Hi all!

This is where we will be discussing our thoughts on Reverie by Yello Brick!

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Hey all,

I've just published a cheeky little blog about our experience here & yes, I totally included the Rambo group shot! Enjoy x

On Saturday I was lucky enough to participate in Yellobrick's newest game Reverie, as part of the Critical Chinwag Team. Below is my experience of the crazy events that led me to slow motion running around Cardiff Bay fashioning a blue Rambo headband.

Reverie is an interactive performance game which throws its audience into an unseen world of mystery and soul snatching. The plot is unlocked and moulded through a series of participatory mini-quests to retrieve fragments of the protagonist's soul. The start is the same for each participant but the experience is unique to each group.

Each gaming team is set off on a quest to awaken protagonist Tom Wakefield from a coma. Tom's blood was the doorway to purgatory and there were those out to abuse it; the red men, who we were to avoid at all costs! His catatonic state is the result of gifting fragments of his soul to his friends for safe keeping, rendering any blood taken useless. We were needed to retrieve these fragments and stop the red men from getting them first.

We started out at The Brooke Institute, a specialist coma clinic, where Tom Wakefield slept. We were given blue bands and asked for a team name. After fashioning our bands around our heads we chose the fitting name: Team Rambo.

Equipped with a wallet and a map by we set off to a number of venues around Cardiff Bay, which was swarming with red men! We were under strict instruction not to run or make noise around them, or risk having our souls snatched. This made for some hilarious slow motion running in busy areas of the bay. At this point we were too far gone into the game to consider how this looked to members of the public (with hindsight this probably looked like we were escaped mental patients, after all, we did start out in a medical clinic).

In each area marked on the map we would have to solve a puzzle facilitated by one of Tom’s friends to successfully secure a part of his soul. A personal highlight for me was the game facillitated by actor Kieron Self. We had to use fishing nets to sift through decoy soul cards to find the real piece. 

Kieron provided some much needed comic relief from the red men. His high energy portrayal of a rather questionable and crude fisherman actually made me snort laugh (by default anything that can make me snort laugh I hold in the highest regards).

I thoughly enjoyed the experience and admired Yellobrick's commitment to the mystery. Even before the show small fragments of the plot were available with a little research. Each week a new video appraisal for coma patient Tom Wakefield was available on The Brooke Institute's highly convincing website. So convincing in fact, that when I first stumbled upon it, I panicked that I had inadvertently hacked into some confidential patient information!

This was just one of many clever ploys to reveal the plot. This meticulous approach to pre show detail allowed me to feel invested and involved in the piece far before its official start. This attention to detail was apparent throughout the whole game, it seemed that every aspect of our experience had been carefully planned out.

I would definitely attend an event like this again!

Thanks Thea!

Can you actually post it on to here as well? Here we are suppost to carry on the discussion of the event and then we can re-blog it just to get people to see it!

I really enjoyed the experience of Reverie, however I left feeling confused. I was not too sure if the ending was the ending, and if we had won or lost the game. But after thinking about it since, I realise this could possible be because it actually was A GAME and not a theatre piece. We always anticipate that the ending is the same for everyone and of course, everyone is a winner.  But it was actually refreshing to see that we had failed at the game we had just done.

We were given a map with marked out areas for us to go to. In each space we had to complete a task to win a piece of Tom's soul. The games were fun, my favourite also the fishing one...the character was great and it involved taking off my shoes to clime some boulders- always a win in my eyes! 

But generally I felt that each area could have been a bit more challenging, the characters relationship to Tom much clearer (I still don't know if they were alive or dead, friends with Tom or even know Tom at all!), and how did the come about to have Tom's soul in the first place? I must take my hat off to all the performers however- they were all very engaging and just a lot of fun!  Alan Humphries really stood out for me- was so much fun and as soon as I saw him, I completely 'got' his character.

Then there was the red men. We were told we would get chased by them and they intent to attach us. 

The reality was that they just hung around corners and as long as we stood still they would walk away. There was not enough of them and they weren't scary enough. We even saw one going into Sainsbury's!! That definitely broke the illusion! 

I think a big part of the issues was the fact that we were given locations, with the particular path or order to take them in. This ment we could roam around the bay in whatever direction- if they had enough red men to fill the whole of the Cardiff Bay area then great! But they didn't, so instead of concentration them on the areas where we would walk it was more sporadic. We were lucky if we saw one...  Not having a path or order also brought up another issue. We were waiting around...A LOT! There was a backlog of groups going to the same area at the same time. We were even advised at one to come back in 30mins. This ment we were waiting around, as though we had pressed pause on the screen and decided to make some cheese on toast. This also stretched the evening to being 4hours long. 

