that will be slightly more trepidatious next time, who might not be in a position to take the same risk. Coming up against the reality of trying to produce independent immersive theatre in this current climate, would you say the experience has put you off producing more work in the future? Morgan: We’ve brought together an incredible group of people that have done some really beautiful work. From our creative team to our magicians, our guest services team, our band, and everyone in between. We have built what feels like a real family and a real community behind the scenes as well as in front of them, and we brought people together who otherwise would never have met each other. Just as we've been forming connections in front of house, we’ve done the same in the back of house too, but this has been a challenge and that challenge has taken its toll not just on me, but on all of our people. We've had to cut back our schedule, we've had to close earlier than we would have hoped, and all of these things have real-world consequences for the people that we have brought on this journey with us. I'm so grateful to those people for coming on this journey and producing something so brilliant for the thousands of people who have been able to see it. I'm so appreciative of their time and their talent and their patience, and I’m apologetic for the fact that not everything has been as smooth or as easy as perhaps we would have liked it. All that being said, I wouldn't change anything about this experience. If I knew this was the end game, I would probably still be tempted to do it again. I think everything you do in life you learn lessons from, and every production, everything you deliver, and every product you bring to market, gives you an opportunity to make the next thing you do even better. A process like this is incredibly draining and challenging, but I remain very excited by the medium and very infused by the potential that I believe it has. I don't believe in closing doors all the way. As with everything in life, at some stage, we turn on the lights and the party ends. We clean up the broken bottles and glasses and sweep up the pieces. I think it's raw and it’s difficult. It's been difficult for everyone on the team as we've come to terms with the last few weeks but it doesn't make any of us less proud of what we set out to accomplish, or less proud of what we built. I think there are lessons to be learned from the challenges people face along the way, just as much as there are lessons to be learned from the successes. Too often we only hear about success, and in many ways, this production has been a success. It has been a critical success, it has brought people together, but we also have to acknowledge some of the challenges and that has to be okay, that has to be an acceptable part of the story that you tell about what you did. Photo: Rhythm & Ruse As we now approach the final performances of Rhythm&Ruse, looking back on the entire process of creating and mounting the show, what are you most proud of? Morgan: I think if I had to give you one word it would be community. From the community that we built in our audience - both people coming back, and people exchanging Instagrams and saying they want to go get dinner together and things like that, I think is incredible. Secondly, the community that we have created backstage across our magicians, musicians and cast members. I think that's been an incredible thing too - it's people who wouldn't normally work together getting to come together to produce something really incredible. Thirdly, our investor community, who have also I think grown quite close to one another. The benefit of building a show this way and building it on investments from as little as £500 is that it distributes risk, which makes it easier to fund a project like this. It means that no one put in more money than they could afford to lose if it doesn't work out, but the benefit I wasn't expecting is that these people are friends now. They talk to each other about the show, and about their lives. There's a WhatsApp community that I have on mute because it moves too quickly. Abigail: I specifically remember once, I said to the WhatsApp group ‘I'm really enjoying that we have an investor community where we can have dinner and then I can say to the investors ‘I have to go home to my super hot girlfriend’’. Everyone was very appreciative of that. Thank you both for making the time to speak to me today. I'm sorry it's not under better circumstances, but I think there's a real value in being able to have a record of things like this, even if they don't work out as hoped. You should both be incredibly proud of what you created with Rhythm&Ruse, it'll be sorely missed. Morgan: Thank you for having us. I think the reality is that the majority of theatre productions fail to make a return and that the default scenario for any production, and for any producer, is this one right? It ends hard and sometimes it ends messy. People who are thinking of doing work like this have to know that that's okay. If you don't have people who are willing to take the risk, who are willing to stick their neck out, and who are willing to sometimes to be seen as the enemy when things go wrong, then you don't get new and challenging work, you just get the same simple cookie-cutter formulas, so I think it is important that people read and understand the realities of it because it sets them up better to do their own thing. If you go in and all there is is unknown, or even worse if you go in and all you see is success, then it can be quite hard to reconcile your own experiences and figure out what you want to do. I think it's helpful to read a warts-and-all description of this stuff and understand some of the machinations behind the scenes, not just because it's interesting, but because I think it holds a lot of value. To tie it back into the show, producers shouldn’t embrace the unknowing then? Morgan: I think embrace unknowing but with context. Rhythm&Ruse is booking until 23rd November 2024 at The Vaults. Tickets start at £17. To book and find out more, visit rhythmandruse.com

Punchdrunk's Viola's Room will receive a festive makeover with A Christmas Tale as part of its final extension, ahead of closing on 23rd december 2024. Punchdrunk, the internationally acclaimed company that pioneered the breakthrough of immersive theatre in the UK, announces the final extension of Viola’s Room, which will conclude its run at Punchdrunk’s Woolwich home on 23 December. Photo: Punchdrunk From 31 October to 2 November Viola’s Room will celebrate Halloween with a special 90s Nostalgia Weekend. At selected time slots, visitors will receive with their ticket a bespoke cocktail and exclusive access to The Prop Store bar where you'll be able to make your own 90s themed friendship bracelet and enjoy some nostalgic board games with friends. Photo: Punchdrunk From 20 November through to the end of the run (23rd December), Viola’s Room will undergo a festive transformation with the launch of Viola’s Room: A Christmas Tale. Featuring Christmas music alongside other seasonal twists, visitors will be able to experience a different version of Punchdrunk’s intimate, linear immersive tale. Photo: Punchdrunk Written by Booker Prize-shortlisted Daisy Johnson, Viola’s Room reimagines Barry Pain’s classic gothic mystery The Moon-Slave for a new audience. It distils two decades of Punchdrunk’s immersive practice into an intimate, linear, audio-driven adventure that promises to suffuse the dreams of those who dare to follow the light. Photo: Punchdrunk The production is conceived, directed and designed by Artistic Director Felix Barrett, with co-direction by Associate Director Hector Harkness (One Night, Long Ago; The Third Day) and design by Casey Jay Andrews, who was part of the design team on The Burnt City. Working with Punchdrunk for the first time are Lighting Designer Simon Wilkinson (Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Vanishing Point’s Metamorphosis), and Sound Designer Gareth Fry (Complicité’s The Encounter; V&A’s David Bowie Is, Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser and Diva exhibitions). Photo: Punchdrunk Viola's Room will run until 23rd December at One Cartridge Place in Woolwich. Tickets are on sale via punchdrunk.com, priced from £28.50 per person. To keep up to date on the latest immersive experiences in London, follow us on Instagram. ​

