Reverie
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.
Photo by www.missionphotographic.com
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!
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Comment by Buddug James Jones on June 3, 2013 at 22:19
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But I also forgot to mention the technology of it!
It was AWESOME! The swipe cards, white boxes, the txts, the phone calls. It all helped to create this illusions and the game. I've been to stuff before where they say 'you'll receive txts as part of the show', and it's either one txt if at all. With this we were getting updates from Donna (character we were helping), phone calls from her etc. It was all so smoooooth!
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I've just replied this on the Critical Chinwag discussion board ...
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?
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