Thursday evening near Haggerston Rail station, I’m getting ready to go into an immersive adventure (or should I say a mission) to find a mysterious dark-net criminal who steals and sells illegal merchandise.
A day before I arrived, I got an email with a video from the mission commander with instructions and a commend to look for Masha and Logan to help us go into the dark-net Empuriam office.
As I arrived at the theatre, I found a group of people who will be Wing 7, an undercover unit that tries to solve the mystery:
Who uses Emporium to sell illegal products? Five strangers and three actors; charming Daisy Badger, a neurotic and keen agent that believes in supernatural entities, Ash Rizi, a cynical agent that wants his work to be done, and Sam Fogell, a criminal under cover of an anarchist, went on a suspenseful mission, hoping we would find the dark-net fraud.
This immersive experience that “42 Factory Production” created is a thrilling unusual theatre experience that gives the audience an active role and tries to challenge our perceptions of theatre. In their manifesto, they say, “It is the culmination of a series of research and development outputs which explore how audiences of the future will experience new forms of entertainment and visitor experience.” But, as an audience member, although the thrill of secretly walking in the halls of “Emporium” and finding spooky things like Van Gough’s ear and Covid 19 vaccines, I wad remained with one essential question: Is this really theatre?
The postmodern era brings a lot of different types of theatre: Nonlinear theatre, multidisciplinary theatre, experience-based theatre, all those forms, and experiments are more than essential and make theatre unique and constantly renewed.
Unfortunately, “Lost Organ.” is more of a well-made and beautifully visual (thanks to Alice Helps and Julie Landau) activity for families/groups of friends than a theatrical experience. For some moments, I felt like I was in a detailed “Disney-world.” adventure and not in a theatre.
Lost Origin is an enjoyable night out but it fails to offer the anything of the theatrical experience.