Immersive theatre has been my obsession for a long, long time. My belief in its potential comes from my background. I didn’t grow up reciting Shakespeare, I didn’t go to theatre school straight after completing A levels and I certainly never had teenage aspirations of directing at the National. As an artist, my influences have often come from outside the theatrical canon. I believe theatre can make us feel how I did when I first listened to my favourite album as a teenager. I believe it can draw us in like the most choice-laden role-playing video game. I’m convinced it can rouse passions and make the audience express them like the fiercest political argument after too many beers.
If you ask five artists what immersive theatre is, you might get five different answers. In this introduction we’ll talk in detail about what the term really means, but something that most people would agree on is that it’s a form that gives the audience greater access to the performance. Whether through roaming freely around the space or talking directly with the characters, these productions invite the audience to take a greater role, to be more involved, to become part of the artistry rather than just spectators.
This book, however, is not a dry analysis of what I think immersive has been. It’s not a rundown of performances that have happened in the past. It’s written for theatre-makers, artists and students who want to create this kind of work. It’s also for those who are interested in the guts and ideas that fuel the performances they love. If this book inspires you to create your own performances and is enjoyable to read, then I will have achieved my aim.
The joy of working in immersive theatre is that there is so much left to discover. What you’re holding in your hands is the fruit of my experiments and projects over the last few years, but I’m also truly excited about the discoveries yet to be made. It’s a privilege to be working in a field that’s so uncharted, where every project is an opportunity to do something truly innovative. Through monumental mistakes and totally unexpected successes, I’ve ended up with a philosophy on
what makes good immersive theatre. My aim is to help you craft your own beliefs – and to create responsive and rich worlds of your own.
WhatisImmersiveTheatre?
Before we begin creating immersive work, we really should decide what immersive theatre is. It’s on everyone’s lips. Every five minutes, a new ‘immersive’ event is announced and sells out – and if you’ve been to a few of these, you’ll know that they often have very few similarities to each other.
I’ve been to interactive stories where I was locked in a room with twenty-five other people forced to make a moral decision that would change the story;1 controlled a small island as I struggled to remain independent against the superpowers trying to coerce me into giving up my uranium;2 been chased by shadowy creatures in the dark underneath London;3 and watched my mythological parents descend into a murderous feud.4 All of them were heralded as immersive productions, and none of them bore any resemblance to each other. There was no one type of space unifying the productions. In some the audience were confined to one room, in some they were free to roam. Sometimes we could affect the story, at others we were purely spectators. All of them, however, are immersive.
There are common threads I see in all productions that we call immersive. All these productions are (or try to be) innovative in two areas: the role of the audience and how they use the theatre space. Within these threads there’s endless variations in both intention and success, but we can make certain general assumptions. It’s unlikely that the audience will be sat down in rows facing a stage. We probably don’t expect the audience to stay silent throughout then applaud at the end. The actors are not, in all likelihood, separated from the audience by an invisible ‘fourth wall’ at the edge of the stage. The problem is that we can point at endless examples of productions that are not immersive, and sometimes it seems like the form is defined by negatives; that by identifying everything that isn’t immersive, we can use what’s left behind as our definition.
I think this is unhelpful. To me, immersive theatre is about the certain spirit with which we make a performance. A production becomes immersive when it is made by a company who will experiment with the theatrical format in ways that are designed to drag the audience further in. So, for this book, let us agree to drop the debate about definitions and genres. Your production will be immersive, because you have decided it will be. All being well, it will be unlike
any immersive theatre we’ve yet seen.
That being the case, I encourage you to look beyond the current definitions. Create your own terminology, and define your new art form with words that truly cut to the heart of what you’re creating. There is already a backlash against this possibly meaningless word, ‘immersive’. What is your medium? Interactive Theatre, Dilemma Theatre, Alternate World Exhibit… As, so often, we can do better than using the vocabulary we’ve been given.
CurrentForms
It’s probably helpful to have an overview of the work that has already been created and described as immersive. It’s a vast and diverse field, taking in work of many kinds; all immersive productions are different from each other, but we can draw distinctions between certain families of them. Identifying where you sit on this spectrum can help you to keep your focus, or even help you decide you want to break the mould and do something totally new.
Broadly speaking, we can identify four different varieties of immersive work. I refer to these as Exploration Theatre, Guided Experiences, Interactive Worlds and Game Theatre. These aren’t established terms that you’ll necessarily see used elsewhere; they’re helpful definitions I use that make it easier to be specific when we talk about immersive work. Let’s look at each of them in turn.
Exploration Theatre
This is the form that leaps to the minds of the average theatregoer when they hear the word ‘immersive’. It’s the form that has been pioneered and perfected by Punchdrunk (arguably the most renowned immersive company in the world) over the years, and probably the form that gets the most press. Exploration Theatre melds a traditional theatre experience with a mobile audience and huge attention to the setting they roam around. Crucially, these pieces can, theoretically, exist without an audience. Like a mainstream proscenium-arch production, the piece has been set and rehearsed; it doesn’t rely on the audience to propel it forwards and, artistically speaking, can take place no matter what the ticket sales are like.
Generally taking place in a multi-room space, these pieces will present a theatrical experience in multiple places (possibly all at once). The audience is free to explore the space, which is usually intricately designed and a pleasure to be in regardless of the cast’s actions, and they can follow whatever strands of the
story they wish. Interaction between cast and audience can happen, and sometimes there’s a lot of it – but these interactions don’t shape the story of the piece. These are logistically easier to plan, as the audience can’t do much to derail the piece (though we should never underestimate their capacity for mischief). In some examples (again, notably Punchdrunk) the audience may even be masked. This can have the dual effects of both reducing the amount of verbal interaction and anonymising the audience so that they feel more comfortable in this new experience.
Theatre of this nature might have a free-roaming audience (see most of Punchdrunk’s work) or the audience may be guided through the performance space in a predetermined order. If you wish to create a piece like this, you’ll need to give a huge amount of consideration to the design of the space – not just its artistic merit, but also because of the huge impact it can have on the audience’s psychology and their willingness to explore. In Chapter 2: Living Spaces, I’ve put together a buffet of techniques for you to choose from.
Guided Experiences
At the polar opposite end of the scale we have Guided Experiences. These pieces rely entirely upon the audience, as they are guided through a story that gives them (ideally) countless opportunities to interact and make (again, ideally) meaningful choices.
One of the most well-known is You Me Bum Bum Train, a huge-scale interactive experience that takes one audience member at a time through a selection of adventures where they take the lead role (YMBBT politely ask that people don’t give spoilers about their work, so I’m afraid I can’t tell you what these are)… but Guided Experiences can also be tiny. OneOhOne presented a piece in Edinburgh where a small group of audience members were given the power to betray or remain loyal to a shadowy woman who made arbitrary demands. The action remained in one small room throughout, with the audience being coopted into a cult as the play went on.
There are two defining traits in these pieces. Firstly, the audience is integral; the piece cannot take place without at least one audience member present. Secondly, the journey they experience is curated. They will experience the space and the story in a set order. If multiple rooms are used, they will proceed through these rooms when they are invited to. Their choices will have weight when they are invited (either overtly or subtly) to make them.
When done well, these are pieces with a taut and honed narrative through which the audience is propelled at a rapid pace. There may occasionally be breathing room or silence, but the audience can’t be left without a set scene for long, as there isn’t much for them to explore outside the confines of the planned arc. You’ll need to make sure the experience you’re offering is fulfilling, and never dull enough that the audience start looking to create their own opportunities for exploration.
Interactive Worlds
An Interactive World is free-roaming, allowing the audience to move through the space however they wish. It also gives weight to their actions and choices, often to the extent of allowing them to influence the end of the story. There is usually a narrative arc underpinning the performance, but this arc is open to change through the audience’s choices. Essentially, an Interactive World combines aspects from both of the previous two forms, and becomes markedly more complex because of this.
Unlike Guided Experiences, the possible influence of the audience is limitless. It isn’t contained to pre-scripted options and choices. There needs to be enough interesting elements in the space to allow the audience a rewarding exploration, and the cast simultaneously need to be very comfortable improvising and know the plot of the play inside out. This is, by far, the most challenging form to plan and execute well, as it requires simultaneously using every technique from the other forms of immersive theatre. Hiding the nuts and bolts of the performance and its structure can become a titanic job. Because of these logistical challenges, it’s a form you don’t often see happening – though my belief is that we can streamline this process. With planning and a little help from this book, you can start crafting Interactive Worlds today.
Because this form of theatre requires techniques from all the other forms, I’ll often seem to assume that you’re interested in creating an Interactive World –this avoids me having to repeatedly write ‘but don’t worry if this isn’t relevant to your production’. There’s no assumption that these pieces are somehow ‘better’ or what you should be striving to create.
Game Theatre
Game Theatre is an odd beast, and in some ways it can seem opposed to the rest of the types we’ve mentioned. In my opinion it doesn’t really belong under the
term ‘immersive theatre’, as its aims and techniques are entirely different (though equally interesting). Though this is a generalisation, Game Theatre tends to highlight the rules and Mechanics of the performance, rather than hide them behind the narrative. The intention is often to ask participants to engage critically with the world around them by drawing attention to its otherwise unnoticed structures. Other types of Game Theatre exist to explore the spirit of competition between participants, using the Mechanics as a way of specifying how we can succeed within the performance. However, nearly every single piece of Game Theatre I’ve participated in or heard of has, at some stage, had the immersive label applied, so it’s definitely a format worth looking at.
