“I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone.”

Maggie Smith

Today is a World Theatre Day and while the work that we produce is not your typical ‘proscenium theatre’ performance, the wise words of Maggie Smith feel very apposite to the type of shows that we create. As an interactive experience, what the guests bring makes a huge difference to each performance. I can say, hand on heart, that no two experiences of The Locksmith’s Dream were alike. How the guests respond to the characters, genuinely affect how the characters develop across the day. As you might gather, scripting for a 24 hour period would be rather insane! Instead, our team get pages and pages of stories, notes, histories, backstories and the dreaded spreadsheets! A full day (and night) filled with narrative, performance, puzzles and hospitality is a lot to keep track of and with so many moving parts I guess it shouldn’t a surprise me any more and yet every show still does.

The Key of Dreams has even more pieces to play with and even more options for the outcomes. Having realised, how much the outcomes change, with the various engagements with characters and how amazing our team are at investing in their character, and interacting in role for the whole day, we decided to lean into that for designing our follow up experience.

With Locksmith’s Dream, the stories are fixed, they have happened and you explore them to discover the object at their heart. You learn the stories through their narrative clues scattered through the environment. And the characters can certainly change their views, but fundamentally not their outcomes. Similarly the societies add flavour and have goals which can help to direct your experience. However, for The Key of Dreams, we decided that the stories would be truly affectable - you will change the endings - likewise with character outcomes. The Secret Societies are much more interested in you than in a specific object and your actions with them will also have real consequence.

This all sounds really cool (and for the record I’m positive it will be) but blimey did we set ourselves a high bar!

If you’ve been involved in anything we’ve done before, or followed our progress, you’ll know that Ivan has great ideas - broad, sweeping, wonderful, insane ideas. It’s one of the things I love him for. And then he has a hugely fine attention to detail, even when he knows that most people won’t notice the tiny things like the dates on coins used for shove ha’penny, but it’s worth it for the one person who does!

My passion is for the narratives. I love stories, but even more I love the idea of discovering stories through snippets and objects, the odd comment, a drawing, something old an loved, or hated. Some of my favourite stories to read, are the ones where the author guides you on a weird journey without explaining too much, allowing you to draw your own conclusions about what the story was, or is, or even could be. Bringing Leo into the team has given us a more theatrical perspective and an understanding of how these many moving parts fit together to make something beautiful, and a clarity on who needs to know what. I also love real history and Wales, and old manor houses are so full of it. I take great joy from melding the real and imagined and seeing what wonder arrives. I think it is a real strength of site-specific theatre which adds an extra layer of realism that you don’t get with a traditional show.

Our team are, as I have said before and will many times more, are amazing! They bring a fantastic realness to characters who should be anything but. To take a character with no memory, a strange almost childlike and yet ancient fascination with an occult world, and enable them to sit, holding a conversation with guests who despite the mad things that were spoken, said it felt like sitting with a person not a character. To have characters who make real decisions (and at be genuinely moved) by things they are told. These things are the magic that can only be created by practitioners who believe in and enjoy what they do.

24 hours ‘on stage’ with no script, and no idea what the guests will ask or do, is a huge ask and I don’t think they’d do it if they didn’t enjoy it! You can hear Emily Carding talk more about this along with Ivan on the No Proscenium podcast here

I can’t wait for the first performances of The Key of Dreams. I’m so excited to see this crazy, magical world brought to life.

But in the mean time - help a busy writer out? Once the first run of shows is completed, I might have some time back in my life, so what ‘theatre’, traditional or otherwise, should I make sure to catch?

L