(by Yaz)

I think for January we can (and should) aim for something simpler than the final (Summer) product. So I think it’s important to be consciously aware of which elements or concepts we want to explore, and which we’re specifically leaving behind.

With reference to your concerns Tom, one specific element we could drop is the idea of ‘teams’ or opposing groups of people. I’m thinking we’d be better setting up a network of characters with different underlying intentions, aims, and feelings towards each other. An almost-farcical set-up - I’ll return to why later.

I’m also thinking the question of ‘why’ time is repeating could be left unanswered (though not neccesarily un-addressed). The whole story of tongue-in-cheek sci-fi time-space conundrums is something that I think will be perfect for the large, final, summer project, with mad scientists and neglected mansions and scientific conferences. But I think the point you made about making the most of the theatrical spaces we’ll actually be using, and setting it in that world makes a lot of sense.

So, with those two points in mind, I’m starting to like to following scenario:

• Piece starts fifteen minutes before a show is due to begin, possibly ‘Waiting for Godot’ (because it never happens. Aha.). This fifteen minutes is what repeats.
• During this repeating fifteen minutes, audience can wonder freely around the theatre (I’ll return to why later), and meet/overhear assorted characters, who might include, for example:
  • Understudy, who’s considering locking the lead actor in a cupboard because there’s someone important in the audience (a crush, or an agent, etc)
  • Lead actress, trying to hide their baby that they’ve brought along, whilst rejecting the advances of the director
  • Someone important in audience, that turns out to be imposter.
  • Stage manager, secretly in love with director, blackmailing imposter
  • etc etc etc
• As audience have personal experiences with characters, they are enlisted to try and help one or the other, and plots change etc in accordance

Now, even something that basic would enable us to fulfil the aim of the January project, which is to gain experience of creating something that’s both interactive and site-specific.

Regarding the farcical nature of the plot: I think it’s helpful for several reasons. 
Firstly, it’s something we’re most well versed in, and as we’re going so far outside our experience with the project it’d be good to have some areas we can be confident in.
Second, I think a comic tone allows a little more suspension of disbelief, and easier interaction, and we’ll need all the help we can get on our first outing.
Thirdly, and most importantly, I’m still uncertain of how audiences will react to certain elements of this interactivity. I’d feel more confident to ask an audience to tell a story that is about petty squabbling than one about crime, violence and danger, simply because we don’t know enough about regulating audience reactions. If it’s a story about lower stakes (people trying not to look like fools in front of each other) then I think a slightly comic approach acknowledges the ridiculousness of the situations.

That’s not to say I think the piece should be light and frothy. I also don’t think we should be aiming for laugh-out-loud funny, just a piece that embraces its absurdity, rather than striving for realism

Onto practical issues. Tom you were concerned about theatre’s ‘rules’ and audience reluctance to break them. Firstly, I don’t think we’ll ask anyone to go backstage by crossing the stage, so it won’t always be obvious to them that that’s where they are.
But why are they ‘allowed’ to be there, within the world of the play, and how do we make them feel comfortable heading there? I’ve written some notes, which I’ll share eventually, about ‘guiding’ characters, the equivalent of ‘NPCs’ in computer games (see this or this). Stooges if you like: characters that are ‘peers’ of the audience members, rather than major players in the story, that encourage interaction and movement, or ‘train’ the audience in how to ‘play’. (Sonic and MC in Auditorium could be considered a version of this, arguably).
But also, I quite like the idea that the director character has opted to allow the audience to wander around backstage, for his own (maybe misguided) artistic reasons. Let’s assume the audience don’t take him up on his offer on the first repeat, but as they realise that it’s the only way forward, I think they’ll start to.

On another point, how do we ‘reset’ time? In terms of characters, whatever our justification, I have a fairly clear idea of what happens to them. Essentially we watch their memory slow slip away and their confusion build, over the course of a minute or two. In some cases, they’ll be struggling to hold onto the memory of the last fifteen minutes, but they never succeed, and always end up confused as to why they’re exactly where they are, then making excuses and hurrying back to the place they think they should be - ie their starting position.

Perhaps that doesn’t explain it very clearly, but we can mess around with this in a practical session and you’ll see what I mean.