In Game Theatre, the Mechanics are the experience. This can be an immensely powerful tool, and my most powerful experience of this was during Hobo Theatre’s The Lowland Clearances. We’ll deal briefly with this form’s unique demands in a later chapter.
AboutThisBook
That’s quite enough about what already exists – this book is here to help you create the piece that’s going to exist because of your hard work. This book is broken up into five chapters. Chapter 1: Starting Out helps to hone in on what kind of piece you want to make. After that, each chapter focuses on a different set of challenges and opportunities you need to consider when creating your own immersive theatre. You can dip in to them in any order you like, though remember that I may sometimes refer to concepts introduced in an earlier chapter. A glossary at the end is on hand to give you a quick reference to the terminology if you need a reminder. Terms in the glossary will be indicated throughout the book by being capitalised (Like This).
Chapter 2: Living Spaces encourages you to innovate how you use a freely moving audience in your production. We go far beyond simply saying ‘you can go anywhere’ and start looking at how this freedom of movement can be used to your benefit. We talk about subtly influencing the audience’s movements, how to Split and rejoin audience groups organically and how to use your space to create gut-level emotional effects. Whether you’re planning a huge multi-room exploration or a tightly honed single-room story, the work in this chapter will help you craft your environment.
Chapter 3: Living Choices focuses on the thorny boundary between audience free will and uncontrolled chaos. We discuss how to ‘cast’ your audience, making them a functioning and enjoyable part of your piece with their own role
to play. We show how to encourage confused or shy participants out of their shell – as well as how to bring unruly ones subtly back into line!
Chapter 4: Living Rehearsals brings things back to the rehearsal room. There are techniques to help you manage the huge complexity of rehearsals along with exercises that prepare your cast for the unexpected. It’s all compiled in a helpful schedule, designed to get the most out of the limited time within which we often have to work.
Chapter 5: Living Beyond the Performance takes us outside of the live event. There’s a whole world of opportunities to expand your production into the living rooms of your audience and the streets on which they live. This chapter looks at how we do that, as well as how these opportunities can get your audience marketing your play for you.
WhatThisBookIsn’t
This is not a set of instructions on how to direct, act or produce in the conventional sense. Creating Worlds is concerned with the additional requirements and unique challenges that immersive theatre adds to the theatremaking process.
Much of this book assumes a certain level of familiarity with the basic concepts of theatre. You don’t need to be an acclaimed actor or director to understand and use the ideas within, but you do need to have grasped the core concepts of performance. For example, I won’t address how to play a character in a production, but I will talk about how you can give your scripted character an interactive life that makes unscripted interactions with the audience possible. I won’t go into the basics of how to use lighting in a theatrical production, but I’ll talk about how you can influence a free-roaming audience to go where you want them to go by using light.
This book is designed to be ‘methodology-agnostic’; I don’t expect you to be working from a background of Stanislavsky, Brecht, Artaud, Littlewood or anyone else. The techniques in Creating Worlds can be applied to your art no matter what it’s based on.
1. 101: Betrayal, ONEOHONE Theatre Co., 2011
2. Archipelago, Hobo Theatre, 2014
3 And Darkness Descended, Punchdrunk, 2011
Hotel Medea, Zecora Ura, 2012
1. StartingOut
YourMissionStatement
It’s nearly time to get some basic concepts under our belt, then move on and apply them to our immersive productions. But first… You need to decide what you’re trying to create.
You know you want to make a piece of immersive theatre. You may have seen what’s out there, and how much the form varies from company to company, even from piece to piece. You probably have an idea of what you like and dislike in an immersive performance. So the first, and most important, question is: What kind of experience are you making? It’s a broad question, but a fundamental one.
For starters, decide what the single most important aspect of your piece would be for your audience. Sum it up in one sentence. Here are some examples:
‘I want the audience to be totally overwhelmed by the amount of experiences they can choose between.’
‘I want to create a world so convincing that the audience forgets they’re experiencing a play.’
‘I want the audience’s choices to have real consequences.’
‘I want to give the audience a total sensory overload.’
You can incorporate any ideas you like, but let’s face it: immersive theatre is hard. Your time, your resources and your actors are going to be stretched to their limit, so knowing where your focus is right from the outset is going to make your life a lot easier (or at least more tolerable) when you’re trying to make hard decisions further down the line. It’s also going to keep you motivated when things get chaotic. Having that clear Mission Statement in your head for the genre-smashing interactive world you are planning is going to give you that extra drive to push through those late nights of thinking and writing.
So go and scribble. Make increasingly absurd and maniacal statements about
what you’re looking to achieve. And when you’ve got the perfect sentence, that phrase that boils your dream immersive piece down to its core guiding principle, read the next section. We’ll start talking about how to achieve it.
SimplicityWorks
Counter-intuitive, isn’t it? Who on earth, if they believe in simplicity, would try to create an immersive piece of theatre? Fair point, you’re about to embark upon a very un-simple journey. To make your journey of creation possible, there are some things that can stay simple and act as your compass. The most important of these is your Mission Statement.
Take a well-known example: Punchdrunk have been one of the foremost names in immersive theatre for many years (for very good reason). They make a very specific kind of immersive, where the world of the story is the most important aspect of the work. Audience choice doesn’t play a huge role in their pieces. It’s totally free-roaming, but it largely makes no difference what an audience member does. The play remains the same. This isn’t a weakness; Punchdrunk know right down to their bones what they’re trying to achieve. What they create in their Exploration Theatre pieces already stretches the limits of what is achievable in any rehearsal period, and if they tried to incorporate every possible aspect of immersive theatre, their work would be both unfocused and underrehearsed.
So guard that Mission Statement carefully. For every decision you make, especially when it’s about incorporating something new into the play, you need to weigh it against your goal. Does it help you achieve that holy grail you set out to find right at the start? Often the answer is no.
Focused pieces work brilliantly. I’ve seen pieces centred around the audience’s ability to influence the story that took place within one bare room (OneOhOne, a small company from Oxford, do this admirably). All the effort had gone into a multi-stranded set of decisions that made me agonise over my every action. In Zecura Ura’s Hotel Medea, I had very little choice in what I did or where I went, and the world was small… but I was totally dragged into the storyline. The immediacy of the writing and intensity of the actors meant my own little desires and urges would have been irrelevant anyway!
Know what you’re creating. It’s going to make life a lot easier later on.
Concepts
Throughout the book, you’ll notice words that are capitalised: Like This. This means that it’s a key concept I work with, one that I’ll probably come back to a few times in the book. Some of these are, as far as I know, unique, and I’ve had to come up with brief descriptive names for them. Hopefully, this will leave us with a shared vocabulary that will both make reading the book smoother and facilitate your own discussions as you create your work. In many cases, giving these concepts a concrete name also helps to refine our thinking even further. There’s a glossary of all these terms at the end of the book, but they’re first introduced in the chapter that makes most sense. If you’re reading the book out of order and come across a word that seems odd, refer to the glossary – it’s probably been covered in an earlier section.
There are three concepts I want to put forward right at the start. These are Elegance, Rewards and Flavour.
Elegance
One of my buzzwords for good immersive theatre is Elegance. What this really means is that the piece is ‘mechanically invisible’; the audience can’t see the planning put into the piece, they don’t feel artificially railroaded and they are never fully aware that the piece is rigidly structured and timetabled. Too often, the audience is bludgeoned into action. A guard in a gas mask bellows ‘MOVE!’, and everyone sighs in resignation as they shuffle to the next room, aware it’s time for the next scene. There’s no feeling of organic life, only a series of instructions thinly disguised by costume and dialogue.
I think we can and should be more inventive (or devious) than that. I’ll be giving you ideas for how to create a piece that never feels artificial. You’ll be running your show with attention to detail and meticulous planning, but your audience will never directly be aware of it.
I’ll be referring to Elegance repeatedly in this book. To me, it’s one of the principal concepts I’ll put forward that everyone should be aspiring to. Respect the hard work you’re putting in; never let the audience reach the limits of the world you’ve created. They should always feel that if they explored through one more door or asked one more question they would discover another part of your devised world.
Rewards
Another of the core concepts I’ll ask you to work with is the Reward. This is essentially how you train your audience to interact fully with your performance. By rewarding the type of behaviour that helps your play along, the audience will swiftly understand their role in your piece. It’s more Elegant than reading out a list of rules or having an out-of-character team member encouraging them. It’s a lot more Elegant than having a character give a clunky ‘in-character’ encouragement to interact.
The essence of a Reward is that you, as a company, anticipate how an audience might interact. You consider where they might ‘explore’, be that a physical exploration of the space or a verbal exploration by talking to a character. Your job is to make sure that there is something waiting for them at the other side of that exploration. You will have placed an interesting scene or object in a hidden space, or an incendiary piece of backstory that can only be found by asking the actors questions. Make the audience feel that their endeavours have importance early on in the performance. Later on, when the stakes are higher and there’s less time for hand-holding the audience, they’ll have already learned the rules of your piece.
Flavour
I use the word Flavour to denote an immersive element that has no function within the play other than making the world feel richer. A character’s diary found in the space, while fascinating, may not be necessary to make the play operate. Don’t overlook these Flavour additions. If the audience starts to feel that every conversation, object and room is necessary, the joy of discovery will be overtaken by a sense of ‘Okay, how do I use this then?’ Allow pure exploration to be its own Reward in some cases.