I realise I have been quite harsh...but I think all this is mainly just fine tuning. The whole evening was amazing, great fun and something I'd never done before. It genuinly made me feel like a kid again, and the best part was that we became suspicious of everyone. Even the people just out for a couple of drinks in the bay that night. 

I think I possibly went into it thinking it would be much more 'theatre'. I was continuously trying to piece up all the stories to find the overall bigger story. That may just be my personal preference!

The online footage before was great and really set you up for the world you were going into. However, there was a lot of work you needed to do before hand and if you didn't book your ticket early enough, you did miss out on this. 

It is something we are seeing more and more, for example Hoipolloi's last show- 'Stories from an Invisible Town' had an online 'world' for us to explore before the show. It brought up the questions- should theatre begin at home? How much work and research should you expect of an audience before they enter the performance space? Should I show be able to exist equally with or without an online presence?

Hm... Anyway...I'm going on waaay too much now!!

What did everyone else think of Reverie? 

I've posted it in here now too :) Its more of a recap that a critique so I've written out some of my thoughts about the piece below:

With regard to our ending I think I've worked out why we were a little confused by it. Because we acted in a rather unconventional way, trying to double bluff our real soul cards, I think we actually confused the actors. In retrospect when we were left in the lift and told to "think hard" about showing the red man whatever else we had, he was trying to coax us into giving him our remaining soul cards. I don't think they had planned for tricky participants to withhold items, assuming that they would just trust the assistant manager of the Brooke Donna. I think our ending was actually a little improvised as we had been so unconventional with our final actions.

I agree with the idea that we needed to see more of the character's relationship to Tom, but after pondering this for a while I wonder if they were characters from the first game as this one was a sequel. I think they may have been trapped souls that he was trying to help before he slipped into a coma, as I understand this was what the first game was about. I think this could have been made a little more clear but I do appreciate their commitment to mystery, its nice to be allowed to make up your own mind.

I think that the waiting between venues did impact our experience a little bit, I guess they're just a victim of their own success! I loved that they were able to track our movements with the wallets, maybe in future developments they could then suggest our next venue based on how busy each one was. This also did bring up an internal debate that I get every time an audience are free to find their own venues, is this actually a good thing? Having the freedom is fun and being left to discover parts of the experience yourself really does create excitement, but when I'm left on my own for too long I tend to stray from the content and feelings of the piece. Once I'd lost the initial feeling of terrified excitement I found it quite hard to recapture. I agree that maybe if there had been more red men I would have found it harder to lose this feeling.

The technology usage in this piece was phenomenal, thinking about organising something like that makes me shudder; so much could go wrong without proper planning and tests! They pulled it off seamlessly! Texts, recorded voice calls, scanning a hidden chip in the wallet, timed audio for each venue, amazing! I was truly impressed with this.

The little blip with waiting around didn't really impact my overall experience too much, I loved it and I will definitely be going to their next one! 

Hey guys - great blog btw Thea - and lots of interesting questions being raised. I also really enjoyed the evening as a whole but left feeling slightly confused about the experience. I suppose for me it's quite a difficult one to assess critically because of how hybrid it is as a show (do we say show? or event? or what?)...

In theatre terms, all the performers were extremely engaging and helped to construct their individual dramatic worlds really effectively. Thinking back, there's something quite interesting about the degree to which these 'scenes' with performers crossed over with the game element of the piece. Did we behave more like an audience or like active participants at these moments? We had tasks to carry out and goals to achieve but there was also times when we were completely passive (particularly when we were in larger groups), and then there were a few moments of uncertainty when I don't think we understood how active we were intended to be or how we were supposed to interact with the performers? And I think at certain points this wasn't just our confusion but also a confusion in the piece itself - in terms of what it wanted to be and how it wanted its audience/participants to engage with it..Does that make sense?

I maybe just mean that for me on a personal level it felt strange being quite active and being able to determine our journey through the piece and then suddenly jumping back into a passive audience position and just watching scenes play out...(I'm thinking particularly of the last twenty minutes of the evening). I think those particular scenes were maybe less effective. I just didn't feel I cared that much about or invested really in the scenario of high drama and high jeopardy they were depicting? Which is absolutely not a criticism of those performers or the dialogue, but maybe just a reflection of the awkwardness of the transition.. Sorry I'm just adding more to think about and not really providing any conclusions! I need to mull this over a bit more (and also reply to the discussion when I'm not at work!!)

