A trilogy of immersive operas, directed by Leo Doulton (Associate Creative Director, The Key of Dreams), is coming to COLAB Tower this Spring for a month-long run. The Uncanny Things Trilogy, which is made up of Come Bargain With Uncanny Things, Come Worship Our Uncanny King, and Come Murder An Uncanny Thing, has been created by Virtually Opera, and will take over the newly-opened South Bank venue from 4th to 30th March 2025. All three shows in The Uncanny Things Trilogy take place in the same setting; one where supernatural creatures still flicker in the corner of your eye, giving gifts and sickness, able to bind and be bound. The audience-community will decide how to change their lives by mastering rituals, crafting offerings, and negotiating with these beings. Photo: Charley Ipsen In Come Bargain With Uncanny Things, a ritualistic gathering tries to solve local problems. In the comedic Come Worship Our Uncanny King, people brought into an Uncanny Thing’s court try to win favour. The trilogy closes with the tragic Come Murder An Uncanny Thing, which sees the community deciding what justice looks like for a captive, dangerous being. This trilogy of shows is the world’s only interactive, immersive operas, and each contains rich lore, total audience freedom, and a commitment to creating communities with their audiences. Each audience’s choices will develop the ongoing world of the show, forming a uniquely growing experience, and the show's fully improvised music shifts and adapts as the audience changes the world, making their magic feel real. Photo: Claire Shovelton Speaking on The Uncanny Things Trilogy, creator Leo Doulton comments: Combining interactive theatre’s invitation to serious play with opera’s ability to conjure worlds beyond our own has made something special: the chance to enter a world where being a human in a community matters deeply (and also feel like you’re doing magic, which is just fun). Virtually Opera is a fusion opera company and has spent the past six years creating a unique system for interactive immersive opera. Their goal is to create work that feels truly live: for the audience as a particular community, there and then. Work on parts of The Uncanny Things Trilogy has been supported by a Britten Pears Foundation Creative Retreat, the International Opera Awards Foundation Bursary, Tête à Tête, Voidspace, and the generous support of crowdfunder backers. Photo: Charley Ipsen The Uncanny Things Trilogy has been created by Leo Doulton, a writer and director working in opera and interactive theatre. Leo founded Virtually Opera in 2017, and continues as its Artistic Director. In 2023, Leo became Associate Creative Director of the critically-acclaimed overnight immersive experience The Key of Dreams, and in 2024 became Creative Consultant to Voidspace. Their interactive novel Rites of Angels will be published by Voidspace Press this summer. Photos: Virtually Opera Cast & Creative Team: CN Lester: Guildmaster McCall (Come Bargain)/Adorer (Come Worship) Sarah Griffin: Carol Schuster (Come Bargain)/Silent (Come Worship)/Local (Come Murder) Amy Kearsley: The Wyrd Gazer (Come Bargain)/Vigilante (Come Murder) Hestor Dart: The Master of Processionals (Come Worship)/Lawful (Come Murder) Maggie Vaz Neto: Cover/Assistant Producer Leo Doulton: Creator (The Uncanny Things Trilogy)/Uncanny Things Charley Ipsen: Designer (The Uncanny Things Trilogy) Erika Gundesen: Musical Adviser (The Uncanny Things Trilogy) The Uncanny Things Trilogy runs from 4th March to 30th March 2025 at COLAB Tower near London Bridge. Standard tickets for each show are priced at £45, and tickets are available for all three shows as a bundle for £105. For more info, and to book tickets visit designmynight.com

Photo: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue Coinciding with the release of A Minecraft Movie in cinemas on 4th April 2025, Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue will open its doors on the same day at Corner Corner, London’s newest exhibition venue in Canada Water, marking the highly anticipated UK and European debut of this immersive Minecraft adventure. In collaboration with Experience MOD, Mojang Studios, and Microsoft, fans can dive into a groundbreaking experience that combines innovative game design, captivating storytelling, and cutting-edge multimedia. Photo: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue The experience invites long-time Minecrafters, new players, and families of all ages to step into the world of Minecraft and become real-life heroes on an interactive quest, with visitors entering seven different Minecraft rooms to help rescue villagers under siege from a zombie attack. Taking on the role of heroes, they must work to gather the essential ingredients to cure them before time runs out. Armed with only their wits and a handheld Orb, known as the Orb of Interaction, players will embark on a journey through breathtaking biomes in search of the resources needed to craft a life-saving potion. Minecraft is the best-selling game of all time, with over 300 million copies sold, with players from around the world adventuring and creating together in their Minecraft worlds. Now, with Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue spawning in London, they can take part in this rescue mission experience where iconic places and mobs from the game are brought to life before their eyes. Photos: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue Visitors begin their 45-minute journey by entering the forest. Guided by two unique characters—Tobin and Dayo—they will learn to use the Orb of Interaction, a glowing interactive handheld device which guides the user from room to room. Moving into the village, they will receive their quest and embark on a rescue mission with a team of fellow Minecrafters. On this interactive scavenger hunt, adventurers will journey through multiple Minecraft biomes while collecting resources and interacting with iconic mobs – some more friendly than others. Minecrafters can gush over pandas and dolphins as well as face skeletons, spiders, and – of course – creepers. Once they complete their quest, they can celebrate their heroic feat at the Minecraft Experience Trading Post with a crafty memento from the adventure. Photo: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue is designed to welcome families, parents, children, players, and non-players alike, and no prior knowledge of Minecraft is required to enjoy the experience. Kayleen Walters, Head of Franchise Development at Mojang Studios comments: After a successful debut in Dallas, TX this past autumn, we’re excited to bring our first-ever immersive touring Minecraft Experience to its next stop in London! We are thrilled to offer players and fans new ways to engage with the Minecraft brand starting this April. Finding ways for our community to express their love for Minecraft both in-game and out is always top of mind for us, and we can’t wait for more of our global community to attend the Minecraft Experience. Photos: Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue opens at Corner Corner in Canada Water on 4th April 2025. The waitlist for tickets is now live at www.minecraftexperience.com will offer access to a presale starting on 12th February, with tickets going on sale to the general public on 14th February at 10am. The experience is priced from £20 for children and £24 for adults (16+).