SomeGeneralAdvice
With those concepts understood, you hopefully have an idea of what it is you’re going to start building. Stay aware of why you’ve chosen to create immersive theatre – and your Mission Statement that reminds you of the effect you want to have on your audience. This point of reference is your anchor, the ideal against which you should measure every idea you start toying with. That guiding sentence you came up with at the beginning of your process will stay vitally important right up to the day you sit down after the last performance and
consider the success of the show.
One of my first immersive pieces, Anima, was born of a desire to make the audience culpable; to make them share the responsibility for, and satisfaction in, the play’s outcome. I had been inspired by the depth of choice that modern computer role-playing games offer the player, and wanted to explore that level of interaction with a live audience. Keeping hold of that guiding principle meant that I was able to retain focus. When I was tempted to invest time and energy into complex set, long tracts of dialogue or any other resource-draining idea, I could ask myself whether they furthered my core goal. Often, they didn’t. These abandoned ideas ended up being secreted away in my notebooks, ready for a production that would use them to greater effect.
If you’re reading this as an individual actor or director rather than as a member of a group (be it a group of students or an acting company), you will also need to get a good team around you from the outset and to define who has responsibility for certain areas of the production. The huge number of elements to keep track of in immersive work might demand a change in your usual working patterns, so have an honest look at how you tend to operate. If you’re prone to micromanaging and keeping a tight hold of every aspect of your productions, learning to let go will be a lifesaver. There’s just too much to keep track of in an immersive piece for any one person. I speak from experience, as I was that kind of director prior to my first immersive work! I fought tooth and nail to keep on top of it all myself, making my first piece much harder than it needed to be. By learning to let go, your production won’t just be easier to manage; ensuring your collaborators feel ownership in the work will make their contributions far more creative and insightful.
Conversely, if you’ve tended to work in a free-form, collaborative way (perhaps as part of a devised company), you may have to put some boundaries around the process. Generate ideas together and pool your creativity, but make sure one or two people are keeping tabs on each area. As your multi-stranded narratives spiral ever-outward, as your design elements multiply, tasks will need to be centralised under one person. The entire web of narrative choices (for example) should be at the fingertips of one person so they can easily spot problems and conflicts.
It’s not my place to tell you how to delegate different roles; this will be influenced by the kind of people you are and the kind of production you’re creating. It might be that one person handles designing the space while another works on interactions with the audience, or it might be that one person is
handling the creation of the main storyline while another adds Flavour. You know your requirements better than I do, so make whatever choices you need –as long as you have actually made those choices.
You will do well so long as you remember that this may be the biggest job you’ve ever taken on. It’s bigger than any one person, and by working together in a disciplined way you will hopefully create something incredible.
CaseStudies
As we’re discussing theoretical ideas throughout this book, I’ve chosen to include practical examples so you can understand these concepts in practice. I’ll be making reference to four immersive productions I’ve been involved in and showing you how our topics were applied to those examples. These productions were all vastly different in nature, and I’ve chosen them to give you a real variety of outcomes and objectives. These aren’t meant as an instruction to copy those examples; the possibilities for your play are limitless and I could fill five books with examples if I were so inclined… and I would still fail to serve up the perfect idea for your piece. That can only come from you.
Below is a brief overview of these four pieces, laid out so you can understand what their unique tone and aims were.
#MSND
#MSND was an immersive rendering of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream created by my production company, AXIS Arts. It transferred the setting from a forest to a seedy nightclub, recasting the characters accordingly. Oberon became the shady character doing deals behind the scenes, vaguely implicated in drugs and prostitution. Puck became his ‘enforcer’, Titania the most prestigious dancer, and Bottom a hapless clubgoer. Taking place within one large space, our aim was to have the audience act as if in a real nightclub. We used a genuine club in a reclaimed South London factory as our setting. A live DJ provided the soundtrack for the evening, and the bar was serving throughout the performance. The action of the play was divided between free-roaming segments where the cast interacted with the audience, and scripted-dialogue set pieces that progressed the plot. The piece was interactive, but the narrative was set and we used Shakespeare’s original text – the audience did not influence the story in any
way. It functioned like a small-scale piece of Exploration Theatre and was designed to accommodate as many audience members as the space would hold.
Anima
Anima was my first Interactive World. It cast the audience as survivors of a plague that was sweeping the country. When they purchased their tickets, they received an information pack in the post. That pack, comprised of documents seemingly created within our fictional world, informed them of their role and the world they were entering. It confirmed that they had signed up for a ‘disaster insurance package’ with Osiris Corporation, along with a wealth of Osiris propaganda.
The play was designed to pit the audience in a series of dilemmas that forced them to choose between equally questionable moral Paths. As the story progressed, they would find themselves choosing (or being coerced into) an alliance with either the Osiris Corporation or a group of terrorists called the Network. Depending on the actions of the audience, one of four drastically different endings could occur – with multiple different minor variations occurring along the route to each ending. We were interested in providing opportunities for audience members to work against each other, and wanted to provide an arena where ideologies and beliefs became more important than friendships.
The space was a collection of buildings belonging to a school, surrounding a playing field. This became the Osiris Corp Quarantine & Research Facility, and the production was designed to accommodate a maximum audience of fifty.
Loveplay
With Loveplay, we created a piece of Exploration Theatre. Taking Moira Buffini’s script of the same name, we placed it in a cellar complex with multiple rooms and branching corridors. Our setting was a sort of timetravelling dating agency, where audience members ventured away from the agency lounge to explore rooms placed in the last two thousand years of English history. In each of these rooms, a scene from the play would be occurring on a looping schedule. The traditional staging of Loveplay consists
of ten scenes in chronological order – each showing a different interpretation of love set in the same physical location but two hundred years apart.
Our intention with this piece was to allow freedom of movement and choice whilst ensuring that the audience saw all ten scripted scenes of Moira’s play. The audience were free to interact with characters not involved in scripted scenes, but we also needed to preserve the set nature of the text. The performance was designed to accommodate an audience of forty.
Caligula
Caligula is probably my most ambitious project so far. Designed to be an Interactive World and draw on my learnings from Anima, it also had to incorporate the set text and ending of Albert Camus’ original writing. Our challenge to ourselves was to create a piece that had total freedom of action for the audience, making their choices feel meaningful within the play, but still preserve the scripted ending – essential to the philosophical themes underpinning Camus’ work.
This performance also utilised the underground space used for Loveplay, and transplanted the setting of Caligula from Imperial Rome to a twisted dictatorial London. The audience were cast as low-level senators in a dystopian version of London’s government, and we hoped to explore their real political beliefs – though the play did not aim to cast judgement on any set of principles. The audience limit for this piece was roughly thirty.
ANoteonFindingSpaces
You might be worried that you could never afford the reclaimed warehouseturned-nightclubs, schools or underground complexes I mentioned in the case studies. Let me put your mind at ease.
Every single one of these spaces was offered for free.
To be more precise, their owners were always willing to accept something other than money in exchange for us using their space. In the case of the school, the cast and I provided a couple of workshops for their students. The nightclub trusted that we’d fill the room up enough to make a decent profit on the bar. The underground complex gave us the space without any conditions once we sat down and told them our ideas.
You may not always get the space you want, and if it’s an established theatre venue you almost certainly won’t until you can offer either a chunk of cash or a significant track record for pulling in big audiences and, therefore, money at the box office… but there are always interesting and under-utilised locations that will allow you access if you offer something meaningful in return (whether that’s workshops, marketing or just the respect and passion of talking to them indepth about why your piece is worthwhile).
Be as creative in finding your performance’s home as you are in creating the piece itself.
What’stheStory?
Before you move on from this introductory chapter, there are fundamental questions to answer about the story you’re telling. Firstly, where it’s coming from: are you adapting an existing story, or are you creating something from the ground up? There are three major ways this can play out.
•
•
You’re creating a brand-new story. It may be within an existing world (perhaps set within a Brothers Grimm-style fairy land or the weird horror of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu stories), but the narrative is new. Anima, one of our case studies, fits within this category.
You’re making an immersive adaptation of an existing story that uses the original text prominently – three of our case studies, Caligula, Loveplay and #MSND, do this.
•
You’re using an existing story as a jumping-off point to create something new. Punchdrunk do this in many of their pieces (using tales such as Dr Faustus and Woyzeck as starting points, but not necessarily using large amounts of the original text).
This choice has an impact on every aspect of your performance, most notably how you use interactivity and the audience’s free will. If you’ve got a story that must end one way, it’s a lot harder to craft a piece that the audience can influence. It’s not impossible, but it will take careful building. You’ll find techniques in Chapter 3: Living Choices, the section on crafting interactions, that will help with this. If you’re creating an original story, however, then presumably you’ll choose to craft a piece that serves your purposes and your space.
Adapting a Story
When you’re adapting an existing piece of art, you’re signing up to steer a course between utilising the interactive elements of immersive theatre and honouring the original creator’s intentions. Sometimes this is easy; myths, legends and other public domain stories are often so old that their original creator is lost to history. You have relatively free rein with your work, though the audience may have strong expectations.
It becomes more difficult if you start working with stories that are still very much attached to their creator’s name. We’ve all seen poor adaptations of Shakespeare, and the same could be said for Dickens, Chekhov, Dostoevsky… or for any modern author. There are two issues that need addressing right at the beginning of your work. The first, of course, is to check that you can legally acquire permission to use this intellectual property. For many older works, such as Shakespeare, these stories are ‘out of copyright’ – this means that you can legally present them on stage without needing permission from an agency, writer or organisation. A good rule of thumb is that it may be out of copyright if the writer died over seventy years ago. With the majority of stories from the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries (and some older work too), there is someone who legally owns the rights to the story. In these cases you will need to contact the rights holder, and this information can usually be found by looking in the front of the book or on the reverse of the DVD case.
