Our Own Experimental Experiences

The first piece I saw was Phoebe's group. They managed to immerse us in the piece immediately by coming out of the room and telling us there was no space at the shelter and we had to leave. This straight away gave us the message that we were homeless people and put us in role. They then rather aggressively pushed us into the room and yelled at us and this was immersive because it really made us believe we were homeless and made us feel bad. They shined torches in our eyes and spread litter around the room which set the scene. One thing I think could have been done without was the music. I think it wasn't entirely necessary and detracted ever so slightly from what was happening.

The second piece I saw was Gus' group, and there's was really exciting, again they immersed us straight away with Gus coming out with a moustache drawn on telling us what the plan was. We were then sent into the space, where the Great Escape theme song was playing. The room was pitch black and there was a strobe light which made the atmosphere Quite intense. Then we went behind the curtain, making it very claustraphobic, adding to the idea of us going through a tunnel. Catherine was shouting at us to get down, which made it feel intense and nerve-wracking. When we crawled on the floor they had laid down wet leaves, which was very uncomfortable but felt very real. I found this effective, one comment said was that the music choice may be too comical, and it may have been even better with something a bit more suitable to the mood.

The last piece I saw was the Asylum piece. This was incredible but absolutely terrifying. I should mention that I am terrified of the dark, and scary things and sudden moments, and everything really! They used space very effectively by huddling us all at one end of the blacked out room. And using a single torch light to illuminate the three people sat at the far end of the room. This made it feel larger than it was, and it was a scary amount of space, especially when they began to disappear as you didn't know where they went. Unfortunately I couldn't tell you about the rest of the performance because I had to leave the room!

We performed ours last. The idea behind ours was that the audience were campers on a scouts trip. We set it up to be immersive by having James and Asa go outside and tell them to get into a line, put on the blindfolds and follow the leader. The performance consisted of the boys telling a spooky story and us girls getting close to the audience, touching them, blowing in their ears etc. The blindfolds worked well as they forced the audience to rely on their other senses, i.e. smell, sound, touch. We put leaves on their chairs so they would feel like they were sat in the woods. It was successful in making the audience feel afraid, however, the story was completely lost because of the screams, I think we built up the climax too early, we should have told the story then done stuff to the audience. That way we could have engaged their imaginations better.