With darkness, confined spaces and jump scares, Spore is a truly immersive experience that will set your heart pounding.Rating
Immersive theatre takes several forms. At one end of the scale is the model typified by Punchdrunk, where you passively follow the actors from room to room. At the other end is COLAB, where you don’t just watch the action – you are the action.
In Spore, you play a researcher investigating a fungal outbreak in a former dental school. This fungus might be dangerous, but it’s also intelligent. And it’s starting to communicate.
You start by climbing into your bright red jump suit, followed by a briefing from the lead scientists. They explain that the school has been sealed under quarantine regulations following the disappearance of two researchers: your task is to find out what happened to them, and attempt to contact the organism. You can decode the spore’s language by attaching electrodes to your skin and touching fungal samples in petri dishes, each of which will generate a different word on the attached computer interface. By joining words you can send rudimentary sentences.
The main action, though, involves exploring your way through the many rooms spread throughout the building’s six storeys, in teams of three or four. Your task is to retrieve spore samples (large, misshapen lumps of dry fungus) and petri dishes which contain cultured spores. You’ll be equipped with a timer, a single torch between you – the floors are in near-total darkness – and a bell. The purpose of the bell is to be thrown to distract the infected survivor (oh yes, there are zombies) who will be chasing you through the deserted rooms.
The zombie is also dressed in a red jumpsuit, but has a mass of fungus where his head should be. He can’t see you, but he can hear you: steel your nerves as you stand completely still, trying not to make a sound, as he walks right through the room in which you’re hiding. If he gets too close, throw the bell to distract him. Finding the spores is the goal; but when you pick one up it emits a loud beeping sound, which is sure to attract any zombies in the vicinity.
The many desolate, abandoned rooms are imaginatively furnished with old chairs, vintage televisions and a number of blackened skeletons. These areas are in contrast to the scientific spaces, which are filled with impressively high-tech equipment that you use to process the results of your exploration. The finale reveals that the zombie is in fact – but I’ll leave that for you to discover for yourself.
This isn’t cosy theatre. With darkness, confined spaces and jump scares, Spore is a truly immersive experience that will set your heart pounding.
Writer/Director: Bertie Watkins
Dramaturge: Ben Chamberlain
Producer: COLAB Theatre
Spore is at The Dentist, 123 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8WD until further notice