The second consideration with pre-existing material is the audience’s expectations of the story. If we present a piece that draws strongly on the plot of Romeo and Juliet, the audience will bring certain powerful ideas into the space. They will expect to see the lovers die tragically, and two warring families. You are free to honour or subvert these expectations as you wish, but if you do reject the traditional expectations of a story then make sure the audience is pleasantly surprised rather than unfulfilled.
Once you’ve dispensed with all these initial considerations, start thinking about the themes of the story you’re using. Consider the moral or message of the story. Decide what the ‘tone’ of the story is. Write all of this down on a sheet of paper, and stick it somewhere you’ll see when you’re working on your piece. You have a responsibility to make sure your Immersive Additions enhance the audience’s experience by complementing the story, rather than degrading the work by using it to carry clumsily made interactive gimmicks. Then, write down the major plot points of the story and divide them into loose scenes, which you will later use as the basis for your production’s structure.
As long as you stick to this, the rest of the process is the same as for any other piece (developing character, working with dialogue, considering the actors’ physical work, etc).
TheAudience
I’ll talk a lot about ‘the audience’ in this book, and make reference to predicting or influencing what they will do in an immersive production. It’s important to understand exactly what I mean by this.
When I talk about influencing or predicting the audience, I am talking about the audience as a group. There is simply no way at all to predict the actions of an individual person, and our plans become increasingly unreliable as we talk about smaller and smaller groups of individuals. In an audience of a hundred people, I can be fairly confident that ‘most people will do this’ or ‘a small amount of them will do that’. We can Split that audience into groups whilst staying Elegant because crowds tend to react in relatively manageable ways.
There should never be a point in your play where you need an individual to make a certain choice. You have the ability to shape certain routes (both literally in the space and figuratively in the story) that groups of people can choose, but remember that this is all you can do.
Below is a list of three things you might want to do in an immersive production: Predict, exactly, what the audience will do.
1. 2. 3.
Offer the audience significant freedom of choice during the production. Keep the production Elegant.
The problem is, you can only manage two of these at once. Be conscious, always, of this dilemma. My personal preference is to highlight the second and third points, using the first only when I have to. In Chapter 3: Living Choices, we’ll talk about ways to keep your audience on the straight and narrow when you need to.
TheSpineofthePiece
Have your Mission Statement to hand for this section. Building an immersive production has different demands to building any other sort of play, and you could start from a number of different places. As we mentioned earlier, Chapters 2 to 5 of this book can be read in any order, and deal with different aspects of
immersive work. The first decision you’ll have to make is what you’re going to start planning first – what’s the central spine of your piece? Really, it boils down to being one of two things, and the sentence you wrote earlier will tell you which to pick.
For some artists, the big appeal is in creating an aesthetically exciting world for your audience to explore. Stories can grow organically out of the setting you can create. So if you’re looking to start from building the perfect imaginary space, begin with Chapter 2: Living Spaces.
For other artists, there’s choice. The world and the space, these things will come later. What you’re focused on is having a branching and responsive world, where the audience is invited (or forced) to make decisions and feel the piece reshape itself around them. Be aware though – this is the hardest kind to achieve! But if you can cope with sleepless nights surrounded by increasingly illegible scraps of paper and some intensely complex rehearsal schedules, head to Chapter 3: Living Choices.
There are also chapters on the rehearsal process and extending the immersive piece into the build-up to the live performance. I’ve tried to present the chapters in an order that makes some sense, but inevitably many of these concepts need to occur simultaneously. It would be madness to plan everything to do with the space itself before you even touch on the audience interactions in the story! With that in mind, you’ve reached the end of the first chapter, and we’ve established some shared key ideas – now let’s dive in to the details.
2. LivingSpaces
BeyondStaging
‘I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.’
Peter Brook, The Empty Space
Any piece of theatre happens in a space. It might be a thirty-seater fringe venue above a pub, the Olivier auditorium at the National Theatre, a disused warehouse or a clearing in a forest; it’s a space, and good theatre pays attention to its environment.
When you’re putting on an immersive piece, the space becomes an even bigger consideration. Think about how much attention we give to the stage in a traditional production, one where the audience is sat in one place throughout the performance. We can agonise endlessly over sightlines, debate the correct positioning of the set, and spend half an hour deciding whether one particular lighting state is slightly too warm or cold. When we allow the audience to wander throughout that space at will (as is likely the case in Exploration Theatre or an Interactive World), everything has to be considered in even more detail. They might look behind every item of scenery, peer through any door and touch anything they can reach. The space has to be designed from every angle – unlike in other theatre forms, you can’t have the running order taped to the back of the scenery. You can’t have an actor hovering at the door to listen for their cue.
Creating a space that is totally ‘explorable’ is hard work. Luckily, it’s also hugely enjoyable. This chapter is aimed at helping you manage your space as fully as possible – and hopefully in a way that lends some structure and clarity to a very subjective process. If you do your prep early on, you’ll be able to let your imagination run riot later without losing track of the complexities of your immersive piece.
There’s two areas to consider: the first will deal with how you work with a single room or area in your space; the other addresses how you get your audience moving between rooms and the journeys they go on.
TheSpace:YourFirstCastMember
Obviously, your performance space should be rich and vibrant, filled with interesting elements to explore and observe… But to take your production to the next level, we should think of the space as more than just a backdrop for the piece. In a well-executed immersive piece, the space is an actor, capable of interacting with and influencing the audience.
We do this by planning how our space can impact the psyche of our audience. How we design and work within a space can have a massive impact on the audience’s experience of the play. We can affect their journeys through the space, encouraging them to linger in a space or rush through it. We can influence how they feel about a room, and even where they stand within that room. Crucially, by doing this through the space, we can keep it Elegant. There’ll never be any need to instruct the audience and break your immersion.
The space is your secret weapon – and it’s a quiet one. If you’ve used the space well, the audience won’t spend time at the end talking about the Mechanics and techniques you applied to it. They’ll be talking about the stories they shared there and the sensory experiences they had within it.
HowtoUseaRoom
Each area of your space can be designed to influence the audience’s psychology, and in this section we’ll be examining how we can do that. Part 1 is about how to utilise individual areas of your entire performance space, helping you to plan their purpose in the performance and work in service of the aims of the piece. We’ll look at how you can create claustrophobia, excitement or contentment simply through (for example) the placement of furniture or the positioning of lights. Later, we’ll look at how audiences might be coaxed into travelling between different areas of the space.
All the concepts that apply to a traditional theatre production will still hold true here, so I’m not going to talk about the basics of design and set. What we’re going to discuss are the unique elements of immersive theatre. Mainly, this involves the unique relationship between the audience and the space.
Planning this relationship in advance is incredibly important; whilst your cast can react in the moment, the space can’t. It has to be ready for the chaos your audience can unleash so that your cast has the best possible structure to work in.
Much of what we’ll discuss in this chapter is actually to do with psychology rather than pure design. Partly, this is because it’s very difficult to have broad brushstrokes about how your piece should be designed when this is totally dictated by your setting. More important, however, is that the space has a unique set of abilities in an immersive piece that no other theatre form allows you to play with to such an extreme extent. Your mobile audience will be influenced by it, and encouraged or discouraged to explore depending on the effects the space has on their subconscious.
This might sound daunting, but don’t worry. These concepts are easily understandable.
The Problematic Audience
One of the most frustrating lessons I had in my early immersive projects was that the audience will very often hide at the sides of a room. We’ve all been educated to believe that theatre is a sacred art that should not be interrupted or disturbed, and audience members unfamiliar with the way immersive theatre works tend to stick to that code of conduct. Trust me, it can kill the atmosphere of your piece. These long-standing and ingrained behaviours don’t just affect where the audience stands, but also how likely they are to interact with the production and how much they’ll talk to each other.
Case Study: #MSND
When we created #MSND (one of our case studies), we had a fantastic nightclub space with a functional bar in a disused warehouse. We couldn’t wait to see the audience fill it, dance, get drunk and generally enjoy the phenomenal environment we’d created. It was crushing when the audience, without exception, all stood around the walls. They instinctively created an arena, enclosing the performance space. And it got worse; whenever a character came anywhere near their part of the wall, they politely parted to create space in case that area of the space was going to become a focal performance point. These traditional behaviours continued, and our audiences resolutely refused to draw attention to themselves. They were not, in any way, surly or hostile;
they applauded and laughed throughout the piece, seeming to enjoy it thoroughly as a piece of standard narrative theatre. Unfortunately, much of the later performance relied on having an audience to interact with – so when these moments emerged, the silence in the space was deafening.
We tried everything. By the fourth performance, we were even giving a preshow speech to encourage interaction. One or two hardy souls briefly stepped into the space now and then, but the crushing weight of forty-nine other audience members staying round the walls soon had them scurrying back into place. In the end, for the fifth performance, we solved the problem… Totally by accident.
There are a number of ways you can subtly direct your audience to use the space whilst keeping the piece Elegant, but first we have to understand what causes the problem. I call it the Void.
The Void
If, at any point, someone in the audience has to cross a large empty space, it could become a Void. If they have to do that in plain view of other audience members, it will almost certainly become a Void. If the room is very quiet when they cross, it is, without a shadow of a doubt, a Void. So what is a Void?