Photo: Grant Walker Santa’s back, baby! This November, London’s immersive Christmas dive bar, HUMBUG, is back in town and, this time it promises to be even bigger, even better and even more raucous than before. Shaking things up for the festive season, the team at HUMBUG will be firing up the snow machines and sprinkling a little mischief into the magic at the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane from 14 November – 31 December. Revellers are invited to step into Christmas and Santa’s cherished watering hole where an unbelievable world of live performances, sing-a-longs, games, immersive storytelling and festivities awaits along with an increasingly weary Santa who needs cheering up … and fast! Photo: Grant Walker Santa’s been working overtime for centuries and he’s hit breaking point so, of course, he’s back at his favourite dive bar where Christmas cheer (and booze) is available on tap. Along with some of Santa’s closest friends, guests will be tasked with bringing their Christmas A-game, ready to help the big man get his groove back and, as long as they do, everyone will be rewarded with an epic party complete with confetti canons, merriment and festive surprises. Double the size for this year, guests will be able to enjoy brand-new rooms and spaces including a hectic mailroom, Santa’s ‘Grotto’, a shrine dedicated to queen of Christmas Mariah Carey and a festive-themed beer can bowling alley. Along the way, guests will encounter a line-up of the finest cabaret from HUMBUG regulars including Daphne the waitress, Rudy the landlord, Howard the mailman and the big man himself. With space for over 200 guests per night, it’s the ultimate festive knees up with the greatest holiday tunes of all time (step up Mariah), live on-stage entertainment, a massive hit of nostalgia and an epic house band playing every night, all set against a backdrop of colourful Christmas lights, dazzling neon’s, mistletoe and festive memorabilia – too much tinsel? There’s no such thing at HUMBUG! Photo: Grant Walker Throughout the night, guests can sip on festive tipples from HUMBUG’s ‘Naughty or Nice’ cocktail menu including the ‘Bah F*****g Humbug’ – rum, chocolate liqueur, oat milk, crushed Oreos & whipped cream, topped with a mince pie – before refuelling in the spacious outdoor courtyard where they can tuck into a full menu of festive-themed street food from Bang Bang Burger including an epic Christmas burger, festive bites and desserts with plenty of vegetarian and vegan options. Photos: Grant Walker HUMBUG! runs at The Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane from 14th November to 31st December 2024. Tickets are priced from £25.00 for Balcony and £35.00 for General Admission. For more information, and to book tickets visit humbugchristmas.co.uk

Prior to its opening later this month, Immersive Rumours get a hands-on demonstration of Bridge Command - the ambitious new immersive experience from Parabolic Theatre that will allow guests to command a spaceship and venture into the expanses of space. Photo: Alex Brenner Bridge Command, an immersive starship simulator experience, is set to take off later this month in Vauxhall. Earlier this week, Immersive Rumours were invited to attend a sneak preview of the experience led by Owen Kingston, Artistic Director of Parabolic Theatre, at the show's venue on Albert Embankment. Bridge Command's history dates back to 2019 when Parabolic launched a previous version of the show at COLAB Factory in Borough. Despite the small scale and limited budget, that initial iteration caught the attention of investors who saw potential in its concept and wanted to enable the creation of this reworked, supersized version of the experience. And what an upgrade it is - with two different starships on-site nestled beneath railway arches a stone's throw from Vauxhall station, the size of these sets far exceeds expectations. There's futuristic bunk beds, a sick bay, captain's quarters, fully functional toilets that have a view looking out into the expanse of space, as well as smaller ancillary ships that can just about squeeze in all the crew members (which will range from four to fourteen per session) in case of emergency. As part of our visit we had a hands-on demo with the command bridge of the UCS Havock. There's multiple touchscreen consoles for each crew member, whether they're working on Navigation, Damage Control, Power Management or any other of the nine Officer roles available. Every mission requires a healthy dose of team co-ordination, with a constant relaying of information from one role to another needed in order to keep both the ship and the galaxy under control. Despite some initial chaos as everyone got their bearings, people settled into their individual roles quickly thanks to assistance from the cast who were on hand to explain the different interfaces and how they interact. Photo: Alex Brenner Elsewhere on the ship, things weren't going quite so smoothly. Our fuel cells had nearly depleted, and a sudden loss of power ship-wide meant that new ones needed to be dispatched from a neighbouring allied ship via the Comms Officer, who had to quickly broker a deal that would keep us operational. With freshly charged fuel cells now in hand, we found ourselves running down the hallways of the UCS Havock as fast as we could to restore the ships functions. We were told about several other scenarios in which crew members would need to leave their posts in order to keep the ship working as required - adding more pressure to what is already an intense experience. In the event that a group find themselves in an unbeatable situation, or the ship falls into complete disrepair, there is of course one last resort - the self-destruct. Never ones to turn down an opportunity, our group were more than happy to see all our previous hard work go up in flames at the mere mention of being able to detonate a bomb on-board the ship. Once armed, we had just 60 seconds to evacuate the ship and ensure our safety in the escape pod. Photo: Alex Brenner One of the unique selling points of Bridge Command is the agency that audience members have over what unfolds. Their 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 (as long as they’re in keeping with the world Parabolic have created). It's all about shifting that thinking from, "We are going to tell you a story, which is