Right, the post I meant to write last time...
As I blogged about back in April last year, all entertainment forms are moving towards deeper levels of interactivity, from choices made about how to view right the way through to taking decisions on how the story develops. As a result there is therefore an increasing prominence to the reader / viewer (who as a result increasingly becomes more of a player).
If you combine this with the move towards the mobile web, and interaction becoming contextually relevant to your time, place and status then it is hard to see how real world games, driven by the web and catalysed by mobile phones will not one day soon be huge.
Which is exactly what I thought at the end of the incredible La Clique cabaret show on Saturday, as the performers asked everyone to stand up and clap and dance - you want to be part of this amazing performance. Social media has taught us that we dont have to be passive bystanders anymore, but this has yet to really permeate live entertainment.
There is still the occasional banter with the audience, or even bringing one of them up on stage to play a (passive) role in an act. But there is nothing that properly involves the audience and rewards them for their own contribution. What we are still waiting for is the user-generated equivalent of theatre.
But perhaps it's too much to expect to jump straight into the best circus acts in the country. Perhaps we should start smaller, less skill-based. Jump back two weeks to the final night of Hotel Medea at the Arcola theatre in Dalston. Running from midnight until six in the morning, as you went in you were searched by Brazilian armed guards who interrogated you about your intentions regarding the Golden Fleece before letting you into a smoky, sweaty room that vibrated with drumming as a host of Inca market traders noisily plied their wares under tented canopies that sprouted cotton canopies.
We had been given some fake coins to spend and I eagerly waded in, buying holy water and fiery homemade liquer. The traders were wary of the guards who were patrolling round still enquiring after your intentions. But when their backs were turned the locals would get out a secreted trinket and offer that instead. We understood we needed this to steal the golden fleece, which must be our mission.
But we needed twenty coins to buy it, and we only had only been given six to start with and only had three of these left. So we either needed to club together with other visitors, or we had to make money ourselves in the market. We were just pondering which route to take and how to go about it when the ringleader blew his whistle and we were pulled into a circle.
We thought we had lost, someone had beaten us to it (presumably by researching it first online). But no, we had been wrong - there was no game. The evening slowly declined from that burst of initial energy and excitement. There were still some incredible moments - dancing and chanting around the two leads as they were stripped, washed, anointed and dressed again for their wedding (all by us); being led away by pretty nursemaids, dressed in pajamas and laid in beds facing away from the action as they fed us cocoa and stroked our hair.
So it was still an incredible experience, but they forgot the golden rule of leaving us wanting more and instead hit us with a totally unnecessary and painfully art-school pretentious final hour of shamanistic resurrections, funeral services and philosophising banquets.
I dont think you can really blame Zekura-Ura for not bringing gameplay elements into their production. Even the best in the pervasive theatre game don't make it truly interactive. Which is practically the only criticism that you can level at the incredible Punchdrunk which has put on the most original theatre of the last decade.
They are having a break for the first time in their history, and rumour has it that they are investigating bringing in more ARG elements to their work. Fingers crossed they do, for these are the gameshows of the future...