It’s any large area that unintentionally discourages the audience to enter it. ‘Large’ is a relative term, and it’s unimportant what the actual dimensions are –if it’s larger than any other empty area in that room, it’s a potential Void. Voids can cause real problems. By encouraging static and passive behaviours, a Void can decrease markedly the power of the scene in which it occurs. Unfortunately, the problems don’t end there. Audiences are constantly being taught how an immersive production works (a concept we’ll look at in more detail later), and the behaviours learned in a Void will then be taken by the audience into other spaces and scenes.
Frustratingly, you can never pinpoint with total accuracy whether it will become one; until the audience filter into the room, the Void doesn’t exist. This is because, really, the Void isn’t created by your choices or your space. It’s created by the audience.
Somewhat surprisingly, the audience themselves create the dynamic that prevents them from engaging fully with your piece. Throughout this book, I’ll show how the audience will build their own rules and stick to them – because of
this, it’s very difficult to break the Void once it’s been created. So, before you allow the audience in… make sure you’ve Smashed the Void.
Case Study: #MSND
We stumbled on to a way of breaking the Void before it occurred. For totally unrelated reasons, we put a podium in the centre of the space on the fifth performance (it was there to give Puck something to clamber onto during a monologue). When our audience entered the space, there was the the usual filing around the walls – but some of the audience clustered around the podium instead. My producer and I shared an incredulous look, because this made no sense. Despite the reluctance all week to go anywhere that looked like it might be where action occurred, here they were clustered around the most obvious focal point in the space. Something had happened, but we weren’t sure what it was.
Overnight, we discussed that it might be something to do with breaking up the space and came up with a plan for the next day. As the podium had broken the space in half, we would use these two halves to experiment with the audience. We left one half as it had been on the previous night, just the wall and the podium on opposite sides of an empty space. In the other half, we placed two tables in the space between wall and podium. The results were beyond anything we expected. In our empty half, the audience behaved as we expected, clustering around wall and podium. In the furnished half, our theory was that they might also cluster around the tables.
In the end, they didn’t cluster at all. They moved freely in the gaps between wall, tables and podium. They lounged on tables, stood in gaps that contained no objects and even sat on the edge of the podium (staying there even when Puck loomed over them in her monologue). As if this wasn’t enough, they also didn’t retreat from the action when characters came towards them. It was an entirely different audience, existing in parallel with their companions in the other half of the space. Over the course of the evening, the pattern continued:
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This was not quite so kind—so says I to him, “Maybe sae, for many a one thinks ye could not hold a candle to Mr Blowster the Cameronian, that whiles preaches at Lugton.”
This was a stramp on his corny toe. “Na, na,” answered Mr Wiggie, rather nettled; “let us drop that subject. I preach like my neighbours. Some of them may be worse, and others better; just as some of your own trade may make clothes worse, and some better, than yourself.”
My corruption was raised. “I deny that,” said I, in a brisk manner, which I was sorry for after—“I deny that, Mr Wiggie,” says I to him; “I’ll make a pair of breeches with the face of clay.”
But this was only a passing breeze, during the which, howsoever, I happened to swallow my thimble, which accidentally slipped off my middle finger, causing both me and the company general alarm, as there were great fears that it might mortify in the stomach; but it did not; and neither word nor wittens of it have been seen or heard tell of from that to this day. So, in two or three minutes, we had some few good songs, and a round of Scotch proverbs, when the clock chapped eleven. We were all getting, I must confess, a thought noisy; Johnny Soutter having broken a dram-glass, and Willie Fegs couped a bottle on the bit table-cloth: all noisy, I say, except Deacon Paunch, douce man, who had fallen into a pleasant slumber; so, when the minister rose to take his hat, they all rose except the deacon, whom we shook by the arms for some time, but in vain, to waken him. His round, oily face, good creature, was just as if it had been cut out of a big turnip, it was so fat, fozey, and soft; but at last, after some ado, we succeeded, and he looked about him with a wild stare, opening his two red eyes, like Pandore oysters, asking what had happened; and we got him hoized up on his legs, tying the blue shawl round his bullneck again.
Our company had not got well out of the door, and I was priding myself in my heart about being landlord to such a goodly turn out, when Nanse took me by the arm, and said, “Come, and see such an unearthly sight.” This startled me, and I hesitated; but at long and last I went in with her, a thought alarmed at what had happened, and —my gracious! there, on the easy-chair, was our bonny tortoise-shell cat, Tommy, with the red morocco collar about its neck, bruised as flat as a flounder, and as dead as a mawk!
The deacon had sat down upon it without thinking; and the poor animal, that our neighbours’ bairns used to play with, and be so fond of, was crushed out of life without a cheep. The thing, doubtless, was not intended, but it gave Nanse and me a very sore heart.
THE MINISTER’S WIDOW.
B P W .
The dwelling of the minister’s widow stood within a few miles of the beautiful village of Castle-Holm, about a hundred low-roofed houses that had taken the name of the parish of which they were the little romantic capital. Two small regular rows of cottages faced each other, on the gentle acclivity of a hill, separated by a broomy common of rich pasturage, through which hurried a translucent loch-born rivulet, with here and there its shelves and waterfalls overhung by the alder or weeping birch. Each straw-roofed abode, snug and merry as a beehive, had behind it a few roods of garden ground; so that, in spring, the village was covered with a fragrant cloud of blossoms on the pear, apple, and plum trees; and in autumn was brightened with golden fruitage. In the heart of the village stood the manse, and in it had she who was now a widow passed twenty years of privacy and peace. On the death of her husband, she had retired with her family—three boys—to the pleasant cottage which they now inhabited. It belonged to the old lady of the castle, who was patroness of the parish, and who accepted from the minister’s widow of a mere trifle as a nominal rent. On approaching the village, strangers always fixed upon Sunnyside for the manse itself, for an air of serenity and retirement brooded over it, as it looked out from below its sheltering elms, and the farmyard with its corn-stack, marking the homestead of the agricultural tenant, was there wanting. A neat gravel-walk winded away, without a weed, from the white gate by the roadside, through lilacs and laburnums; and the unruffled and unbroken order of all the breathing things that grew around, told that a quiet and probably small family lived within those beautiful boundaries.
The change from the manse to Sunnyside had been with the widow a change from happiness to resignation. Her husband had died of a consumption; and for nearly a year she had known that his death was inevitable. Both of them had lived in the spirit of that Christianity which he had preached; and therefore the last year they passed together, in spite of the many bitter tears which she who was to be the survivor shed when none were by to see, was perhaps on the whole the best deserving of the name of happiness of the twenty that had passed over their earthly union. To the dying man Death had lost all his terrors. He sat beside his wife, with his bright hollow eyes and emaciated frame, among the balmy shades of his garden, and spoke with fervour of the many tender mercies God had vouchsafed to them here, and of the promises made to all who believed in the Gospel. They did not sit together to persuade, to convince, or to uphold each other’s faith, for they believed in the things that were unseen, just as they believed in the beautiful blossomed arbour that then contained them in its shading silence. Accordingly, when the hour was at hand in which he was to render up his spirit into the hand of God, he was like a grateful and wearied man falling into a sleep. His widow closed his eyes with her own hands, nor was her soul then disquieted within her. In a few days she heard the bell tolling, and from her sheltered window looked out, and followed the funeral with streaming eyes, but an unweeping heart. With a calm countenance and humble voice she left and bade farewell to the sweet manse, where she had so long been happy; and as her three beautiful boys, with faces dimmed by natural grief, but brightened by natural gladness, glided before her steps, she shut the gate of her new dwelling with an undisturbed soul, and moved her lips in silent thanksgiving to the God of the fatherless and the widow.
Her three boys, each one year older than the other, grew in strength and beauty, the pride and flower of the parish. In school they were quiet and composed; but in play-hours they bounded in their glee together like young deer, and led the sportful flock in all their excursions through wood or over moor. They resembled, in features and in voice, both of their gentle parents; but nature had moulded to quite another character their joyful and impetuous souls. When sitting or walking with their mother, they subdued their spirits down to suit her equable and gentle contentment, and behaved towards her with a delicacy and thoughtfulness which made her
heart to sing for joy. So, too, did they sit in the kirk on Sabbath, and during all that day the fountain of their joy seemed to subside and to lie still. They knew to stand solemnly with their mother, now and then on the calm summer evenings, beside their father’s grave. They remembered well his pale kind face—his feeble walk—his bending frame—his hand laid in blessing on their young heads—and the last time they ever heard him speak. The glad boys had not forgotten their father; and that they proved by their piety unto her whom most on earth had their father loved. But their veins were filled with youth, health, and the electricity of joy; and they carried without and within the house such countenances as at any time coming upon their mother’s eyes on a sudden, were like a torch held up in the dim melancholy of a mist, diffusing cheerfulness and elevation.
Years passed on. Although the youngest was but a boy, the eldest stood on the verge of manhood, for he had entered his seventeenth year, and was bold, straight, and tall, with a voice deepening in its tone, a graver expression round the gladness of his eyes, and a sullen mass of coal-black hair hanging over the smooth whiteness of his open forehead. But why describe the three beautiful brothers? They knew that there was a world lying at a distance that called upon them to leave the fields, and woods, and streams, and lochs of CastleHolm; and, born and bred in peace as they had been, their restless hearts were yet all on fire, and they burned to join a life of danger, strife, and tumult. No doubt it gave their mother a sad heart to think that all her three boys, who she knew loved her so tenderly, could leave her alone, and rush into the far-off world. But who shall curb nature? Who ought to try to curb it when its bent is strong? She reasoned a while, and tried to dissuade; but it was in vain. Then she applied to her friends; and the widow of the minister of Castle-Holm, retired as his life had been, was not without friends of rank and power. In one year her three boys had their wish;—in one year they left Sunnyside, one after the other; William to India, Edward to Spain, and Harry to a man-of-war.