going to be fixed and will always happen the same way every time." It's changing from that to being, "We are going to tell a story together, and we're going to take what your decisions are. We're going to make them meaningful by bending the world of the show around it." Owen Kingston on designing Bridge Command to give audiences agency This is an idea that they've explored and pioneered in the past as a company, most notably with Crisis? What Crisis? and For King and Country. If this isn't impressive enough on its own, Bridge Command also allows these decisions to carry over to repeat visits, meaning your past choices will impact your experience if you visit again. The behind-the-scenes infrastructure that facilitates this has also been upgraded this time. What used to just be a huge spreadsheet is now a cloud-based system built in Notion that according to Tom Black, Artistic Associate at Parabolic Theatre, will "save all the things that you did on that mission, not just to the crew, but also to you". It works to such a degree that if two guests have visited before as part of separate missions, their individual decisions will merge and impact their crews storyline when they play together. The hope is that this level of individual personalisation will ensure people come back again and again, picking up right where they left off. The 2019 version of the show deployed a rudimentary version of this, which worked to great effect according to Owen Kingston. Around 50% of first time visitors would return again, with "nearly all of them who did come back, came for every single episode that we made. That's when we realised, "Oh, there's a business model here which works in theory"" Photo: Alex Brenner We've had thousands of hours of being able to test being able to pivot the story around audience decisions, so we've gotten good at it. But I think that makes it difficult to imitate this as well because there are so many pitfalls, and it's only really through doing it that you learn how to avoid those. Owen Kingston on Parabolic Theatres' experience at adapting to audience decisions on the fly All this narrative flexibility is all well and good, but what exactly can we expect from the story of Bridge Command? According to Kingston, they're "trying to deliver on the promise of shows like Star Trek, where it's not just about flying around and 'pew-pew, we're going to blow up a load of bad guys'. You are a representative of an Earth government, and you're there to try and be responsible". Acting on behalf of UCTCN - a new political union combining the governments of both Earth and Mars, tension and in-fighting between different groups plays a big part in the show. "We've got five or six different factions in the Adamas Belt - people who live on an old ark ship with forests and fields built into the ship so they can grow food, there's a bunch of space criminals who run a gambling operation out of an old space station. There's pirates who literally just go out and steal people's shit. There's a variety of different factions who all know each other. The UCTCN becomes a kind of a police, trying to make everybody work together for the good of humanity." Photo: Alex Brenner While there are plans for regular updates to the overarching story of Bridge Command in the future, it appears the teams current focus is on perfecting an experience that both satisfies guests desire to do something unique, and feel connected to those around them while doing so. I've been to immersive shows where by the end I've hugged people, and I then realise after I've hugged them that I didn't know them until two hours before. I'd love for that to start happening because when you were playing, because of how much you have to work together if you're going to thrive, it really bonds you together. Tom Black on the kind of connections they hope to see come out of Bridge Command Photo: Alex Brenner Upon launch, there are two main mission types on offer - Military and Exploration. Both involve starship combat, but the Military Missions focus more on ship-to-ship confrontation whereas the Exploration Missions allow players to delve into the mysteries of space. The custom built set is fully integrated with bridge simulation software, meaning that whatever takes place in the simulation, from an enemy attack to a ship malfunction, will directly impact the physical set causing systems to break and sparks to fly. This is a truly unique project that has been years in the making. It is a remarkable blend of immersive performance, interactive storytelling and gaming technology, and there really is nothing else out there quite like it. We are extremely excited to finally share it with the world. Owen Kingston on Bridge Command Bridge Command begins previews on 27th March in Vauxhall. Tickets can be booked via bridgecommand.space with prices starting at £40.00.

The Kraken Rum announce their new pop-up immersive Halloween horror experience in London, where the prices of drinks are determined by visitors’ heart rates during an 'immersive horror gauntlet'. This article was first published in 2023 and is in relation to Screamfest: Shock Exchange. Click here to read about 2024’s Screamfest: House of Curses. A new pop-up immersive experience this Halloween by The Kraken Rum will see visitors don heart-rate monitors before being thrown into a unique horror experience. The price they pay at the end of the experience in the bar for cocktails will be dictated by how much their BPM increased while inside. Developed alongside The Recreational Fear Lab, the immersive pre-bar experience is 'scientifically designed to make hearts pound'. The event is described as 'an immersive horror gauntlet' that will be 'dark, suspenseful and heart-thumping-out-of-the-chest frightening, it has more scares per minute than the best horror movies and is designed with one aim in mind: raise heart rates.' Guests descending into this heart of darkness will find themselves in a twisted testing ground - an arena of terror designed to discover if they are brave enough to receive The Beast’s benevolence by way of lower-priced cocktails. Once through the gauntlet guests will find themselves in the relatively safe embrace of The Beast’s bar, where they’ll discover just how much they were able to control their BPMs – or not. Those with lower heart rates will have their bravery compensated, while those who let fear take over will be charged incrementally more. Mathias Clasen from The Recreational Fear Lab says the following... An increase in heart rate is among the most well-known physiological indicators of fear and research has identified a range of stimuli that reliably induces fear in the average person. It is this knowledge that hosts of Screamfest VII have used in an event designed to heighten fear, and, by extension, heart rate. Hearts don’t lie, even in the presence of masking smiles. Tickets for Screamfest VII: Shock Exchange are priced at £10 each and include a cocktail. All subsequent drinks will be priced in line with guests’ heart rates. Those with racing hearts won’t pay more than £7 and resting hearts less than £3. Those interested in attending will need to book quickly, as there are limited spaces available, with many time slots already sold out. Kraken Screamfest VII: Shock Exchange will run for three days at the Clerkenwell Catacombs, from 26th to 28th October. Tickets can be booked via Universe.

