The motley bunch of clowns that accompany you on your bizarre quest.A week ago today I was told to head to a pub in West London for a “5-dimension Cinema experience which allow[s] attendees to be both audience member and performer.” Called And the Birds Fell from the Sky, the project comes from performance duo Il Pixel Rosso: theatre director Silvia Mercuriali and film director Simon Wilkinson and was part of the InTRANSIT Festival, run by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which featured a series of art events that took over the borough for the last week of July. Not really knowing what to expect, I ventured over to the Drayton Arms Pub in Old Brompton and was ushered into a small room lit by a naked bulb. Flyers were scattered everywhere and a TV played some apocalyptic footage of something catastrophic happening in Russia. Soon after, I was summoned and told to follow a young guy into a darkened room. Here I was given some goggles with two video screens on the inside to put over my head and some earphones to plug into my ears. Then a strange, yet not unpleasant, experience began.This is not the author, but instead is a press photo of what you may or may not look like under the influence of the play.
What followed was an interactive film that began with a man telling me to cling to an envelope at all costs as I went on a bizarre journey in a car with some freaky-looking clowns. As we drove around in the nighttime, they spoke to me and to one another in what could’ve been a deleted scene from a David Lynch film. As the drama unfolded literally before my eyes, the experience was heightened by both the sound coming from the earphones, and the fact that I became an actor, an accomplice, in the drama itself. Given directions like “hold your hand out, sit down, stand up, look to your left, right”—with all your actions expressed on film in the LCD screens in your goggles—I gave myself over to what the experience called for.Beyond my masked vision, “helpers” placed props in my hands, ushering me to sit down on the car seat, and even pushing me around at one point as the plot dictates that I be wheeled in a wheelchair to the waiting car. At the closing of the film, I found myself inexplicably placed in a meadow where I was handed a chicken’s foot (which, thankfully, turned out to be some rolled up flyers), and told to leave. Off I trotted out of the door into the busy Friday evening bustle of the pub, dazed and confused by this wild virtual ride. As well as the fictitious chicken foot, my only other souvenir (albeit temporary) was the firm imprint of the mask indented on my face, which solicited plenty of odd looks from people enjoying a Friday night pint. I then struggled off down the road, still trying to digest what had just happened to me.At one point I drifted down a stream, just like in this trailer, and was sprayed with water.
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The film/theatre/game hybrid is an enjoyable experience, made all the more intriguing for the attention lavished on you and the fact that you’re the central protagonist in this surreal play. When I initially arrived, I actually went upstairs not knowing I was supposed to wait for someone and opened the door on two people enjoying the experience. They were surrounded by these “helpers” pulling and pushing them, holding their arms up, placing objects in their hands, wafting smells in their face while they were lost in the strange cinematic world—it looked not unlike two people in a virtual reality mask, which the experience is akin to, with the added enhancement of being bombarded with smells, textures, objects and other sensory stimulation. The experience is actually meant for two, but my plus one bailed on me, so I had to go it alone. It was still fun, and perhaps heightened the sense of adventure. My only qualm was that the video screen at times was a little blurred and tainted the immersiveness of it, but that’s probably down to my own inadequacy at putting the goggles on.Although it was surely unique, the play falls into the tradition of immersive theatre that has become popular over the last few years and is practiced by groups like Punchdrunk, where the audience is brought into the action, free to roam around and even become one of the actors. With And the Birds Fell from the Sky, the experience is augmented further by the use of video goggles and props, so it becomes a kind of video game-like experience. It’s a great way to spend 30 minutes of your time and I recommend going if it comes to a pub/bar/room near you soon. It’s on an international tour, so you might be lucky, and the dates can be found here.