Still was the widow happy. The house that so often used to be ringing with joy, was now indeed too, too silent; and that utter noiselessness sometimes made her heart sick, when sitting by herself in the solitary room. But by nature she was a gentle, meek, resigned, and happy being; and had she even been otherwise, the sorrow she
had suffered, and the spirit of religion which her whole life had instilled, must have reconciled her to what was now her lot. Great cause had she to be glad. Far away as India was, and seemingly more remote in her imagination, loving letters came from her son there in almost every ship that sailed for Britain; and if at times something delayed them, she came to believe in the necessity of such delays, and, without quaking, waited till the blessed letter did in truth appear. Of Edward, in Spain, she often heard—though for him she suffered more than for the others. Not that she loved him better, for, like three stars, each possessed alike the calm heaven of her heart; but he was with Wellington, and the regiment in which he served seemed to be conspicuous in all skirmishes, and in every battle. Henry, her youngest boy, who left her before he had finished his fourteenth year, she often heard from; his ship sometimes put into port; and once, to the terror and consternation of her loving and yearning heart, the young midshipman stood before her, with a laughing voice, on the floor of the parlour, and rushed into her arms. He had got leave of absence for a fortnight; and proudly, although sadly too, did she look on her dear boy when he was sitting in the kirk with his uniform on, and his war-weapons by his side—a fearless and beautiful stripling, on whom many an eye was insensibly turned even during service. And, to be sure, when the congregation were dismissed, and the young sailor came smiling out into the churchyard, never was there such a shaking of hands seen before. The old men blessed the gallant boy; many of the mothers looked at him not without tears; and the young maidens, who had heard that he had been in a bloody engagement, and once nearly shipwrecked, gazed upon him with unconscious blushes, and bosoms that beat with innocent emotion. A blessed week it was indeed that he was then with his mother; and never before had Sunnyside seemed so well to deserve its name.
To love, to fear, and to obey God, was the rule of this widow’s life; and the time was near at hand when she was to be called upon to practise it in every silent, secret, darkest corner and recess of her afflicted spirit. Her eldest son, William, fell in storming a fort in India, as he led the forlorn-hope. He was killed dead in a moment, and fell into the trench with all his lofty plumes. Edward was found dead at Talavera, with the colours of his regiment tied round his body. And the ship in which Henry was on board, that never would
have struck her flag to any human power sailing on the sea, was driven by a storm on a reef of rocks, went to pieces during the night, and of eight hundred men, not fifty were saved. Of that number Henry was not; but his body was found next day on the sand, along with those of many of the crew, and buried, as it deserved, with all honours, and in a place where few but sailors slept.
In one month—one little month—did the tidings of the three deaths reach Sunnyside. A government letter informed her of William’s death in India, and added, that, on account of the distinguished character of the young soldier, a small pension would be settled on his mother. Had she been starving of want instead of blessed with competence, that word would have had then no meaning to her ear. Yet true it is, that a human—an earthly—pride cannot be utterly extinguished, even by severest anguish, in a mother’s heart, yea, even although her best hopes are garnered up in heaven; and the weeping widow could not help feeling it now, when, with the black wax below her eyes, she read how her dead boy had not fallen in the service of an ungrateful state. A few days afterwards a letter came from himself, written in the highest spirits and tenderest affection. His mother looked at every word—every letter— every dash of the pen;—and still one thought—one thought only, was in her soul;—“the living hand that traced these lines—where, what is it now?” But this was the first blow only; ere the new moon was visible, the widow knew that she was altogether childless.
It was in a winter hurricane that her youngest boy had perished; and the names of those whose health had hitherto been remembered at every festal Christmas, throughout all the parish, from the castle to the humblest hut, were now either suppressed within the heart, or pronounced with a low voice and a sigh. During three months, Sunnyside looked almost as if uninhabited. Yet the smoke from one chimney told that the childless widow was sitting alone at her fireside; and when her only servant was spoken to at church, or on the village-green, and asked how her mistress was bearing these dispensations, the answer was, that her health seemed little, if at all impaired, and that she talked of coming to divine service in a few weeks, if her strength would permit. She had been seen through the leafless hedge standing at the parlour window, and had motioned with her hand to a neighbour, who in passing, had uncovered his
head. Her weekly bounty to several poor and bedridden persons had never suffered but one week’s intermission. It was always sent to them on Saturday night; and it was on a Saturday night that all the parish had been thrown into tears, with the news that Henry’s ship had been wrecked, and the brave boy drowned. On that evening she had forgotten the poor.
But now the Spring had put forth her tender buds and blossoms— had strewn the black ground under the shrubs with flowers, and was bringing up the soft, tender, and beautiful green over the awakening face of the earth. There was a revival of the spirit of life and gladness over the garden, and the one encircling field of Sunnyside; and so likewise, under the grace of God, was there a revival of the soul that had been sorrowing within its concealment. On the first sweet dewy Sabbath of May, the widow was seen closing behind her the little white gate, which for some months her hand had not touched. She gave a gracious, but mournful smile, to all her friends, as she passed on through the midst of them along with the minister who had joined her on entering the churchyard; and although it was observed that she turned pale as she sat down in her pew, with the Bibles and Psalm-books that had belonged to her sons lying before her, as they themselves had enjoined when they went away, yet her face brightened even as her heart began to burn within her at the simple music of the psalm. The prayers of the congregation had some months before been requested for her, as a person in great distress; and, during service, the young minister, according to her desire, now said a few simple words, that intimated to the congregation that the childless widow was, through his lips, returning thanks to Almighty God, for that He had not forsaken her in her trouble, but sent resignation and peace.
From that day she was seen, as before, in her house, in her garden, along the many pleasant walks all about the village; and in the summer evenings, though not so often as formerly, in the dwellings of her friends, both high and low. From her presence a more gentle manner seemed to be breathed over the rude, and a more heartfelt delicacy over the refined. Few had suffered as she had suffered; all her losses were such as could be understood, felt, and wept over by all hearts; and all boisterousness or levity of joy would have seemed an outrage on her, who, sad and melancholy herself, yet wished all
around her happy, and often lighted up her countenance with a grateful smile at the sight of that pleasure which she could not but observe to be softened, sobered, and subdued for her sake.
Such was the account of her, her sorrow, and her resignation, which I received on the first visit I paid to a family near Castle-Holm, after the final consummation of her grief. Well-known to me had all the dear boys been; their father and mine had been labourers in the same vineyard; and as I had always been a welcome visitor, when a boy, at the manse of Castle-Holm, so had I been, when a man, at Sunnyside. Last time I had been there, it was during the holidays, and I had accompanied the three boys on their fishing excursions to the lochs in the moor; and in the evenings pursued with them their humble and useful studies. So I could not leave Castle-Holm without visiting Sunnyside, although my heart misgave me, and I wished I could have delayed it till another summer.
I sent word that I was coming to see her, and I found her sitting in that well-known little parlour where I had partaken the pleasure of so many merry evenings with those whose laughter was now extinguished. We sat for awhile together speaking of ordinary topics, and then utterly silent. But the restraint she had imposed upon herself she either thought unnecessary any longer, or felt it to be impossible; and rising up, went to a little desk, from which she brought forth three miniatures, and laid them down upon the table before us, saying, “Behold the faces of my three dead boys!”
So bright, breathing, and alive did they appear, that for a moment I felt impelled to speak to them, and to whisper their names. She beheld my emotion, and said unto me, “Oh! could you believe that they are all dead? Does not that smile on Willie’s face seem as if it were immortal? do not Edward’s sparkling eyes look so bright as if the mists of death could never have overshadowed them? and think— oh! think, that ever Henry’s golden hair should have been dragged in the brine, and filled full—full, I doubt not, of the soiling sand!”
I put the senseless images one by one to my lips, and kissed their foreheads—for dearly had I loved these three brothers; and then I shut them up and removed them to another part of the room. I wished to speak, but I could not; and, looking on the face of her who was before me, I knew that her grief would find utterance, and that
not until she had unburdened her heart could it be restored to repose.
“They would tell you, sir, that I bear my trials well; but it is not so. Many, many unresigned and ungrateful tears has my God to forgive in me, a poor, weak, and repining worm. Almost every day, almost every night, do I weep before these silent and beautiful phantoms; and when I wipe away the breath and mist of tears from their faces, there are they, smiling continually upon me! Oh! death is a shocking thought, when it is linked in love with creatures so young as these! More insupportable is gushing tenderness, than even dry despair; and, methinks, I could bear to live without them, and never to see them more, if I could only cease to pity them! But that can never be. It is for them I weep, not for myself. If they were to be restored to life, would I not lie down with thankfulness into the grave? William and Edward were struck down, and died, as they thought, in glory and triumph. Death to them was merciful. But who can know, although they may try to dream of it in horror, what the youngest of them, my sweet Harry, suffered, through that long dark howling night of snow, when the ship was going to pieces on the rocks!”