Screamworks, London's premier immersive horror creators, return with Open House - a new experience for Halloween that fuses immersive horror and escape rooms. In recent years, ScreamWorks has earned a reputation for creating London's best immersive horror experiences. Their debut show, Bloodbath, launched in late 2022 and was unlike anything else on offer in the capital at the time. It pushed the boundaries of immersive theatre to an extreme and saw visitors being force-fed, tied up, undressed, and chased through an air vent on their hands and knees. Last year saw them launch The Ghost Hunt - another exceptionally scary immersive horror experience that had guests make their way through a Victorian house illuminated only by torchlight. Set within the abandoned home of the Luff family, who all met their end in bloody murder-suicide in 1937. Visitors were invited by paranormal investigator Hector Phoenix to explore the family home and discover the truth behind what caused their horrific deaths. "I think it's the scariest show we've done yet by far. We're building on the things that have worked so far in our experiences, but it's always been about psychological fear more than anything else." ScreamWork's Gary Stocker on Open House: The Escape Room Bloodbath by ScreamWorks (2022) For 2024, they return with Open House: The Escape Room. The experience is a combination of immersive theatre and escape room elements. ScreamWorks CEO Gary Stocker describes it as their most exciting immersive concept yet, and the culmination of everything they've learnt in the last few years. "I've always liked escape rooms for the fact that they really are quite immersive and give you a little bit more agency," says Stocker "but then there are some massive challenges with them that we've been butting our heads against - trying to tell a story in an escape room is almost impossible. People want to play the games, but they're so disruptive to the story because you can't really make someone believe that they're in a real story and then suddenly you go 'throw these ping pong balls into this cup to get a clue'. We needed a format where the games could work and coexist, but still allow us to tell a story." The Ghost Hunt (2023) by ScreamWorks The official description for Open House: The Escape Room is as follows... East London’s most haunted house is up for sale, and seasoned ‘escape agent’ Jason Shepherd has teamed up with ScreamWorks to present one of the most innovative house-hunting events of the season: Open House – the escape room. What better way to explore and experience the highlights of this unique property than to be locked inside for up to two hours, with a delicious drink from our brand sponsor and a host of fun games and challenges to complete? Possessed by the previous inhabitants for almost half a century, this enormous Victorian mansion is dripping in history, full of characters, and the perfect forever home for a young couple or family looking to take their lives to the next stage. With a bathroom to die for and a suite of bedrooms that will guarantee you rest in peace, this captivating property won’t cost you an arm and a leg! While the house has a guide price of £666k, the current vendors are keen for a quick sale and are willing to accept any offers whatsoever. Bloodbath by ScreamWorks (2022) Open House will run between 60 to 90 minutes depending on the choices visitors make. They will have complete freedom to choose their path, and those who are curious enough may uncover hidden secrets leading them down even more terrifying routes. Gary Stocker is eager for people to explore these options: "It's perfectly possible to come to this experience, play the games, and leave thinking that there was nothing else to it. However, there's a game inside the game to be found. For those people who are curious enough to explore and find it, they will end up having a completely different experience. We've decided to reward the curious and, in many respects, punish them too. We'll reward you by making you feel like you're going to die." Bloodbath by ScreamWorks (2022) Each group will be guided by Jason Shepherd, the property's "escape agent," who serves as both guide and game master as visitors complete a series of puzzles and tasks. For each completed task, there's a small gift from one of the show's brand sponsors, plus a complimentary drink during the house tour. Screamworks will also provide digital copies of photos and videos taken during key moments of the experience, accessible via a portal on their website. According to Stocker, this addition was developed in response to frequent requests from visitors: "It's a really nice addition because when everyone leaves our shows, they always ask 'Is there any chance I can see some footage from the CCTV cameras of this bit?' We basically have a full-time team actioning customers' requests at the minute for the footage. So now that this is launching, it'll happen automatically." Ghost Hunt by ScreamWorks (2023) Tickets for Open House are priced at £45.00 per person, with options for either public or private time slots. Each slot can hold between 2 to 7 people, and returning visitors will receive a discount if they wish to come back and try alternative paths through the experience. You can book via screamworks.london Photos from ScreamWorks' previous productions. Open House runs in Bethnal Green from 27th September 2024 until 3rd November. Tickets start at £45.00 per person and can be booked via screamworks.london

Midnight Circle Productions, the immersive theatre company that previously mounted Immersive Picture of Dorian Gray at Crypt (Bethnal Green) earlier this year, return for a two-week run of Frankenstein: An Immersive Show in October. Directed by Nicholas Benjamin, the adaptation of the 1818 Mary Shelley gothic novel will see the audience enter the memories of Victor Frankenstein against the backdrop of dingy pubs and creepy laboratories in Victorian London. The immersive show will take place at Crypt in Bethnal Green and will welcome visitors from 3rd October until 14th October. The show's official synopsis is below... Descend into the depths of the Crypt Tavern; a home of sailors, abandoned dreams and dark secrets. Amongst this rabble lurks Victor Frankenstein, a man with a past deeper and darker than you would ever guess. A story of loss, pain and one man's scientific folly. The question is, is he running from it or frantically pursuing it? The cast has been confirmed as follows... Victor Frankenstein will be played by Miles Blanch Caroline Frankenstein will be played by Nadia Lamin Elizabeth Lazenza will be played by Niamh-Handley-Vaughan Robert Walton will be played by Nicholas Benjamin Alphonse Frankenstein will be played by Harry Harding Henry Clerval will be played by Michael McGarry William Frankenstein will be played by Piers Mackenzie All photos by Roj Whitelock Speaking about the upcoming adaptation, director Nicholas Benjamin comments. Frankenstein has always struck me as a grossly misused text when it comes to the media of film. Say the name ‘Frankenstein’ and you’ll probably think of some crazed mad scientist screaming ‘It’s alive! It’s alive!’, or even worse a hulking figure with bolts coming out of its neck. To me ‘Frankenstein’ is a study of human grief and its potential repercussions, the actions of its titular character are inspired by his desire to overcome the mortal weakness of death. However, it’s through these actions that the real weaknesses of humankind are shown, anger, obsession, and denial. By once again giving the audience the choice on what aspect of the story to follow, I hope to give them the chance to view the actions of grieving humankind and conclude whether they are justified. Together let’s discover at what point a man creates a monster -- Frankenstein: An Immersive Show runs from Tuesday 3rd October to Saturday 14th October. Tickets are priced at £27.80 and can be booked via eventbrite. Find out more about Midnight Circle Productions via their Facebook page.

