Dating agency turns evil but you can stop it
New immersive show Lovestruck mixes theatre, escape rooms and treasure hunts to create an experience like no other
There’s something incredibly creepy about the trailer for Paperwork Theatre’s new show Lovestruck, which takes you out of the venue and on to the streets of whichever town you are watching it in.
A glossy advert for a dating brand, it starts off with talking heads making the usual over-earnest claims about how this experience is different to all the others and how it has completely changed their lives. But then the footage glitches and the faces contort into wide-eyed gurns and teeth-baring grotesqueries and you realise the claims are actually true - just not in the way you originally understood them.
The immersive theatre experience is touring to three North West theatres over the coming weeks - Liverpool Everyman, Storyhouse in Chester and Shakespeare North Playhouse in Prescot. At each venue, instead of watching from a seat in an auditorium, the audience will enter the action - leaving the theatre to uncover the evil that lies behind rogue dating company Lovestruck, and put an end to it.
Nicole Behan, Paperwork’s co-artistic director, is doing her best to avoid spoilers while sharing a flavour of what people can expect: “It’s a tongue-in-cheek dating event where all is not what it seems, and part way through something is revealed and the audience is given a mission to save the world in the next hour.”
The mission is the same no matter which venue you start at, but the places you visit obviously change, although they are all quirky and unknown or have local historical or cultural significance.
Taking inspiration from escape rooms and treasure hunts, the audience is asked to follow clues, enter buildings and talk with some of the people they meet along the way. Each group will have a slightly different experience depending on the choices they make, and will encounter at least some of the eight North West-based cast members, two of whom are collaborators from theatre company Fright Wig, which itself creates immersive theatre drawing on the absurd.
Unlike some promenade theatre, where accessibility is limited by the locations, Paperwork Theatre is inviting audience members with access needs to speak with them on an individual bases so they can ensure everyone is able to take part.
The creation of every Paperwork Theatre show starts with the same question: “What does the world need right now?”
Nicole says: “When we were making Lovestruck it really felt like the world needed saving. There are so many big things going on in the world with climate change, with government, with the mass migration of people and it’s really to feel as an individual that you don’t have any power. How on earth could you make a difference?
“So we thought we’d give people the power to save the world and show them that even one person can make a huge difference if they work together. You’re more powerful than you know, go and save the world, and here’s how to do it.”
This idea fed into the show’s format: “We thought that if people need to feel like they can change the world they don’t need to sit down and be told it in an auditorium, they need to do it,” says Nicole.
“So it felt like it should be an immersive show, that it should be on the move. Then we got excited about escape rooms and treasure hunts, and how they might inform the performance and how we could gamify it. Lovestruck as an agency is this massive global enterprise, how could we possibly take them on? Well, we’ll show you how.”
Lovestruck is at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, from June 19-22; Storyhouse in Chester from July 4-6 and Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prescot, from July 12-13.
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Have a great week,
Laura