I think that is quite true, it was strange transitioning in and out of the performance elements and the gaming elements to the piece. I don't think this is a bad thing as I did actually quite enjoy the uncertainty at some points, it kept me on edge and meant I intensely listed to each word in case they were to reveal a sudden instruction! I thought of the performance moments as cutscenes in a RPG I might play on a gaming console. I do agree though, that at some points we were in a weird limbo (no pun intended) between a performance and a game, especially with the red men. Once I realised that they were actually just there as a scare tactic rather than a way to disqualify us from the game they lost a bit of their edge.

I feel like I would have felt more involved in the piece if they had totally committed to the game idea, meaning that we could actually have our souls snatched! I do understand their decision though as it would have put them in tricky territory; I'm not sure how an audience would have responded to being disqualified (I would probably have sulked for a while). I wonder if their choice to balance between a game and a performance only confuses me because I don't have an exact category to place it into.

I think I was expecting some kind of final battle at the last venue, not just a result, like our fake soul cards activating some kind of crystal maze machine where we had to frantically grab at silver and gold soul fragments... something like that, but less ridiculous hah! Maybe thats where the weirdness in being a passive audience came from, that we didn't actually feel like the activities built up into one final finale.

Great to hear your responses to the production guys. One of the Young Critics was also going to review it so will be interesting to compare/contrast responses.

Thank-you Guy, that would be awesome actually. Because everyone's experiences are so different with this piece, it would be great to hear from someone out of our participant group!

I totally agree with Thea on going back again. If this is just their second game...imagine how they could grow! 

The technology was beyond me and yes it was great to have the fun of working out our own way to each place. It felt we had more control, but it's finding the balance between the control with the audience or the performers. When you leave the audience to roam a big area, there's only so much you can do (unless you have endless amount of money!). It's more of the 'red men's' commitment I got disappointed with...it seems like we were told to not be caught by them and they were told not to catch us. I regret now not running up to one of them screaming and shouting just to see what they would have done? I must be a nightmare audience member for this... however, when you put audience in a situation of 'a game', you must be prepared to be challenged and for everyone to interprit the story differently. Just like how we were not prepared to trust Donna, the main character. Were we the first to not trust her? Maybe we were just asking for too much for a detailed story AND a game?! 

All this does go back to Josh's point. What was this? "(do we say show? or event? or what?)" 

Because it was booked through a theatre (Chapter), you instantly think THEATRE!! 

But, on their website it says 

 "Get ready for an experience that will stretch you to your limits. Listen, play, explore and RUN... Run like your soul depended on it." (We didn't run. I wanted to run. I was told to run! Josh even wore trainers!!)

I think it was a game. That had a story... It was no Pacman, more Sonic. 

I think the more I try to get my head out of the 'theatre' category and more into the 'game' the more I like it. But also, the more I wanted to be challenged.

I keep finding bits to pick on. And they are mainly just nitty bitty bits. I still had an amazing evening and it's definitely going to stay in my mind for a loooong time. 

But one more question.... do you think that because it was booked through a Theatre, it limited the audience to being the theatre crowd? Wouldn't this be the sort of thing that everyone would have loved??? Maybe everyone did come to it... It's a tricky thing to do when it's not a theatre piece, but best way to manage it is in a theatre set up i.e bookings, tickets, advertising etc. 

Anyway....questions questions questions and their all melting in this heat.

All I know right now is that I definitely want to see more stuff from YelloBrick. 

Right now!!

P.S I actually think they got the balance of 'acting scenes' and games bits well, but because you didn't get much of the characters details and history, it was hard to care and empathise with them. When I was told at the end that we didn't save Tom's life, I didn't really care! (I was gutted we lost the game though). 

BUT I get what you mean though Josh...maybe if the 'acting scenes' were a bit more interactive the transition would have been better. Even if they simple referred to us as Tom's friends or whoever we were, just so we know what our part was within the bigger picture, you know what I mean?

i really don't know if I'm making sense anymore.... haha! 

Man...Imagine, if this is what we feel like after seeing the show, imagine what it's like to write and create something as complex as this!!

Hahaha, I joke I joke!

I know what you mean, it genuinely hurts to think about how much effort goes into something like that! Especially with all the venues, the red men organisation, the texting! I think the organisational aspect can't really be faulted, I was so impressed!

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