Amber Jarman-Crainey has announced her latest immersive theatre production, BOUND, will be premiering on the 24th August 2024 at Bargehouse on South Bank. BOUND encourages people to process, explore, and reflect upon their grief through a multi-sensory experience. Photo: Rachel Patrice Fallon B O U N D gives you the opportunity to step into the heart of the story and discover your own pathway through the production, whilst immersing yourself in nine stories developed from real examples of grief and loss shared through movement, live music, theatre and art. Amber started to create BOUND as an outlet for her own grief after losing her older brother in 2020. Her interest in movement and performance has always focused on human behaviour and memory, which is reflected in the curation of BOUND through the set, storylines and score. She's also been working with a small team of specialists to build the work, including industry-leading performers, grief specialists, doctors, charities and artists. Photo: Rachel Patrice Fallon The aim is to create a space where the audience has the power to lead their own journey and view what they feel interested in or connected to. The show is spread over five floors of Bargehouse, which will be home to nine storylines told by eight physical theatre performers. The cast for BOUND includes Lucija Bozicevic, Rosalia Panepinto, Vinicius Salles, Dominic Coffey, Adrienne Ming, Angela Smith, Lee Clayden, and Julian Nichols. Photo: Rachel Patrice Fallon Each story has been developed from either the performer's experience or an interest in the concept. Movement has been inspired by physical and emotional reactions to grief, with the key storylines found in BOUND being Living Grief, Shelter, Gaslight, Rooted Love, Therapy, Mourning Meadow, Time, and Subconscious Mind. Each room within Bargehouse has been designed to give the audience the chance to engage with a tactile space. As the audience ventures through the building, they will find, for example, a wild meadow, twisted willow structures, draping, and installations. Filling the space will be an original score created by composer and musician Ann Warren. Amber and Ann have worked together on previous projects, including the award-winning short film 'Clamber.' The audience will move in and out of the sound until reaching the top floor, where the audience will be immersed in cello music played live by Madeline Napier. Photo: Rachel Patrice Fallon BOUND is gifting a limited number of free tickets to students who are 16+ and studying an area that connects to B O U N D and Licensed Therapists who are considering alternative ways to support clients in processing grief and loss. Amber Jarman-Crainey recently spoke to Katy Naylor at voidspace about the show. Click here to read that interview and find out more about the show. BOUND runs at Bargehouse, near Blackfriars station, from 25th August - 8th September. Tickets start at £11.55 for students and £15.87 for general admission. To book and find out more, visit coinstreet.org

In the spoiler-heavy second half of our interview with writer/director Jack Aldisert, we dissect the key moments in The Manikins: a work in progress. Photo: Marc Tsang This interview contains major spoilers for The Manikins: a work in progress. Immersive Rumours: So Jack, let's dive into specifics about some of the big moments in The Manikins. After entering the venue, there's a pre-show briefing in which you explain to participants that if things get too much for them, they can loudly say 'I want the show to stop'. You're planting a seed for later in the show where people need to say that phrase as part of the narrative. It's a really interesting subversion of the typical immersive theatre rules... Jack Aldisert: It goes back to what I was saying earlier when I was talking about Ligotti and layers of reality and incorporating the participant's reality into the piece as one of many. I think a very effective way to do that is through conventions and the subversion of conventions. A convention is something which is totally expected to the degree that it disappears into the background. For example, when you go to the theatre, you expect that there's a bar, you have drinks at the bar, there's a bell that rings, you go into the auditorium, you sit at your seat, you're chatting with whoever you came with, lights go down, the crowd hushes. Everyone knows to do all those things. There are these framing devices like the curtain opening, which are conventions that signal the shifting frames of the show. Because they are conventions, they disappear into the background. There's nothing realer than that because it's totally unquestioned. Every time we subvert conventions, it's like we're grabbing a chunk of the participant's experience of reality and putting it into the fiction or revealing to them that it was always part of the fiction. That's powerful because it takes something so real that you never would have thought to question it and makes you realise it was part of a fictional scheme or fictional framework. [The 'I want the show to stop' line] was always part of the show, but as something real - we didn't subvert it. It was there in case they wanted it to happen as an actual safe phrase - which it still is. People still could use it like that, even after it gets subverted. It's those things that I think make the piece powerful because that's what helps the piece eat your reality. There's a fantastic book by Bert O. States, Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theatre. There's a section where he says something like 'The history of theatre, especially when it comes to its avant-garde development can largely be characterised as a gradual colonisation or appropriation of reality.' He argues that all of the most avant-garde theatre in its day has been avant-garde and gotten its power from how it takes something real and uses it within its fictional or theatrical framework in an unexpected novel way. That's what I think we're trying to do with this, incorporating reality into the piece in a novel way. Photo: Rebecca J. Windsor. There's a question that gets repeated a lot by the characters to the participant or to each other - 'Who are you?'. One of the things I love most is when the participant gets asked that and they say 'I don't know anymore'. That tells you it's working. IR: Another element of the show that I think is incredibly interesting, and it's something we mentioned in our review, is that the participant ends up playing as much of a role in the experience as the two actors. They start as a version of themselves, then they're playing a version of that performance's actress, at one point they're the Doctor, then they're playing a version of you as the Director amongst several other roles. It's a really effective way of having people lose their sense of self during the show. Jack: Yeah, it's another attempt to transfer a literary technique or concept from weird fiction into a theatrical medium. Something that's classic weird fiction is that it's not just your sense of reality that gets subverted and altered, it's your sense of identity. Often there's a theme in weird fiction of an interchangeable and permeable sense of identity where the characters don't know who's who anymore. They get exchanged with each other. There are a couple of really useful qualities of theatre that can harness a sense of shifting and permeable identity. Something else that States talks about, when you're watching the theatre, you're inherently watching two worlds at once. You're watching the world of Hamlet and the world of Olivier. You're seeing both simultaneously. They oscillate between each other. He talks about how great actors are the ones who are able to use themselves in the performance to make the performance of the character even stronger. The idea is to put the participant in this situation, which goes back to the identity crisis that Sophie Nield talks about. The identity crisis is what happens when you take that Hamlet/Olivier split off of a stage, which a more traditional audience is watching, and you put that dichotomy into a conversational interaction with an audience member. We try to fuel that intentionally by having the participant be asked to play multiple roles, which is again just a convention of theatre - the actor playing a character becomes something that makes you feel like your identity is shifting. One of my favourite moments is near the end of the show, there's a question that gets repeated a lot by the characters to the participant or to each other - 'Who are you?'