We were given a group of practitioners who had put on successful site specific performances to research and give a presentation on; ours was You me bum bum train. However, compared to all the other groups, we weren’t able to tell our audience what kind of a performance you me bum bum train is.
Why? Well ,simply because once the audience has seen this production, they are sworn to secrecy to not repeat what they just experienced. This is so other audience members won’t be influenced by what they have heard and they won’t expect what to happen. “For the show to have maximum effect, the less you know the better” (Bond, 2012). The performance relies on the audience to have an open mind, hearing other’s experiences will cause future audience members to predict what they will see, do and hear.
The audience is described as passengers and have to enter each scenario on their own; just like our piece, the experience is meant to be very personal and they don’t want other audience members to influence everyone’s mind, they should all have their own opinion. They become part of the experience, it’s as if they became perfumers into the piece, just like in ours when we immerse our audience into patients and they get to experience what it was like back then to have bought typhoid.
The location isn’t revealed; only that’s it’s somewhere in central London in a building.In the disused building, they want to bring life into a dead space. They placed it in central of London in order to connect people with each other as people are disconnected into that massive city, it’s so big no one really pays attention to anyone. You me bum bum train wanted to change that in their piece.
“The show lets you remember your potential again” (Lloyd, 2012), the audience who are treated as passengers experience an alice in Wonderland experience, they are taken through a journey that reflects on them; once they are out of it, they leave the place questioning them selves and have a different view on things in life. “It leaves you questioning everything and it’s lots of fun” (Dazed and Confused, 2012)
Bond, K. (2012) Immersive theatre. Best theatre of 2012, you me bum bum train.
Lloyd, M. (2012) Immersive theatre. Best theatre of 2012, you me bum bum train.
Dazed and Confused, (2012) The Times. London:Times Newspaper LTD