Later this month Crypt in Bethnal Green will be taken over by Sleepwalk Immersive for their debut show - Bacchanalia. Based on The Bacchae by Euripides, the show will see audience members enter the city of Thebes and be immersed in the story of Dionysus as they seek revenge on the family who have denied their divinity. It's set to be an intense and intimate immersive production, with just 40 audience members per performance. Ahead of the beginning of rehearsals for the show, we spoke to Sebastian Huang (Artistic Director) and Maya McQueen (Associate Director) from Sleepwalk Immersive to discuss the shows conception, their approach to creating immersive work and what audience members can expect from their 1960s-infused Greek tragedy. Photo: Sleepwalk Immersive What inspired the creation of Sleepwalk Immersive? How did it come to be with the team you’ve got in place? Sebastian: Work on the show Bacchanalia actually started before we founded the company. I've been working on the show for about four and a half years now. We started with a tiny little experience in Brixton, and from that the show has developed, but I think about two years ago a lot of us started working in the bar team at The Great Gatsby Immersive. We met doing that and obviously, we all got on very well. So we started throwing around these ideas about The Bacchae and how we'd work with that. We did a couple of little R&Ds and from that, I think we all just had so much fun and loved it so much that we just decided to form the company. Maya: Yeah, it's been a slow-growing thing. Pretty much this time last year we started our first R&D where it was the first version with a smaller team. We made a 20 to 25 minute version of the show, which we shared with friends and a couple of people from the industry to get feedback, which was really, really useful. And then with Ruth (Howard - Movement Director), we approached her and presented the show to her and she really liked it and was happy to come on board to further out the team. Photo: Sleepwalk Immersive Bacchanalia is based on The Bacchae by Euripides. Can you speak to what drew you to wanting to tell that story specifically? Sebastian: I love the play. I remember reading it for the first time and thinking 'How I never heard of any of this?' A lot of the great tragedies get a bit more attention than The Bacchae, so we were really keen to do it. A lot of the themes that come from Euripides, they're very translatable into immersive. It's all about the madness, it's about loss, it's about power dynamics. That's something we felt very confident in conveying in an immersive setting. Maya: Especially Greek theatre, so much of it is about justice in this huge wide world. It feels like a great place to bring an audience into, where you've got these two sides in these two towns and nothing can be fully concluded because that's what a lot of Greek theatre is about. You've got these different points of view and this person believes so strongly in this way of living and this person believes in that. It's presented to you and you think about it afterwards and I think that's a nice type of play to throw audiences into. Photo: Sleepwalk Immersive You held a workshop for Bacchanalia last year. Can you share how that experience was and the biggest takeaways from putting that workshop on? Sebastian: There are a million things! We did two workshops and then an official R&D. I think every time we were learning, it was getting bigger and bigger each time as well. Every time we do something new, there's a million different things that we now have to think about. I'd say every day we work on this show we're learning something new, which is just a really lovely, privileged position to be in because we get to do what we love and we get to learn about what we love every day. Maya: I feel like with immersive in particular, one thing we've learned is it's really important that it feels really collaborative with the performers because they're the ones at the end of the day who are having that specific connection and contact with the audience member. So they're going to be fully on their own and it's important that they feel empowered in what they're doing, that their ideas are heard and they feel 100% confident that they can bring themselves and their ideas to the table because they are going to be alone in a room with a bunch of people and they have to feel confident in that. Sebastian: We're just so excited to get these cast in as well because they're all at the top of their game, you know? From the last things we've done, we've really been able to get the best cast we can, and to work with them very closely. Photo: Sleepwalk Immersive You had a successful Kickstart campaign for the show, which exceeded the goal. How was it seeing that kind of response for a show that’s from a new company and is an unknown entity for most backers? Sebastian: We were incredibly fortunate that people were willing to give and willing to support us. So really, we wanted to give something back. We spoke to a lot of immersive superfans over the last few months and something they felt was missing from the scene is that some of these people who spend loads of money and loads of time coming to see these shows, they don't really feel like they ever get much back or recognition for their support of the industry. So it was very important to us that the people who come and support, they get something back. So that was kind of the idea around the Kickstarter. Putting something like a picture of their loved one or their name in the set, something like that - we want to show that we're here to work with the community, with the fan base, with the scene, not just tell them 'This is the work. Go enjoy it'. We want to include them in our work. Maya Particularly because they are so included within the form. A lot of creating this work was us looking at what do we as superfans of this work love. What do we come out of and go 'That was my favourite experience'? Often it's the little easter eggs and the tiny