IMMERSIVE EVENTS
“ We look forward to bringing our world-renowned immersive experiences to Battersea Power Station, which has quickly established itself as a vibrant centre of creativity and community since the restored Power Station opened its doors,” says NEON CEO Ron Tan.
Enter the Storehouse
Sage & Jester, a newly launched arts production company, is kicking off with an impressive debut project; a largescale immersive theatre show encompassing the 9,000 square metre Deptford Storehouse in London.
The Storehouse event, which opens on 4 June, is set to run until September. Set across a space equivalent to two football fields, the show takes audience members into a world where humanity’ s stories have been carefully archived since 1983 – the dawn of the internet – and where they will be engaged in a battle between the defenders of truth and creators of fake news.
Sage & Jester consists of a 40-person team who collectively have worked for the likes of Secret Cinema, Punchdrunk, BBC Studios, Warner Music and Vice Media. Among the key members of the Storehouse production team is executive producer and AAA 100 member Zoe Snow; whose previous projects include
Storehouse
Susan Walker
“ A NEW WORD IS NEEDED TO REALLY DESCRIBE TRULY IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES.” – SUSAN WALKER
the Birmingham 2022 ceremonies. Other members of the team include lead producer Rosalyn Newbery, production designer Alice Helps( Lost Origin), costume designer Julie Belinda Landau( Secret Cinema) and lighting designer Ben Donoghue( Ezra Collective’ s UK Tour).
Production house Scene2 has been the design and production partner for Storehouse. The company, co-founded by Susan Walker and Andy Dixon, has been engaged in the design and building of immersive events for more than 25 years.
Walker says major immersive theatrical experiences are a great way of commercialising empty spaces, and that more often than not the event producers find a space first, and then design and build an event experience that fits into it.
In the case of the enormous Storehouse project, she says it involves a bespoke structure created within the warehouse using around 4 km of timber, and involving 20 carpenters working daily. It is the largest immersive experience environment Scene2 has built since the company was founded in 1999.
“ We ' re used to doing immersive experiences with brands, or immersive theatre with existing IP, where there ' s always an existing story or brand book that goes with it, so you always have something to reference back to,” says Walker.“ The beauty of this project, and what really attracted us to it, is that it is moving into a different arena. It is taking an immersive theatrical experience into a very artistic space. We are working with an artist who has a message, and it ' s our role to build a vehicle to facilitate that.”
Walker says that in order to maximise the potential of an immersive event experience, production companies should be brought in as early as possible and work collaboratively from the outset:“ The best result are achieved when all the creatives, including directors, writers, sound designers, lighting designers, set fabricators and set designers are all working together on the concept from the beginning. That enables you to be more creative, really push boundaries, and be better with the budget. One of the issues we face is when we are brought in as just fabricators at the very end of the process when the designs have been finished and we ' re given a set of drawings to build to. Often they are unrealistic, and you spend months and months redesigning the project.
Much like others who have been creating immersive events for years, Walker is a little frustrated by what she sees as the increasingly frequent misleading use of terms such as immersive and experiential, which have become buzz words in recent years.
“ That is why this project is such a positive move forward, it ' s true to the real meaning of immersive,” she says.“ Sage & Jester have created an immersive world that people enter into and become affected by it, the experience informs them and changes the way they feel. I think a new word is needed to really describe truly immersive experiences.”
40 accessaa. co. uk