That last dismal thought held her for a while silent; and some tears stood in drops on her eyelashes, but seemed again to be absorbed. Her heart appeared unable to cling to the horrors of the shipwreck, although it coveted them; and her thoughts reverted to other objects. “I walk often into the rooms where they used to sleep, and look on their beds till I think I see their faces lying with shut eyes on their pillows. Early in the morning do I often think I hear them singing; I awaken from troubled unrest, as if the knock of their sportive hands were at my door summoning me to rise. All their stated hours of study and of play, when they went to school and returned from it, when they came into meals, when they said their prayers, when they went leaping at night to bed as lightsomely, after all the day’s fatigue, as if they had just risen—oh! Sir, at all these times, and many, and many a time besides these, do I think of them whom you loved.”
While thus she kept indulging the passion of her grief, she observed the tears I could no longer conceal; and the sight of my sorrow seemed to give, for a time, a loftier character to hers, as if my weakness made her aware of her own, and she had become conscious of the character of her vain lamentations. “Yet, why should I so
bitterly weep? Pain had not troubled them—passion had not disturbed them—vice had not polluted them. May I not say, ‘My children are in heaven with their father?’—and ought I not, therefore, to dry up all these foolish tears now and for evermore?”
Composure was suddenly shed over her countenance, like gentle sunlight over a cheerless day, and she looked around the room as if searching for some pleasant objects that eluded her sight. “See,” said she, “yonder are all their books, arranged just as Henry arranged them on his unexpected visit. Alas! too many of them are about the troubles and battles of the sea! But it matters not now. You are looking at that drawing. It was done by himself—that is the ship he was so proud of, sailing in sunshine and a pleasant breeze. Another ship, indeed, was she soon after, when she lay upon the reef! But as for the books, I take them out of their places, and dust them, and return them to their places, every week. I used to read to my boys, sitting round my knees, out of many of these books, before they could read themselves; but now I never peruse them, for their cheerful stories are not for me. But there is one Book I do read, and without it I should long ago have been dead. The more the heart suffers, the more does it understand that Book. Never do I read a single chapter, without feeling assured of something more awful in our nature than I felt before. My own heart misgives me; my own soul betrays me; all my comforts desert me in a panic; but never yet once did I read one whole page of the New Testament that I did not know that the eye of God is on all His creatures, and on me like the rest, though my husband and all my sons are dead, and I may have many years yet to live alone on the earth.”
After this we walked out into the little avenue, now dark with the deep rich shadows of summer beauty. We looked at that beauty, and spoke of the surpassing brightness of the weather during all June, and advancing July. It is not in nature always to be sad; and the remembrance of all her melancholy and even miserable confessions was now like an uncertain echo, as I beheld a placid smile on her face, a smile of such perfect resignation, that it might not falsely be called a smile of joy. We stood at the little white gate; and, with a gentle voice, that perfectly accorded with that expression, she bade God bless me; and then with composed steps, and now and then turning up, as she walked along, the massy flower-branches of the
laburnum, as, bent with their load of beauty, they trailed upon the ground, she disappeared into that retirement which, notwithstanding all I had seen and heard, I could not but think deserved almost to be called happy, in a world which even the most thoughtless know is a world of sorrow.
THE BATTLE OF THE BREEKS: A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF WILLIAM M‘GEE,
WEAVER IN HAMILTON.
B R M , LL.D.
I often wonder when I think of the tribulations that men bring upon themsels, through a want of gumption and common independence of speerit. There now was I, for nae less than eighteen years, as henpeckit a man as ever wrocht at the loom. Maggie and me, after the first week of our marriage, never forgathered weel thegither. There was something unco dour and imperious about her temper, although, I maun say, barring this drawback, she was nae that ill in her way either,—that is to say, she had a sort of kindness about her, and behaved in a truly mitherly way to the bairns, giein them a’ things needfu’ in the way of feeding and claithing, so far as our means admitted. But, oh, man, for a’ that, she was a dour wife. There was nae pleasing her ae way or anither; and whenever I heard the bell ringing for the kirk, it put me in mind of her tongue—aye wag, wagging, and abusing me beyond bounds. In ae word, I was a puir, broken-hearted man, and often wished myself in Abraham’s bosom, awa frae the cares and miseries of this sinfu’ world.
I was just saying that folk often rin their heads into scrapes for want of a pickle natural spunk. Let nae man tell me that gude nature and simpleecity will get on best in this world; na—faith na. I hae had ower muckle experience that way; and the langer I live has proved to me that my auld maister, James Currie (him in the Quarry Loan), wasna sae far wrang when he alleged, in his droll, gude-humoured way, that a man should hae enough o’ the deil about him to keep the deil frae him. That was, after a’, ane of the wisest observes I hae
heard of for a lang time. Little did I opine that I would ever be obligated to mak use o’t in my ain particular case:—but, bide a wee, and ye shall see how it was brocht about between me and Maggie.
It was on a wintry night when she set out to pick a quarrel wi’ Mrs Todd, the huckster’s wife, anent the price of a pickle flour which I had bought some days before, for making batter of, but which didna turn out sae weel as I expeckit, considering what was paid for’t. Had I been consulted, I would hae tell’t her to bide at hame, and no fash her thumb about the matter, which after a’ was only an affair of three-ha’pence farthing, and neither here nor there. But, na; Maggie was nane o’ the kind to let sic an object stan’ by; so out she sets, wi’ her red cloak about her, and her black velvet bonnet—that she had just that day got hame frae Miss Lorimer, the milliner—upon her head. But I maun first tell what passed between her and me on this wonderful occasion.
“And now, my dear,” quo’ I, looking as couthy and humble as I could, and pu’ing my Kilmarnock nicht-cap a wee grain aff my brow in a kind of half respectfu’ fashion, “what’s this ye’re ganging to be about? Odds, woman, I wadna gie a pirn for a’ that has happened. What signifies a pickle flour, scrimp worth half a groat?”
Faith, I would better hae held my tongue, for nae sooner was the word uttered, than takin’ haud of a can, half fu’ o’ ready-made dressing, which I was preparing to lay on a wab of blue check I was working for Mr Andrew Treddles, the Glasgow manufacturer—I say, taking haud of this, she let flee at my head like a cannon-ball. But Providence was kind, and instead of knocking out my brains, as I had every reason to expeck, it gaed bang against our ain looking-glass, and shattered it into five hunder pieces. But I didna a’thegither escape scaith—the dressing having flown out as the can gaed by me, and plaistered a’ my face ower in a manner maist extraordinar to behold. By jingo! my spirit was roused at this deadly attempt, and gin she hadna been my wife, I wad hae thrawn about her neck, like a tappit-hen’s. But, na—I was henpeckit, and she had sic a mastery ower me as nae persuasions of my ain judgment could owercome. Sae I could do naething but stan’ glowering at her like a moudiewart, while she poured out as muckle abuse as if I had been her flunkey, instead of her natural lord and master. Ance or twice I fand my nieves yeuking to gie her a clour by way of balancing accounts, but
such was the power of influence she had obtained, that I durstna cheep for my very heart’s blude. So awa she gaed on her errand, leaving me sittin’ by the fire to mak the best of my desperate condition.
“O, Nancy,” said I to my dochter, as she sat mending her brither’s sark, opposite to me, “is na your mither an awfu’ woman?”
“I see naething awfu’ about her,” quo’ the cratur; “I think she servit ye richt; and had I a man, I would just treat him in the same way, if he daured to set his nose against onything I wanted.”
I declare to ye, when I heard this frae my ain flesh and blude, I was perfectly dumfoundered. The bairn I had brought up on my knee— that used, when a wee thing, to come and sit beside me at the loom, and who was in the custom of wheeling my pirns wi’ her ain hand— odds, man, it was desperate. I couldna say anither word, but I faund a big tear come hap-happing ower my runkled cheeks, the first that had wet them sin’ I was a bit laddie rinnin’ about before the schule door. What was her mither’s abusiveness to this? A man may thole muckle frae his wife, but, oh, the harsh words of an undutifu’ bairn gang like arrows to his heart, and he weeps tears of real bitterness. I wasna angry at the lassie—I was ower grieved to be angered; and for the first time I fand that my former sufferings were only as a single thread to a hale hank of yarn, compared to them I suffered at this moment.
A’thegither, the thing was mair than I could stand, so rising up, I betaks mysel to my but-an-ben neighbour, Andrew Brand. Andrew was an uncommon sagacious chiel, and, like mysel, a weaver to his trade. He was beuk-learned, and had read a hantle on different subjects, so that he was naturally looked up to by the folks round about, on account of his great lear. When onything gaed wrang about the Leechlee Street, where we lived, we were a’ glad to consult him; and his advice was reckoned no greatly behint that of Mr Meek, the minister. He was a great counter, or ’rithmetishian, as he ca’d it; and it was thocht by mony gude judges that he could handle a pen as weel as Mr Dick, the writing-master, himsel. So, as I was saying, I stappit ben to Andrew’s, to ask his advice, but, odds! if ye ever saw a man in sic a desperate passion as he was in when I tauld him how I had been used by my wife and dochter.
“William M‘Gee,” said he, raising his voice,—it was a geyan strong ane,—“ye’re an absolute gomeril. Oh, man, but ye’re a henpeckit sumph! I tell ye, ye’re a gawpus and a lauching-stock, and no worth the name of a man. Do ye hear that?”
“O ay, I hear’t very weel,” quo’ I, no that pleased at being sae spoken to, even by Andrew Brand, who was a man I could stamach a gude deal frae, in the way of reproof—“I hear’t a’ weel eneuch, and am muckle obleeged to ye, nae doubt, for your consolation.”
