A postcard from the theatre capital of the world.
The London immersive scene is dark and active — productions are continually popping up, being devoured, and then disappearing like prized mushrooms in the twisting, damp, and deeply seductive streets of a city that has visible structures dating from 200AD. American productions boast of using the city as a character but nothing dwarfs an audience’s ego like two thousand years of metropolitan development looming above as they proceed to or stumble across a performance.
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The dregs of summer marks the end of the busy season in London. Shows that were successful during the winter’s Vaults Festival at Waterloo have had their spring relocation and are drawing the last of their summer audience by now — this year London witnessed the re-emergence of showstoppers The Great Gatsby and Alice’s Adventures Underground which are still offering tickets through extended seasons. There’s no shortage of opportunities as we enter the fall, however — production companies Coney and Blast Theory are continually asking for participants in their free scratch trials while ZU-UK produces their contemporary performance engagement festivals and CoLab develops new site-specific experiences. The city is rife with immersive-influenced interactive museum exhibits and short-form productions tailor-made to promote films — currently there’s a pop-up haunted-house style piece promoting the new Conjuring release. While London doesn’t makes as much of a fuss about Halloween as America does, you can expect to see spooky site-specific performances as the season approaches. Thanks to Arts Council funding and other backer sources, these popular smaller performances are usually reasonably affordable, rarely breaking the £30 ceiling.
Finally, for those in the community who are interested in hands-on education about the development and construction of an immersive piece may look no further than the home base of Punchdrunk — their Fallow Cross location offers masterclasses on design and performance through a sprawling indoor village that finally allows longtime audience devotees get their hands on a completed set and let their own creative juices run wild. With a sandbox facility like this it’s little wonder why the immersive scene is so active and varied in the city.
London is currently a seething den of hidden passageways and secret corners where productions are breeding and thriving, begetting offshoot pieces even as they close their own runs. The more audiences attend, the more experiences they want and sometimes even choose to produce. Much like the scope of the shows we seek, the community is only as small or as large as a participant’s willingness to engage.
So come out and play with us.
Join the fastest growing immersive arts & entertainment community on the planet: EVERYTHING IMMERSIVE.
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