One final thought. Perhaps the ‘justification’ for the repeating time is in fact part of the plot, after all. Maybe it’s eventually discovered that some character or other has, for whatever motive, slipped some sort of fabled drug into everyone’s food/drink, that messes with everyone’s memory and body clocks.

And maybe that character has subsequently forgotten. That could be the underlying ‘mission’ of the piece, to figure out who it was?

PRACTICAL ISSUES: - 1) how do the actors get back to their positions after each 15 mins (without breaking out of the ‘world’ of the event) - 2) what happens to any items that have been moved or changed or created during each 15 mins (not all can be fully re-set so does this limit what can happen?) 3) a theatre has too many ‘rules’ (don’t go backstage, don’t go onto the stage) to allow for free-roaming so probably can’t go with this concept

THEORETICAL ISSUES: 1) why doesn’t time reset for the audience (obviously they can remember what has happened before) 2) opposing teams and the resetting of time were both ideas to allow things to be done and then undone to keep things going. do they work together if we use both ideas? 3) does the thing that resets time back 15 mins have to be done at the end of each 15 mins (hopefully not - but then harder to make clear what’s happening and how to solve it) - of course it could have been done before the audience arrived but then it’s harder to get the audience to ‘see’ what has happened

Potential Scenario (i think based on yaz and haroun’s original application)

• professor is about to stage a conference to demonstrate his new time invention, invited audience to this theatre in the west end. lots of important people
• he is setting up as people arrive so we can see him on the stage and watch if we like but are also encouraged to wander around. most of the rooms are people chatting and getting ready to watch demonstration but some of more private rooms that we are told off for entering or welcomed in as an opportune visitor
• during the set-up the professor does something silly and time is reset, everyone goes back to what they were doing 15 mins ago - audience will realise this but not much more
• somehow someone thought this might happen so there are clues the audience can find for them to work out what happening
• the aim is to get some audience members to tell the actors what has happened so that the actors can lead the way in working out how to stop it. this will not be a huge surprise to some of them so that as soon as an audience member suggests it they suddenly realise all that has to be done
• of course, some characters will need to be convinced!
• at least two of the characters realise they can profit from controlling this time glitch and enlist audience to help. as well as numbers, the fact the audience’s memories are not reset each 15 mins gives them an advantage - even though the characters have the background knowledge to direct them
• there is therefore some item or information or action which has to be found/done to help someone get control

PROBLEMS:

• this doesn’t exploit the time resetting:
  • different people wanting something means it can go back and forth with teams
  • however, the time resetting just undercuts this by resetting things each 15 mins
  • that is more suited to some event(s) happening at the end of the 15 mins that need to be stopped/changed by going back and doing things differerently. so people can experiment with how their actions will affect the end result while others do things that ruins/helps their plans.
  • so perhaps better if the aim is just to stop time resetting and there are no teams - we don’t know what happened at the end of the 15 mins to reset time but the audience can work it out by process of elimination
  • but then it just goes on until someone figures it out (one ending) and if they don’t it never ends

Present: Yaz, Tom, Mic, Alan, Haroun

Ideas:

• Time repeating (15 min blocks?)

• Keep the geography and look of TBT and Actor’s Centre roughly

• But it is now a more important place in society

  • e.g. first performance in 10 years about to be performed

  • hosts important conferences etc.

• People can follow ‘paths of trade’ (like in Zelda) - one person wants something, in return they give you what another person wants

• People are looking for people and the audience reunite them

• SIDES

  • when you meet someone they encourage you to do tasks for them

  • other will give you conflicting tasks

  • you have to choose a side

  • others will choose other sides, so things can be achieved, then undone, then done again etc.

—>Allegiances, spies, allies

- audience can form groups or go it alone

- but we want to retain a distinction between actors and audience (except in some cases)

—> impassioned speeches by actors to get people onside

• People make moral choices (they need to be in groups to do this, so others can judge them)

• Want to bring people together at certain times - whilst still allowing them to go somewhere else if they wish

  • difference between them being told to form groups and doing it naturally

  • (e.g. 5 minute call brings people into the auditorium)

• If no breaking character or explanation then how do you get people to roam freely and talk to people

• Want to make it a believable world with believable characters who have real needs/wants - impress people with genuinely good performances

• Suggestion of making it the scene of a play about to be performed

  • we start 15 minutes before the show begins but just as it’s about to, time reverts back

  • one of the understudies wants to injure one of the main actors to get their part

  • audience might end up onstage or in audience

A site full of articles (loosely) about the philosophy, debates, and art of making and playing games - mostly computer games.