“Hooly and fairly, William,” said he in a kinder tone, for he saw I was a degree hurt by his speech. “Come, I was only joking ye, man, and ye maunna tak onything amiss I hae said. But, really, William, I speak to ye as a frien’, and tell ye that ye are submitting to a tyranny which no man of common understanding ought to submit to. Is this no the land of liberty? Are we no just as free as the Duke in his grand palace down by; and has onybody a richt—tell me that, William M‘Gee—to tyranneeze ower anither as your wife does ower you! I’ll no tell ye what to do, but I’ll just tell ye what I would do if my wife and dochter treated me as yours have treated you: losh, man, I would ding their harns about, and knock their heads thegither like twa curling-stanes. I would aye be master in my ain house.”
This was Andrew’s advice, and I thocht it sounded geyan rational, only no very easy to be put in practice. Hoosomever, thinks I to mysel, I’ll consider about it, and gin I could only bring mysel to mak the experiment, wha kens but I micht succeed to a miracle? On stapping back to my ain house, the first thing I did was to tak a thimblefu’ of whisky, by way of gieing me a pickle spunk, in case of ony fresh rumpus wi’ the wife, and also to clear up my ideas; for I hae fand, that after a lang spell at the loom, the thochts, as weel as the body, are like to get stupid and dozey. So I taks a drappie, and sits down quietly by the fireside, waiting for the return of Maggie frae scolding Mrs Todd about the flour.
In she comes, a’ in a flurry. Her face was as red as a peony rose, her breathing cam fast, and she lookit a’thegither like ane that has had a sair warsle wi’ the tongue. But she was far frae being downcast. On the contrair, she lookit as proud as a Turkey cock; and I saw wi’ the tail o’ my ee that she had gained a gran’ victory ower puir Mrs Todd, who was a douce, quiet woman, and nae match for the like of her in randying. So she began to stump and mak a great phrase about
the way she had outcrawed the puir body; and was a’thegither as upset about it as if Duke Hamilton had made her keeper of his palace. Losh! I was mad to hear’t, and twa or three times had a gude mind to put in a word, to sic a degree was my courage raised by the drap speerits; but aye as the words were rising to my mouth, the thocht of the can and the dressing sent them back again, till they stuck like a bane in my throat. Very likely I micht hae said ne’er a word, and Andrew Brand’s advice micht hae gane for naething, had it no been for the cratur Nancy, who was sae lifted up about her mither’s dispute, that naething would sair her but to hae the hale affair mentioned cut and dry.
“And did ye cast up to Mrs Todd, mither,” quo’ the little cutty, “that she was fat?”
“Ay, that I did,” said Maggie. “I tell’t her she was like a barn-door. I tell’t her she was like the side of a house. ‘Ye’re a sow,’ quo’ I; ‘ye get fou every hour of the day, wi’ your lump of a gudeman!’”
But this wasna a’—for nae sooner had Maggie answered her dochter’s first question, than the cratur was ready wi’ anither: “And, mither, did ye cast up to her that her faither was a meeser?”
“Atweel did I, Nancy,” answered the gudewife. “I tell’t her a’ that. I coost up to her that her faither was a meeser, and would ride to Lunnon on a louse, and mak breeks of its skin, and candles of its tallow.”
I could thole this nae langer. I fand the hale man working within me, and was moved to a pitch of daring, mair like madness than onything else. Faith, the whisky was of gude service now, and so was Andrew Brand’s advice. I accordingly steekit my nieves wi’ desperation, threw awa my cowl, tucked up my sark sleeves,—for my coat happened to be aff at the time,—and got up frae the three-footed stool I had been sitting upon in the twinkling of an ee. I trumbled a’ ower, but whether it was wi’ fear, or wi’ anger, or wi’ baith put thegither, it would be difficult to say. I was in an awfu’ passion, and as fairce as a papist.
“And so,” said I, “ye coost up sic things to the honest woman, Mrs Todd! O, Maggie M‘Gee, Maggie M‘Gee, are ye no ashamed of yoursel?”
’Od it would hae dune your heart gude to see how she glowered at me. She was bewildered, and lookit as if to see whether I was mysel, and no some ither body. But her evil speerit didna lie lang asleep; it soon broke out like a squib on the king’s birthday, and I saw that I maun now stand firm, or be a dead man for ever.
“Has your faither been at the whisky bottle?” said she to her dochter. “He looks as if he was the waur of drink.”
“He had a glass just before ye cam in,” answered the wicked jimpey; and scarcely had she spoken the word, when Maggie flew upon me like a teeger, and gied me a skelp on the cheek wi’ her open loof, that made me turn round tapwise on the middle of the floor. Seeing that affairs were come to this pass, I saw plainly that I maun go on, no forgetting in sae doing my frien’ Andrew’s advice, as also my auld master Tammas Currie’s observe, anent a man ha’eing aneuch of the deil in his temper to keep the deil awa frae him. So I picked up a’ the spunk I had in me, besides what I had frae the drap whisky; and fa’ing to, I gied her sic a leathering as never woman got in her born days. In ae word, she met wi’ her match, and roared aloud for mercy; but this I would on nae account grant, till she promised faithfully that, in a ’ time coming, she would acknowledge me as her lord and maister, and obey me in everything as a dutiful wife should her husband.
As soon as this was settled, in stappit Andrew Brand. At the sight of my wife greeting, and me sae fairce, he held up his hands wi’ astonishment.
“William M‘Gee,” quo’ he, “it’s no possible that ye’re maister in this house!”
“It’s no only possible, but it’s true, Andrew,” was my answer; and, taking me by the hand, he wished me joy for my speerit and success.
Sae far, sae weel; the first grand stroke was made, but there was something yet to do. I had discharged a’ outstanding debts wi’ my wife, and had brocht her to terms; but I had yet to reduce my bairns to their senses, and show them that I was their lord and maister, as weel as their mither’s. Puir things! my heart was wae for them, for they were sairly miseducated, and held me in nae mair estimation, than if I had been ane of my ain wabster lads. So, just wi’ a view to their gude, I took down a pair of teuch ben-leather taws, weel burnt
at the finger-ends, and gied Nancy as mony cracks ower the bare neck, as set her squeeling beyond a’ bounds. It was pitifu’ to see the cratur, how she skipped about the room, and ran awa to her mither, to escape my faitherly rage. But a’ assistance frae that quarter was at an end now; and she was fain to fa’ down on her knees, and beg my forgiveness, and promise to conduct hersel as became my dochter, in a’ time coming.
Just at this moment, in comes wee Geordie, greeting for his parritch. He kent naething of what had taken place in the house; and, doubtless, expeckit to mak an idiot of me, his faither, as he had been accustomed to do, almost frae his very cradle. I saw that now was the time to thresh the corruption out of him; and brandishing the taws ower my head, I made a stap forrit to lay hand upon him, and treat him like the lave. He looked as if he had an inkling of what was forthcoming, and ran whinging and craiking to his mither, who stood wiping her een wi’ her striped apron in a corner of the room. The terrified laddie clang to her knees, but she never offered to lend a helping hand, sae great was the salutary terror wi’ which I had inspired her. So I pu’d him awa frae her coats, to which he was clinging; and, laying him ower my knee, I gied him hipsie-dipsie in the presence of his mither, his sister, and Andrew Brand, who were looking on.
And thus hae I, who for eighteen years was ruled by my wife, got the upper hand; and ony man who is henpeckit as I hae been, should just tak the same plan, and his success will be as sure as mine. Andrew Brand aye said to me that a man should wear his ain breeks; and I can maintain, frae present experience, that a wiser saying is no to be found in the Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David. No that Maggie hasna tried nows and thans to recover her lost power, but I hae on thae occasions conduckit mysel wi’ sic firmness, that she has at last gien it up as a bad job, and is now as obedient a wife as ye’ll meet wi’ between this and Bothwell. The twa bairns, too, are just wonderfully changed, and are as raisonable as can be expeckit, a’ things considered. Let men, therefore, whether gentle or simple, follow my plan, and the word “henpeckit,” as Andrew Brand says, will soon slip out of the dictionair.
MY SISTER KATE.
B A P .
There is a low road (but it is not much frequented, for it is terribly round about) that passes at the foot of the range of hills that skirt the long and beautiful gut or firth of the Clyde, in the west of Scotland; and as you go along this road, either up or down, the sea or firth is almost at your very side, the hills rising above you; and you are just opposite to the great black and blue mountains on the other side of the gut, that sweep in heavy masses, or jut out in bold capes, at the mouth of the deep lochs that run up the firth into the picturesque highlands of Argyleshire.
You may think of the scene what you please, because steamboating has, of late years, profaned it somewhat into commonness, and defiled its pure air with filthy puffs of coal smoke; and because the Comet and all her unfortunate passengers were sunk to the bottom of this very part of the firth; and because, a little time previous, a whole boatful of poor Highland reaper girls were all run down in the night-time, while they were asleep, and drowned near the Clough lighthouse hard by; but if you were to walk this road by the seaside any summer afternoon, going towards the bathing village of Gourock, you would say, as you looked across to the Highlands, and up the Clyde towards the rocks of Dumbarton Castle, that there are few scenes more truly magnificent and interesting.
There is a little village exactly opposite to you, looking across the firth, which is called Dunoon, and contains the burying-place of the great house of Argyle; and which, surrounded by a patch of green cultivated land, sloping pleasantly from the sea, and cowering snugly by itself, with its picturesque cemetery, under the great blue hills