. One of the things I love most is when the participant gets asked that and they say 'I don't know', or 'I don't know who I'm supposed to be anymore'. That tells you it's working. That's what I want them to feel like. I don't know exactly what, but I think this piece is doing something around identity essentialism. You take a person and maybe they construct their identity based around a certain set of characteristics or they say 'My identity is essential to who I am. These certain identifiable traits about me are essential to who I am', and the experience that you go through in this show isn't that. At the end of the day, you might find yourself playing five different roles. You see other people playing you and anyone can play anything in the show. It's not just the role you're playing that changes, it's what that makes you feel about your identity changing. Photo: Rebecca J. Windsor I don't think of this piece as something I've made, I think of it as an activity that I do with whoever else is involved in it that day. IR: This is quite a big statement, but The Manikins is the closest I've ever come to having a life-changing experience from a piece of theatre. In the realest sense possible, I felt like a different version of myself when I walked back out that door, and the old version of me was left behind. It's an incredibly powerful thing. Jack: Fantastic. You can't ask for anything more as a creator. A friend and I talked a couple of years ago about who theatre is for. We were talking about how in both of our experiences, theatre really is for the actors. You're giving a performance to the audience. but in my mind, the core of the magical transcendent experience of theatre is the experience of being an actor playing a role in this suspension of disbelief and the feeling that you get from the experience of leaving yourself in a way. Finding a different version of yourself feels like the transcendent part of theatre. What we talked about was that one of the great potentials of interactive theatre would be to give that experience to an audience member who doesn't have to have any experience as an actor or in doing immersive or interactive work. Giving that experience of what it feels like to be an actor in a role to someone who hasn't had that before and doing it in a way that we support them, the process of them becoming that is part of the storyline of the piece. That's why at the very beginning I explicitly say, 'I want you to feel like you're inside the story, but without you having to act. I don't need you to pretend to be someone else, just somewhere else.' The whole thing is telling them at the start, you don't need to be an actor, you don't have to act. Of course, by the end of it, they've been acting their asses off. Most of the time without even knowing it, without even noticing it. One of my favourite moments in the piece is the scene where they become the doctor and they're interviewing me, where I'm playing probably the closest version to myself of any other point in the show. The vast majority of people, even people who characterise as very passive participants in that scene, do lead and do push the scene forward. I'm thinking in my head as it's happening 'Wow, this person must have acting experience. This is a fantastic performance'. Then you talk to them at the end, and they've never acted in their life. We had one person the other day who just stared at me in that scene. I thought she was trying to make a power play or make a choice in the scene, in the way that an actor would make a choice in a scene. It turned out she was just really nervous and she didn't know what to say. She was trying to put on a veneer of confidence and wait for me to say something. I do think people get to experience what it feels like to have that sort of transcendent stage-acting experience through this. I don't want to sound like I'm talking myself up because I don't think about it that way at all. A piece of work is something you find rather than something you make - you find it. I don't think of this piece as something I've made, I think of it as an activity that I do with whoever else is involved in it that day. Photo: Rebecca J. Windsor IR: The 'intermission' interview that happens after passing through the curtain a couple of times I imagine catches people off-guard. It feels like a break from what is going on, but in the five minutes between the end of that conversation and the recreation of that conversation after taking off the headphones, for me was the moment where everything clicked into place. In the first couple of scenes, answering questions as either myself or Serena [the actress performing during our show], you're still trying to find your footing and work out exactly what is happening, but haven't yet dived into the dream space. It's a pivotal scene. Jack: Exactly. I talked earlier about the turning point for me in terms of the creation process was when I had that realisation - the meta stuff from the dream. I'd been asking people questions like that during the workshops, so the interview really just came out of the idea I had for that turning point scene where the actor is playing you. I had that idea and we just needed something to set that up, so we do a false intermission interview, which is why the show needs to still be referred to as a work in progress in the marketing, because it justifies the existence of that intermission. The main idea there goes back to when I first wanted to have a naturalistic office - you take off the headphones and eye mask and you're in a completely new space. What was exciting about that was you're now in a world of unlimited dream-like possibility, and it's undisputed - the situation just makes you inherently know that you're in that world of open possibility now, where it's like a dream and anything could happen. That's the feeling I wanted to give them. It came from when you're in a dream, and you can see someone in the dream, for example a figure that you know is your mother. She doesn't look like her, but you know that that person, despite their appearance in the dream, is who you think it is. That scene you're talking about is in my mind, a way to take that experience, which seems like it's only possible in a dream, and give it to the participant, They know, suddenly in that moment, without us having to say what's happening, they are having an out of body moment, where they're seeing someone else being them. Then we come over to them, and we ask them for director's notes, and they realise that they've become the director. No one has to ever acknowledge that in the scene, we don't have to hand you a script that tells you, we don't have to tell you what the situation is. We've set it up with quite a lot of logical plotting and planting of details so that in the moment of payoff, it feels like you're feeling