little details that you come out with that nobody else has noticed. And so, especially with the set, it's so fun for someone to be going around and seeing how we've personalised these details. Photo: Sleepwalk Immersive It feels like a comparison that could be drawn between yourselves and the work of Punchdrunk. Would you say they've been one of the inspirations behind your approach to immersive storytelling? Sebastian: I think that we definitely take a lot of inspiration from them. The company is made up of quite young people, so we're really one of the first generations to be able to grow up with immersive. Maya and I have been seeing Punchdrunk since we were quite young, we're big fans, but there are also a lot of other companies that we really respect and draw inspiration from - Third Rail, Parabolic, Immersive Everywhere - all these amazing companies that we've managed to experience. There's been a lot of talk and comparisons with Punchdrunk, but I would say in terms of the work we make there are quite a few differences. Their shows are very cinematic, almost. It's supposed to be like you're walking through a movie and I'd say the work we make is a bit more theatrical, a bit more focused on the live performance aspect of it. Maya: One thing we're really interested in is different mediums and how they blend together. Bacchanalia is going to be a mix between dance, physical theatre, music and puppetry. We want to see how these different things blend. And it works narratively within the play because of these two characters you meet who are polar opposites of each other. So we're exploring that artistically, but we're definitely interested in drawing, from other mediums and as well as inspirations like Punchdrunk and how they can blend together. The show is taking place within Crypt in Bethnal Green. It’s a very intimate and atmospheric venue. How much does the space inform the show and vice versa? Maya: I think completely. We wrote Bacchanalia as a bigger version of this show. So what people are going to see in a few weeks is about 30% of what we'd originally written. But what we did when we got the venue was go 'Okay, how does this show best work for this space?' Because it has to - there has to be that site-specific element within immersive theatre. Otherwise, it just feels like you're inserting something in and that's not fully breathable in that space. So we're definitely looking at the atmosphere as well as the rooms and how we can adapt different scenes to that. We definitely feel like we've then adapted what we'd written to build it for this space. Do you think there's a future version of this show that is 100% of what was originally written? Sebastian: Absolutely. 100%. We're not going to stop until it is as big as we want it. Photo: Sleepwalk Immersive Bacchanalia seems like it'll be a very intimate experience - with six performers to forty audience members. What do you anticipate that'll be like for the guests? Sebastian: One of the things we really love about immersive theatre is the human-to-human connection, that real intimate personal level of performance. I think this show, in our dream world, would be for one audience member and they would go in by themselves and all this crazy stuff would happen just for them, you know? Obviously, we can't do that, so we try to replicate that sense of intimacy in that sense of being very personal with the performer. And we're quite lucky that Crypt as a venue does really help that - low ceilings, all the corridors. It's a very intimate space. So we're really looking forward to getting the audience in and seeing how that works and seeing how far we can push that. I think we always want to be dealing with quite a small audience - just because we believe that that makes for a nicer viewing of our work. We really want to just make sure that people who do come have a good time and they don't get pushed around, it doesn't feel super crowded. Maya: I think that's definitely the best kind of experience for performers and audience members as well. People will really feel like there's a full connection for an hour and a half with these one or two characters; because even for the performers they've got a small group of people in front of them that they can remember and have this whole experience with. I think that's really, really important to us. The show is set in a 1960's version of Thebes. What was it about that period that spoke to you when devising this version of the show? Sebastian: I think we just read the play and I was like 'Okay, well, obviously this needs to be in the sixties'. I think there are a lot of things in Euripides's play that lends itself very much to the hippie culture around that time, and we're big fans of the music as well so it's great that we can use some of that. I think it was really just the natural place to set it. Our first version of the show was quite abstract as to when and where it was set. I think as we explored the show more we started unpacking these themes. It just made sense to set in the sixties. Maya: A lot of the play is about this divide in culture where you have two completely different sides who live in completely different ways and see freedom as something completely different. The sixties just immediately jumped out to us with that. I think even it shows that during the time it was a very popular play that was revived and put on, which I think speaks to how people within the Sixties kind of felt quite akin to that. Finally, how are you feeling about opening the show to the public in the coming weeks? Sebastian: We're just really, really excited to get audiences in and to show people what we've been doing and hopefully start building a little community organised around this style of immersive. Every decision we make is to enhance the audience experience. It all comes from a love for the audience really. Sleepwalk Immersive's Bacchanalia runs from 12th to 31st November in Bethnal Green. You can find out more about Sleepwalk Immersive via their website and Instagram.