Provides a good way of thinking about elements of this project, lots of ideas, and a useful set of terminology.

(I’ll link to specific articles later on)

I’ve written so much today I don’t think I can tell this story.

Roughly speaking, we had a incredible and inspirational three-day session at Uni with one Stuart Nolan all about interactivity, in Dec ‘06. I found it amazing and eye-opening, and it pretty much filled the last few gaps in this idea for me.

It all made sense, here was an idea that tied together everything I was excited by with all of my skills and hobbies, ya-di-ya-di-ya.

(I’ll probably rewrite this in some kind of more informative way in the future.)

Back in my first year of Uni, I was working on a small site-specific project with a few others - including Alan Fielden. Recently inspired by dreamthinkspeaks’s extraordinary show Underground, We were briefed to create a piece about the Orpheus myth. We looked around the school for locations to use, and settled on an alleyway behind it, a rarely-used design studio, and a courtyard that connected the two.

But we came across a problem. Above the rarely-used design studio was an often-used design studio, and part-way through the process we discovered there was to be a public design showcase going on upstairs on the night of the performance. This meant that there’d be another stream of audience going backwards and forward between the main building and the other design studio. This would happen at exactly the point we needed to shepherd our small crowd from Orpheus, distraught in his alleyway, to Euridice, now a dancer in the sleazy 30s-style nightclub we were planning to set up in our studio* - a route we didn’t think was obvious enough anyway..

We were worried about losing audience, them not knowing where to go, or mixing them up, or whatever. Particularly as I wanted us to stay ‘in character’ all the way through the process.

I had a solution I thought was pretty simple. The audience would have just met Orpheus and discovered he was seeking his lost lover. I wanted him to give them photos of her, and ask them to try and find her. They would be encouraged to ask around. Set up at the door of the studio would be a poster of Euridice, advertising her as playing inside. The audience would either spot the poster - and know where to go - or ask around. If they asked an audience member from the other show, they’d reply honestly that they hadn’t seen her. If they asked one of the characters we’d have planted in the area, they would give them a lead in the right direction. Some audience would find it on their own, but most would probably just follow the crowd.

What’s more, it moved the story along, giving Orpheus a suitable bridge between “where on Earth could my Euridice be” to “Oh look here she is”.

The group didn’t adopt the idea in the end, but Alan and I were both keen on it. And I suddenly felt I’d stumbled upon something very exciting, something that would perhaps enable those childhood ambitions: a site-specific piece of theatre, that the audience could ‘play’.

*Hey, we were first years. Stop guffawing.

Ever since I can remember, my brother and I had wanted to make real-life experiences that were like movies and computer games. I guess this developed out of the make-believe games we played, and the forts and shop we built, so I couldn’t put a date on it’s inception. But it’s there.

Another attempt to describe what the project is, this time written on the back of a napkin. It reads:

Fusing site spec. theatre w/ interactivity in a way that evokes some of the best features of character-cased role-playing games - to allow the audience to immerse themselves in a (fantasy) world they can participate in or watch.
Why? We love RPGs, love live perf., want to experience their marriage, want to innovate.
[Other elements: illusion, reality blending, ARG…]

I’ve included the original napkin for future historians, even though you can’t read it and it’s not relevant.

I’ve transcribed it exactly because of the way these descriptions work, even though I quite want to make some changes to it.

But it’s interesting, when writing these ‘simple’ descriptions, how we feel the need to add more and more adjectives and sub-clauses to make it all make sense, and to use language as vague and open as possible. (I had to stop myself swapping fantasy for fantastical, because fantasy doesn’t explain it right, and fantastical is more vague and open.)

And that is the reason why nearly every ‘mission statement’ or company description written by almost any artistic organisation ends up sounding almost exactly alike.

(Not that that’s relevant.)