the truth of that situation in the way that you feel the truth of something in a dream. Most people say that that's their favourite scene, and I know for a lot of the actors who play the Secretary, that's their favourite scene to play. It's really, really fun. Most people keep their directing notes to us very simple, or they don't know what to say at all. It can be very fun sometimes when people give us some wild ones. It's the turning point of the show because it signals that you've now entered the place where anything is possible, as in a dream. I think it also signals to people as a device that they have more agency and more room to improvise than they previously realised. Everything that comes after that is set up to be as open as we can make it in order to encourage them to use that agency. Photo: Marc Tsang IR: Speaking of agency, there's a moment that comes towards the end of the show where the participant has complete freedom in how to proceed. Is there a scenario in which people can break the show by doing nothing? I certainly found the number of possibilities in that moment a bit overwhelming. Jack: The only way that someone could break it is if they did something harmful or dangerous or sat in a corner and just kept going like, "La, la, la, la, la, la, la," and wouldn't engage. The only way to break it is act entirely outside of the framework we've created. But we've created an extremely broad framework so someone would have to do something not okay to break it or they'd have to refuse to engage entirely. Besides that, one of the backing devices that makes the whole second half work is that if something happens that's just too difficult for us to control, we can snap out of the show instantly and we can snap into our capacities as actor and director and we can dictate what's going to happen next, which we haven't had to do for that reason ever. I feel very secure in knowing that that's a possibility. IR: Do you think people would accept that as being a break from what's going on or do you think people would just assume it's another layer of the show? Jack: Depends on how we played it. It could be either of them for us too. We could use that however we wanted to. The last resort if something goes really wrong or if the participant is feeling really uncomfortable, they need out. You've set up this device where the actor and the director themselves are also part of the show and fictional characters as well. So to bypass that, the easiest way to do it, the final resort is to go outside, leave the venue, remove costume pieces, go outside and just be very clear that it's over or you're out of it and that I can either talk you down from here or I can just step away, go back inside and leave you to it. We've never had to do that. There are things you can do to prove that it's true. Parts of the show are wanting to give the participant the experience of reality that I have sometimes had in my life. The way that reality seems to me a lot of the time is it's dark, it's chaotic. There are a million and one things that you could choose to do with your life or with your day or with your hour. There is no ultimate authority that is going to be able to tell you which of those is right. You just have to do something because otherwise you rot. I wanted to take that experience of things and put it into a piece of theatre so that the participant could feel a heightened and metaphorical version of that experience for the last 15 minutes of the show. They feel like a tightened version of 'Wow, there are so many possibilities. There are all these figures around who are confusing, but they're telling me that they know what to do. They're telling me that they have it figured out. They have the right way to do it. They have the path that needs to be followed but there's nothing that's going to tell me which of them I should trust'. There's also the possibility of making my own path, but then I'm confronted with infinite options, and that's just as crushing. Do I follow the path that either one of these two characters is laying out for me? Or do I try to do something myself? Or do I just sit here and wait for someone to figure it out for me? Either of those options should feel equally daunting I think. --- For further discussion with Jack Aldisert on The Manikins: a work in progress and immersive theatre, check out voidspace's interview on voidspacezine.com The Manikins: a work in progress ran at Parabolic Theatre's Crypt in Bethnal Green from 3rd June to 13th July 2024. Visit themanikins.com to find out more about the show. Deadweight Theatre is currently crowdsourcing funding to bring the show to a new London venue this August and send the show to Gothenburg Fringe in September. To support them, visit crowdfunder.co.uk/the-manikins

With A Most Mechanical Murder returning for one night only this June at Phantom Peak, we interrogate Moonstone Murder Mysteries Creative Director Sam Emmerson on how to craft the perfect immersive murder mystery event. Immersive Rumours: Hi Sam. Thanks for sitting down with us today. Do you mind letting us know how long Moonstone Murder Mysteries has been running and how many shows you've launched since it first started? Sam Emmerson: It was Halloween 2017 when we first launched in London and the Southeast, but there's a Moonstone Theatre company in the South West of England that's been going for 15 years now. I was with them for a couple of years before starting it up here. Moonstone Theatre Company very much comes from a dining experience background, and it's in the last few years that we've moved more into the immersive experience game. I actually lost track of it at one point, but we've launched around 30 shows to date. IR: How do you go about devising and scripting that many shows? Sam: Generally, either a strong coffee or a large glass of wine tends to help. One of the things that's quite interesting about how we work - although we do the big immersive experiences like we've got coming up with A Most Mechanical Murder, and when we previously did Cyanide In The Speakeasy last year, we mainly do things for private parties and a lot of it is bespoke stuff. For about 1/3 of our shows, the clients will say 'Look, we want to do a show for our venue' or 'It's our 60th birthday' or 'We're getting married. We'd love to do a murder mystery in this sort of world, or this sort of theme' so you get a bit of a jumping-off point there. Alternatively, for the two new dining experiences that we've got for this year, we were just spitballing ideas and going, "What areas have we not touched yet that we think would be popular?" That's why we've got a show set around horse racing and the other one set like in a Renaissance Fair LARPing festival. So do you typically start at a concept or setting and work backwards? Sam: That's the way of creating shows that I find works best because ultimately - for a murder mystery in particular - although there are so many different avenues you can go down, in terms of creating motives there are only really 10 different categories that it can fall into. The order I always go in is to figure out the world that you're in, and then who would then fit into that world. Once you've got that established, then you find the link. That's why the more unique the setting, the more fun you can have. The hardest ones to write, to be honest, are the really generic ones. If it's set in an office, we've got nothing to build off. We did a live lockdown series on Zoom for 12 weeks where we played a new show every week and some of them were 'What are the strangest settings we can think of?'