Photo: Unwired Dance Theatre Immersive Rumours: Hi Clemence! Thanks for speaking with us today. Do you mind introducing yourself and telling us a bit about our Unwired Dance Theatre? Clemence Debaig: My name is Clemence Debaig. I’m a bit of a weird mix between a dance artist, a technologist, and I also have a background as a UX designer. That leads me to making work at the intersection of dance and technology with a strong focus on immersive and participatory experiences, which is what I do with Unwired Dance Theatre. The company was created in 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic, because I needed an umbrella for my work that was beyond me as a person. I do a lot of work with collaborators, and I wanted to celebrate that rather than having things under my own name. We work across all sorts of tech - from VR and motion capture to haptics and spatial audio - anything that goes bleep bloop will usually trigger our curiosity. A lot of the common themes in our work are around empathy, sense of control, and how those two things sometimes are related. We’re questioning how technology affects us as humans and as a way of connecting with each other. Sometimes we have this illusion that technology is everywhere and we can communicate very easily, but we tend to forget how to empathise and connect with other humans. IR: In 2020, when the company started, I imagine a lot of the work at that time was online? Clemence: It was very remote in the work we were doing. Thankfully I have the technical skills to make work happen online - that was beyond just a Zoom performance. I’ve done quite a lot of work with telematics and having performers in different locations performing together. The first piece of work we did as Unwired as a company was called Remote Intimacy, where I had a dancer in London and one in New York, and I made these capacitive, haptic jackets where the dancers could touch and feel each other in real time from a distance. I made a whole performance around that. That was taking place remotely for the audience, but also remotely for the performers. Remote Intimacy (2021) Photos: Unwired Dance Theatre IR: Your latest show, Where We Meet, is at The Cockpit in Marylebone later this month. Can you tell us a bit about the ideas behind that show and what audiences who are attending can expect? Clemence: Absolutely. The show started from this idea that we can never really know what's happening in someone's mind. Everyone's putting up a mask, and getting to the core of someone's inner world is very difficult. We wanted to use technology to give access to that and see if people could connect more easily when they had access to those inner thoughts. For an audience, we like to say that we've invented telepathy. As people roam around the room, you have three dancers in the space, and the audience is invited to be part of the same space and wander around. It's very much a choose-your-own-adventure piece of work where you can decide to approach any of the three characters at any time. When you get close to them, you enter this sound bubble, and it gives you the feeling of entering their inner thoughts. As the work progresses, the dancers also have the ability to decide what they want to share through a device they're wearing on their arm. Through that, we then evolve the work to invite audiences into gentle moments of interaction, so that can be a little bit of gesture mirroring or meditation. We're not forcing anyone to dance! It's more about using your body as a human to interact, and that turns into this joyful, euphoric, communal experience. IR: Across 2024, Where We Met was staged in a few different spaces around London. How has the show changed over the past 12 months? Clemence: I'm going to go back a little bit because the work started in 2021. The concept was born out of an event called the Dansathon, which is a dance hackathon organised by Sadler's Wells, Maison de la Danse de Lyon, and Theatre de Liege in Belgium. People with different backgrounds would come in, but it was really about the idea of technologists and dancers coming together. We won the Grand Prize of the event, which gave us a little grant to start. We wanted to figure out a couple of things, both what we could do from a tech point of view, but also where we wanted to go from a dramaturgy point of view, and what other stories we wanted to tell with this set-up. The original three-day prototype we had was very much to show the mechanics more than dramaturgy. We wanted to develop the dramaturgy through the exploration of the tech and what it is enabling us to do. We had several little R&Ds, then we got to present the first version at Maison de la Danse de Lyo in January 2023. That was only a two-character version of the show. We were using in-ear monitors to stream the audio from a central computer. We learnt a lot from that event and quickly realised that basically, we were never going to be able to tour the work if we carried on with that tech due to the cost of hiring equipment. In 2024, I injected a little bit of funding into this from our own savings, and we started to re-engineer the work completely. We really wanted to own as much of the tech as possible so we could work more easily in rehearsal spaces. We're now working with very cheap tech, like secondhand Android devices rather than really expensive Sennheiser in-ear monitor systems. Based on that, it really allowed us to go back into the studio and work more with the material and go much further. We started by reworking the two characters we had from a choreographic point of view, led by Livia Massarelli, our co-director and choreographer. The writing by Emma Nuttall and music by Christina Karpodini were already absolutely gorgeous, so we started from that, but choreographically we needed more time in the studio. We had an R&D with Rambert School of Dance, where we worked with an in-house psychologist, Kio Tomiyama, and we worked on the third character who focused a lot on perfectionism. Our third character is also male, so we needed to understand what the male perspective on perfectionism was too. We first presented the three-character version of the show at Theatre Deli’s SHIFT+SPACE in June last year. We were particularly interested in revising our onboarding and outboarding of the work. Before that, we were onboarding people outside of the space, and it was very practical. It was very much like, ‘Do this, put this on your head.’