On Friday February 22 we were treated to a Lunchtime Talk by Studio residents The Raucous Collective. They came to offer an exclusive, insiders view of their prototype piece of immersive theatre, The Stick House. First developed as part of our artist's residency programme by writer Sharon Clark and creative technologist Tom Burton, The Stick House is a hauntingly beautiful theatre piece inspired by Angela Carter and Otto Dix. They are experimenting with cutting edge digital tools but hold strong to the belief that technology should be embedded into the story, rather than being an adjunct to it.

What is The Stick House?
The following is taken from an interview with Sharon Clarke and Tom Burton from the Raucous Collective website – read the full interview here.

Sharon (writer and creative director): As a playwright I was interested in writing a play that had emergent technology embedded in it so that the story becomes more immersive and immediate to an audience. There is a structured story that is delivered and by using new media we hope that it is delivered and experienced in a different way. I felt that the story I wanted to tell, with its roots in magical realism, would really benefit from heightening the experience by using technology to make the piece more magical, more beautiful as well. Also I wanted to throw into the pot a full original score, projection, smell and promenade…. I wanted to build the world rather than just represent it.

Tom (Director of Technology): Technology is often pretty but lacks substance, or is meaningful but doesn’t tell the story. Sharon and I both wanted to explore how we could approach in our practice and production knitting technology into the performance and the audiences role within it. We often compared it to a soundtrack to a film, something implicit that has a meaningful impact on your understanding and appreciation of the story being told.

The Stick House is the prototype piece that we are developing around this initial inspiration.

It’s in its second stage of R&D what have been your challenges to date?

Sharon: The relationship between Tom and I is an unusual one and I feel that sometimes we have challenged each other – he is a creative technologist who has never worked in theatre and I am a theatre maker who has never worked with new technology so no wonder there were times when we simply did not understand each other. But we do now. It is uncanny how well we understand each other now. That is also a rather lovely find. As a playwright I am also used to writing a piece on my own with little opinion or interruption, here I am working with mine and Tom’s own company, The Raucous Collective, which currently had 13 collaborators involved in the project. Everyone, quite rightly has an opinion, but sometimes I get lost in a sea of them. Also, because this project was my idea initially I find it quite hard to let go sometimes and let another artist take the lead or have influence. A benign dictator maybe but not a role I am wholly comfortable with -  because I can SEE the piece and it is has been in my head for two years then it is difficult to be challenged on it. But I am getting better at that….

Tom: I have worked on a short bit of prototype work with theatre makers before but this has been a real in at the deep end for me. I have had to try to get a grasp on the world of theatre as well as direct - via the proxy with other developers/providers/collaborators - different pieces of technology. This is together with getting to know and develop working relationships with over a dozen different collaborators. With most already involved in the theatre this has meant feeling isolated at points. With so many cooks it has meant a lot of regrouping and opinions as well as realizations and has been a struggle at times to get a clear view on what everyone is supposed to be doing and where we are heading. Of course as with any project, time and budgets are never quite enough but with such an ambitious project looking to work across as many of the theatrical disciplines meeting the ambitions for the technology has been a struggle.

Studio Panel

Ahead of their upcoming live test, producer Maggie Dunning, technologists Tom Burton and Tarim and stage designer Connor Murphy, joined us to discuss the joys and frustrations of creating work that fuses live performance, music, projection and pervasive media/digital technology. The talk was held as a panel discussion with Studio Producer Verity hosting the session.

How is the piece staged?

Tom: It’s a promenade piece. It’s not quite like Punchdrunk’s work where you are completely free to explore the space, but it’s not a traditional piece of theatre where you sit and watch either. You are guided around the space, hopefully making it a more immersive experience. I guess overall the technology that we’ve chosen, to some people in the field, won’t be radically something they haven’t seen before, but it’s looking at it from a more traditional theatre context. In most performances you don’t even walk around the space. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; in fact it’s testimony to the power of the story that means you can be transported to somewhere else.  We want to use technology to enhance and progress the story.

Maggie: It begins with a beautiful pre recorded projection onto a clothes line, then a scene later you’re lead somewhere else to watch a section that is more traditional, focussing directly on live actors. I don’t want to say too much and give away the game but within each scene there’s another type of technology contributing to the experience, it could be through smell, projection, our totems, or sound or lighting. It’s about marrying the different elements together. At the moment we don’t even know if that’s going to work or if people are going to enjoy it, that’s what we’re trying to explore and evaluate.

Maggie, what do you think has been your biggest challenge in producing The Stick House?  

Maggie: Methods of working have been quite different. From a theatrical point of view, me being a producer I work from Z. I know what I need to do at the end, and I go from Z and work my way back up to A, then make my way back up to the production. The Stick House has been a whole different world for me as there hasn’t been an exact ending point. I’ve had to change my working practises to for the production.

Can you tell us a little about what a totem is:

Tarim: It is a doll, made out of sticks and corn leaves – that can be controlled to change it’s heat, or heartbeat at moments of importance or trepidation within the performance.

Tom: Part of the story is that one of the main characters is making totems to protect herself, and people she cares about – as they are importance in the story we wanted to incorporate technology into them to heighten the experience for the audience. It also gave us a chance to look at how we can make the piece personal to each person taking part. By giving a totem to each audience member we are able to slightly alter their experience of the piece so it is unique for them, something that we feel could be very special if done right.  We have lots of ideas of what we’d like the totems to do eventually but for this test we are experimenting with changing the temperature of the totems and introducing a heartbeat.

Tarim: Initially they were going to be worn around the neck but the practicality meant that we had to use them around the wrist, as If you wear something that cools down around your neck you are probably not going to notice it, whereas if it’s on your pulse point there’s a much higher chance you will. If you’re doing lighting or sound there’s a whole history of what works for people, when you’re building something unused before there’s no references to how to use them. You just have to test to discover what works and what doesn’t. And even if it works - does it make them feel how you want them to feel? It’s an on-going process.

Are certain parts of the technology crucial to the plot?

Tarim: It’s designed so no, it’s not crucial to the plot. If you don’t notice something happening you won’t not understand. It’s more to create an effect, to enhance the feeling, and to heighten the experience.

How do you design for an audience?

Tom: One of the first things in the artistic residency me and Sharon spoke about, was what we did and how we did it. The most important thing to come out of that was Sharon’s understanding of how to tell a story, and my background in the practicalities of interaction design.

Tarim: That’s been one of the main things running throughout the tech. The big question is whether it has the effect on the audience you want it to have. The only way to find out is to test it, which is why we’re doing the live showing.  

When & where will the production be happening?

Maggie: The live tests will be taking place in a vaulted cellars in a Crypt in Southville. We’re using that crypt because it creates the atmosphere we want for the live tests. It’s an opportunity to test out how the story and aspects of the technology work together. After the live tests we will be interviewing audience members to help us develop the piece further, and then using the experience to hopefully develop the project further.

You can find out more about The Raucous Collective on their website: http://raucous.org.uk/