. One was set on the sound stage of a children's TV studio where a clown had been suffocated with a custard pie. Because of the bizarreity of it, you can be so playful with the options there. Moonstone Murder Mysteries Zoom Shows. Photos: Moonstone Murder Mysteries At the end of June you're running A Most Mechanical Murder at Phantom Peak in Canada Water. Can you give us a brief overview of the storyline for the show? Sam: The premise of A Most Mechanical Murder is that the town of Phantom Peak has gathered for the funeral of a murdered robot. However, as the last rights and the user warranty are being read, they realise someone's not there and the Health and Safety Officer of the town has also been found murdered. Fortunately, Inspector Rutherford just happened to be in town at the time, and goes 'Whilst I'm here, I've called on my detectives across the land to come into Phantom Peak to solve the case'. So the audience then set about solving both a human murder and a robot murder at the same time. With A Most Mechanical Murder, the show is set within the universe of Phantom Peak. What kind of things did you have to consider when taking over another shows space for one of your shows? Sam: Firstly, the venue is amazing. Because Phantom Peak is such a unique and big world, it gives us so many different ideas about where we could go. The challenge is making sure that anyone who'd been to Phantom Peak before believed that this had some link to that world without getting too bogged down in the huge amount of lore and information that it already has within it, while also having it so people who'd never been to Phantom Peak before weren't isolated. When we ran it previously, about 1/3 of the guests came because of Phantom Peak, 1/3 came because of us, and 1/3 had just booked because they liked the look of the show but hadn't been to one of our events or Phantom Peak before. It's a little bit of a balancing act with those sorts of shows. Our story is outside of the Phantom Peak canon, and the way we explained that was the dumbest way we could think of. When anyone who had been to Phantom Peak before asked us where the town's usual townsfolk were, we told them they'd gone off to compete as part of the Rhythmic Gymnastics team for the Jonalympics. Photo: Alistair Veryard When you take over a space, how do you make sure it's clear what is part of your world, and what's just part of the venues you've taken over? Sam: Well, the last time we did the show was a little bit like herding cats at one point because Phantom Peak's got things like Videomatic codes written everywhere - we made it explicitly clear that if we tell you it's a clue, it's a clue. If you find it randomly spray-painted in a corner of a dark room, it's not a clue. People would still do it, but I love it despite the confusion it caused because it meant people were really into the game that they were playing. When we did Cyanide In The Speakeasy at the COLAB Tavern in 2023, we had the space for three nights a week. COLAB Tavern had a lot of nooks and crannies from previous shows at the venue, and we had a whole thing where you snuck through the back door to get into the speakeasy. On the first night we did the show, someone found a cabinet filled with fake guns that we didn't know existed, and we also had people coming up to me with random little bottles of poison and I was going "Where did you find this?!" and they'd say "Oh, it was behind that locked door." Cyanide In The Speakeasy at COLAB Tavern. Photos: Moonstone Murder Mysteries This is the second time that you're mounting A Most Mechanical Murder. What were the big takeaways from when it ran previously? Sam: Fortunately, as a whole, it worked very well! There's a couple more interactive elements that we're currently looking to develop so there's always something to do. We only used the indoor space last time, this time we're opening it up to use indoor and outdoor so there's a nicer audience flow. When it's a murder mystery, everyone is 'Okay, go, go, go.' So we're trying to make it clearer to take it at your own pace. You don't have to be running around constantly the whole time because you knacker yourself out by the start of the second half! Sam Emmerson as Inspector Rutherford. Photo: Moonstone Murder Mysteries Your cast is made up of comedic improvisers. How much freedom do they have to go off-script when interacting with guests? I imagine there's a balancing act of improvising and still having to hit specific story beats. Sam: We give our team probably a much longer leash than most companies do. With A Most Mechanical Murder, the actual script is three times the size of a standard Moonstone Murders script. There are scenes that are scripted and will play out - basically the top, the middle and the end of the show where everyone's together. When they're on their own, they have certain points to hit, but they never know what's going to be asked. If an audience member wants to go down a completely random rabbit hole, our actors will go with them. If they want to go and just drill them on facts of the case, they'll also go with it, because it's their night, and it's how they want to play. It's a game within a show, but it's a show at the end of the day. If people get it wrong, that's entirely on them at the end of the night, but if that's the way you people to enjoy our show, we're more than happy to go with them on it. My ethos with our shows is 'Did you get it? Great. Did you get it wrong? Oh well. Did you have fun?'. Moonstone Murder Mysteries run events all over the country. Have you noticed a different between how regional audiences approach the shows compared to London audiences, who might attend immersive experiences more regularly? Sam: Our audience is on the whole quite a broad church and you never quite know what you're going to get. I find London audiences - and I mean this in a good way - they make you work a bit harder sometimes. Whereas sometimes when you go to a place that doesn't have as much available, it's got a different atmosphere to it. I think the great thing with London audiences, especially when you're surrounded with immersive theater fans, is that they will stress test what you've got in every which way. You get a different satisfaction from knowing that things truly do work under that stress test. Murder mysteries seem to have an enduring popularity through all kinds of media. What about them do you think has allowed them to remain so popular and for Moonstone Murder Mysteries to do so well? Sam: One is the curiosity for the morbid in all of us, I think. Because something like murder is so abhorrent, none of us could ever imagine doing it. It becomes almost fantasy, in a sense. That's why our shows are lighthearted - you'd never set a murder mystery experience in a modern-day setting where someone's been in a gang fight or someone's been stabbed. But if you set it on a train in the 1930s and everyone's wearing outfits and doing silly accents and having it off at the back of the train, then that's all kosher - that's good to go. On a lighter level, I think especially the British, we're just very nosy people. So when someone goes 'This has happened, I'm not going to tell you the answer to it.' It's that curiosity of 'I've got to know now', and an actual murder mystery most of the time is just fun. When someone admits to a murder in real life, everyone is appalled. It's a very sombre moment. When someone admits to a murder at the end of a murder mystery event, generally someone will shout 'Hang him!'. You get what I mean? There's a very big difference between reality and fiction. A Most Mechanical Murder runs at Phantom Peak in Canada Water on Thursday 27th June 2024. Tickets start at £36.50 and can be purchased here. Thanks to Sam Emmerson for taking the time to speak with us.