. Now we've made it part of the work; it’s part of the audio, and there's a proper theatrical dramatic entrance with lights and all of that as you would expect. We also integrated a post-show section where we built a little decompression room where people can reflect after the show and come back to reality rather than being spat out of the space, and we're like, ‘Okay, go and take the tube again.’ Camden Fringe was the first time we had a seated observer version. So alongside the active participants, who can move around the space and get close to the dancers, the seated observers are given a tablet where they basically see a top-down view of the three dancers with circles. They can then virtually, with their fingers, move themselves around in the space. We were already very keen to explore and really just started scratching the surface of accessibility, especially from a mobility point of view. Could we offer an option for people who do not want or cannot stand in the space and move around the space for 30 minutes? After that, we did City Fringe at Theatre Deli, Voila! Festival at The Questors Theatre and the Digital Body Festival that was in London as well, which is where we introduced a durational version of the work - which is an interesting one for festivals - especially in a more arts context where there might be other things happening in parallel and it's much harder to do small time slots. You need to have a lot of people coming through, so we’re experimenting with that, but we know it works. We're always trying to figure out what's the best format/business model/conversation we can have with a potential venue or potential festival because touring very tech-enabled work is very difficult, so it’s a lot of learnings. Photo: Unwired Dance Theatre IR: I'd love to dig a little bit more into the three characters in the show. Do you mind telling us a bit about what's going on beneath the surface in all three of them, and the commonality between them? Clemence: All three characters have a big duality of what is affecting them and the journey they're on to cope with it. They’re all sharing what they're struggling with, but also they're sharing how they're coping with it. Faith is someone who is struggling with body image and has had issues with seeing herself in the mirror for years, looking at what genetics has brought in terms of the shape of her nose and the shape of her body. It's something she adores in her family, so she’d be looking at her Mum and adore her Mum’s nose but hate it on her. She has that kind of weird relationship with her body. In that journey of healing, she really takes the time to thank the body for allowing her to breathe and live to experience the world. A lot of the interactions that Faith offers to the audience are grounded meditation with a lot of visualisation exercises. There's one where you visualise yourself as a tree to retake ownership of the body, but not necessarily with an image of a body needing to have those properties. It's a way to experience the world around you and feel the air around your skin and so on. Then we have Becki… Becki is seemingly a social butterfly. Very much someone who's going to suffer from FOMO. She appears to be a party girl, but inside suffers a lot from loneliness and really struggles to connect deeply with people. To fight that, she keeps surrounding herself with a lot of people and being the life of the party but is struggling a lot with a sense of loneliness, even when surrounded by others. The interactions she offers are about reconnecting with others and then taking time to really see each other. Finally, we have Adam, who is kind of an executive machine. He comes from a family environment that expects a lot from him and for things to be done a certain way. He’s very much in this work-sleep-work-sleep pattern of trying to be the best and pushing boundaries but really is working towards letting go. There's a lot of interactions with Adam that are brushing off shoulders, shedding all that stress and anxiety, and then relearning to be present. Even though those descriptions sound dark and intense, a lot of the characters are really on a journey of taking those struggles and coping, turning them into a positive outcome. The whole experience is actually really joyful and looks at how those challenges are just the vulnerabilities that are going to help us connect and turning it into a big celebration of each other. IR: What have the audience reactions to the work been like in the previous outings of the show? I can imagine these topics being quite close to home for a lot of people. Clemence: People are usually really touched in a joyful way, which sounds like a bit of a weird description, but people leave the space saying that they almost feel a bit hopeful for humanity and excited to then connect. We had people telling us that they were then on the tube afterwards and started talking to strangers. We had people coming back as well, wanting to do the next show straight away because they’d related so much to one of the characters; they realised they hadn't given enough attention to the others, so they wanted to then spend a bit more time there. People who have resonated a lot with one specific character on a personal level say, ‘This is literally my story,’ but also say that while the other two might not be exactly what they're going through, they still empathised with them because they might know someone who is similar. There are always those points of connection. A lot of the time people just stay afterwards to talk to the people who are in the room, which I think is quite beautiful. There's a lot of strangers in the space, and they're like, ‘I've done this interaction with you. I've been waving my hand in front of your face, so let's have a quick chat.’ It's quite nice. Photo: Unwired Dance Theatre IR: As you mentioned, the addition of the seated observer tickets is a recent change. Would you say that the audience takeaways from the experience are the same regardless of which ticket type you get or is it going to be a different experience if you were to go from the seated observer role over the active participant role? Clemence: As a seated observer, you have a view on everything that's happening on stage. Sometimes you can see the three dancers dancing at the same time, which you might not see once you're in the action, so it's a different experience. We've had people be a bit nervous about participating and select seated observer first, and then once they see how much fun everyone is having, they’re like, ‘Oh, I wish I was in there,’ and then come back to be an active participant. While the active participants might feel like they’ve got people observing them because they’ve got an audience, that's not what happens in reality because, thanks to our interactive projections, you're always in the dark. As you get closer to the dancers, the light comes into the dancer. You are always kept in the dark, and you're never stepping in the spotlight. As an active participant, you never become the point of attention for people who are observing. That's a nice way of protecting that level of intimacy and making sure that no one feels like they’ve become the show. IR: That actually segues quite nicely into what I was about to ask, which is about the technology that is used in the show. Originally the lighting was very different and the audience would be more in the spotlight, right? Clemence: Our original intention was to surround the group with the light. We have this squiggly line that's being projected onto the floor, and we wanted it to represent that level of intimacy and embracing people through the visuals. We realised that people, as soon as they noticed they were in the light, then thought they were doing something wrong. They thought they were getting too close to the dancers, and there was this feeling of, ‘Oh no, dancer, I'm not getting in the way. I'm not the show.’ So people were not getting close enough, and they were not hearing the monologues. There's a lot of happy mistakes in the work, which I love. We were in a space that was a bit too small, and our projections were not as big as usual because we didn't have the ceiling height to get an image big enough. We ended up having that line landing between the audience and the performer and suddenly it worked so much better. We realised, talking to the audience afterwards, that for them, it was very natural that it becomes this flexible boundary. The second happy mistake, we were in a space that was too small, but originally we had the performers really quite far from each other. You had to exit one thought and then enter the other one. When we were in that space that was too small, we had to put those sound zones a little bit closer to each other with a little bit of overlap. That's the thing that everyone absolutely adores - being able to stand in the middle of two characters. Because the sound is directional, you can hear one character in one ear and another character in another ear. I can see them from a distance when I'm managing the show; people are just standing in the middle and then listening to two monologues. There's something quite magical about that. Photo: Unwired Dance Theatre IR: Do you mind telling us a bit more about how audiences are tracked as they move around the space and how that impacts what they hear? Clemence: So basically, we’re using a very similar system to what a VR system would use. We have a virtual scene with sound zones. Imagine in a game, let's say there's a little radio playing, and then you're hearing it very faintly from a distance, but as you approach, it gets louder. We can actually track that data; we can track people in that space as every audience member is wearing a tracker on their head, and we're feeding that back into the central system and into a virtual scene that goes back out to the phones hidden into the pouches audiences wear around their neck. It's like you are virtually moving into that scene and getting closer to those positions. So we're leveraging a lot of the game engine and XR technologies. The whole product is running in Unity, and everything is kept in real time through this massive spaghetti of network messages, pretty much. As well as affecting the audio, it also affects the lighting and projection. That data is going to be grabbed as it comes through the stage management system so that if you are getting closer to a dancer, the light will be affected. The dancers are also using phones - that's the device they have on their arms - and their decision is coming back to the stage management system and being broadcast to all the other devices. If they make a change, then everyone is affected in real time. [Read more about the technology used in Where We Meet here.] IR: What do you think the main takeaway is that you would want audiences to have from the show? Clemence: I want them to remember that connecting with others is a proactive kind of activity. We're going to connect more through vulnerabilities than through whatever superstar mask we're putting on and through pretending that we are pretty awesome. Basically the opposite of what we're doing on social media. I want them to feel a bit hopeful about humanity and others. I think we are living in a complex, international, media-infused world at the moment, and having this little bubble of time where we can reconnect with others and have a bit of faith in reconnecting with other humans and the beauty of our differences. I know it sounds a bit cheesy when I describe it this way, but this is really what we're trying to do. Photo: Unwired Dance Theatre IR: Finally, what does the future hold for both Where We Meet, and Unwired Dance Theatre? Clemence: We just got a bit of Arts Council funding, which has never happened before. The phase of the project is dedicated to accessibility. Due to the format of the show, there are a lot of traditional theatre guidelines that just don't apply. We want to really take the next six months as a big R&D to figure out how we do accessibility right for new immersive and XR formats. We’re working with several accessibility consultants and also involving disabled participants in co-creation sessions where we'll be setting up the show and then doing some rapid prototyping in the space. I'm quite excited to maybe explore, I don't know, AR glasses for live captioning, which we've been talking to our Deaf consultant about the other day. Beyond just the minimum of sharing the words, how do you share the feeling of the beautiful composition, maybe through haptic vests? There's a lot of additional visuals we can imagine. That's going to be really interesting. As part of that, we also want to collect our findings and then publish a white paper at the end of the process so we can expand this to the wider community. To give you a quick example, we were trying to follow a relaxed performance format just to cater to people who might have sensorial needs. In our work, the darkness is what protects the audience, so we had put the lights a little bit up - as per traditional theatre approach for relaxed performances - and then suddenly everyone was super self-conscious and everyone hated it. It was just weird. Everyone was like, ‘I'm not going to move,’ and then no one was participating. We were like, ‘OK, we can't just take those guidelines. We're going to have to reinvent those a little bit and then see how it works’. The Cockpit is our first milestone of research. We're going to have one performance that’ll be fully BSL interpreted. Because it's a choose-your-own-adventure, we're going to have one BSL interpreter per dancer so the participants can really switch around and then decide which character they want to engage with. This has already been really interesting because the interpreters need to sign in 360. They're in close proximity with the dancers, so suddenly the BSL best practices don’t work, and we have to go into the rehearsal space and try to figure this out together because it’s all new. We’re also inviting participants into the space to then have a discussion with them afterwards to see if they've experienced it in a certain way and what are the new modalities we can imagine, and that will lead to a bit more prototyping. We have a partnership with the University of Kent in Chatham and then PROTO in Gateshead, who will host our upcoming workshops and sessions, so that's quite exciting. That's what we’ll be embarking on for the next few months. Photos: Unwired Dance Theatre Where We Meet runs at The Cockpit in Marylebone from 28th February to 2nd March 2025. Tickets are priced at £21.60 for active participants and £16.45 for seated observers. Accessibility information for Where We Meet is available here. To find out more, and book tickets visit thecockpit.org.uk

The Shop for Mortals and Fools, a site-responsive and immersive production from multidisciplinary artist Vinicius Salles, is set to open its door next month at Stanley Arts in South London. Audiences will be immersed in a carefully designed world, where every corner of the shop holds a fragment of a larger story. Old relics, unique finds, hidden trinkets, and heirlooms await discovery – treasures that whisper forgotten stories and hold secrets to be unearthed. Photo: Stanley Arts/Vinicius Salles From physical performance to detailed set design, the production creates a multisensory journey that invites participants to question their perceptions of reality, memory, and the human condition. Audiences of up to 10 people per performance are invited to explore the shop's collection, in which every object has a tale to tell. One audience member may unlock a hidden mystery by participating in a game woven into the experience, with the winner getting the chance to play a special scene, reveal the mystery, and if successful, receive a gift from the gods to take home. The production reimagines The Bacchae by Euripides, weaving an original narrative that explores power, revenge, and the fragility of the human spirit. Salles’ vision invites audiences to delve into a narrative as captivating as it is deeply human, where ancient myths collide with contemporary themes. As an artist known for his interdisciplinary approach and immersive storytelling, Vinicius Salles continues to push the boundaries of theatre and performance. Drawing from a 35-year career collaborating with companies such as Punchdrunk, Gecko, and Jasmin Vardimon Company, Salles combines his expertise in physical theatre, narrative, and multimedia to create unique experiences. With The Shop for Mortals and Fools, he explores the power of environment and interactivity, crafting a performance that is as much an exploration as it is an experience. Blurring the boundaries of immersion, the experience will also feature an exhibition of artworks by artists such as Anita Wadsworth, Alberto Pavan, Leah German, and Daisy Young, with these works available for purchase. The Shop for Mortals and Fools runs at Stanley Arts in South Norwood from 14th February to 1st March 2025. Tickets are priced at £20.00, with VIP tickets available for shows on the 28th February and 1st March. To find out more and book tickets, visit stanleyarts.org

With an exceptional performance from Kate Webster, The Shop for Mortals and All Fools is a profoundly affecting piece from Director Vinicius Salles Photo: James Lawson This review is from the February 2025 run at Stanley Arts The Shop For Mortals and All Fools is the latest show from director Vinicius Salles. An immersive, site-specific retelling of The Bacchae by Euripides, the show is told from the perspective of Agave - the mother of Pentheus and aunt of Dionysus - as the god of wine and ecstasy returns to Thebes to claim his divine right. The Bacchae is having quite the moment within London's immersive scene right now, with Sleepwalk Immersive's retelling of the story coming to Hoxton Hall in March. While both shows are based on the same text, their approaches to adapting it differ in some key ways. Set within an antique shop in an unnamed English village, shopkeeper Agatha (Agave, played by Kate Webster) has invited a small audience of 10 people to preview the shop's latest collection. While not every item may be for sale, they all have their own story to tell, and nearly all of them lead back to their nephew Dominic's (Dionysus) return to the village. Photo: James Lawson By way of introduction, visitors are invited to explore this collection and remove the sticker alongside an item of their choosing if they think it may contain a hidden coin gifted by the Gods. With information on each item provided in a catalogue, visitors are free to browse the collection and make their own decisions. While it's an engaging beginning to the show, the combination of low light within the space and small font size makes it a challenge to make an informed decision, with most visitors settling on any available sticker they come across after a few moments. The consequences of these decisions aren't immediately clear, but become important later on for one audience member. Photo: James Lawson Slowly unfolding over the next 45 minutes, Agatha recounts the tale of growing up in the brothel overlooking the village where she and The Vixens would worship Cybele, the goddess of fertility. She speaks of her sister falling pregnant and giving birth to a child that the villagers believed to be half human, half God, and her marriage to the man who would become Pastor. As the years passed, she would indulge more and more in drinking to speed up the passage of time, until one day a newspaper headline stating 'Banished God Returns' changed the trajectory of her life. Those familiar with The Bacchae will know the next part of this story. With Dominic's return heralding the village's descent into frenzy, Agatha is drawn into the woods and joins the crowds of women deep in ritualistic worship of the newly returned God. It's a choice that later leads to the death of Preston (Pentheus) at the hands of his mother, who decapitates him while believing him to be a lion. Photo: James Lawson Within the show's space, Kate Webster has a commanding presence. Given the experience both Salles and Webster have as choreographers, it's little surprise that Agatha's movement throughout the space is utterly enthralling. Constantly shifting and contorting as she traverses the room, Webster injects every scene with a wonderfully fluid sense of self. Alongside this, her performance of the show's text is exceptional, ranking up there with some of the best we've ever seen in an immersive, site-specific show. While all of Agatha's interactions with the audience are fairly light, there are select moments where she interacts directly with them. Some of the sustained eye contact between Agatha and audience members has a terrifying menace to it, and smaller interactions inviting the audience to scatter bark across the space's central table create a wonderful visual to go alongside her descent deeper into the woods outside the village. Midway through the show, the whisper of a prophecy is shared with one audience member. Photo: James Lawson By the conclusion of The Shop for Mortals and All Fools, Agatha's feelings are clear. She's been shaken by her retelling of past events, and she holds the village's men responsible. Drinking numbs the pain and represses her memories, but the objects she holds onto still have great meaning. For one audience member, their earlier choice of which artefact to claim as their own will reveal an even deeper meaning, but for the rest of us, our time in the shop is over. The Shop For Mortals and Fools is an exceptionally well-crafted piece of immersive, site-specific theatre. Tickets for the current run at Stanley Arts are sold out, but here's hoping the shop's opening hours are soon extended so more people can hear Agatha's story first-hand. ★★★★½ [Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review] The Shop for Mortals and All Fools runs at COLAB Tower until 7th June 2026. Tickets are priced from £35.00. To find out more about the show and to book tickets, visit tickettailor.com

You Me Bum Bum Train, The legendary immersive theatre show, returned to London's west end in November after an eight-year absence Photo: Kirk Newmann Update: This article has been amended to reflect the new, extended closing date of the ballot, which is now 9th February 2025. You Me Bum Bum Train (YMBBT), the legendary, boundary-pushing immersive show which returned to London's West End in November 2024, has opened its ticket ballot for 2025 shows. The show was founded by Kate Bond and Morgan Lloyd. You Me Bum Bum Train was previously named as one of The Times' 25 best plays of the century, won the Milton Shulman Award for Outstanding Newcomer at The Evening Standard Awards in 2010, was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Affiliate Theatre at the Olivier Awards in 2013 and was the Barbican's fastest ever selling show. The show is a surreal, exhilarating, euphoric and mind-bending participatory experience that sends its audience, or ‘Passengers’, through a dream-like carousel of scenes, fantasies, and, in some cases, life-altering experiences. Loved by hundreds of thousands, yet shrouded in near-total secrecy, since 2004, YMBBT has redefined what it means to be part of an audience. For the last show in 2015, there were over 120,000 people applying for tickets in the first minute of release. Photo: Kirk Newmann The show’s impact depends largely on Passengers having no idea what they are about to experience so they react authentically. Secrecy is therefore an integral aspect of You Me Bum Bum Train, with no details about the production released whatsoever. This ensures the show is experienced at its best, with the proven power to change lives and perspectives. All passengers sign NDAs, which prevents them from sharing what they have experienced. The ballot will close on 9th February at midnight. Each ballot entry will allow passengers to book a maximum of two tickets which are priced at £99.99 + booking fee. Successful participants will receive an email or SMS from 11th February with a link to purchase their tickets. There is a concessionary ballot ticket price for those on job seeker’s allowance. Photo: Kirk Newmann In addition to experiencing the show as a Passenger, You Me Bum Bum Train relies on a community of volunteers who come together and contribute their time, resources and skills to make a special, meaningful experience for audience members. Without this community, the project would not be affordable and would simply not exist. YMBBT offers free training and certification across production, stage management and performance. Many of the volunteers have gained newfound confidence and skills, and more come on board with each show, many of them ex-passengers who want to contribute to the next show themselves. The ticket ballot for You Me Bum Bum Train is open now via bumbumtrain.com, and closes at midnight on 9th February. Successful applicants will be informed from the 11th February.

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