To celebrate the launch of our new interactive video performance, Penumbra, we asked some of the cast and crew to reflect on their experiences being a part of the show!
Quinn Greytryx (Performer, The Locksmith):
I treasure working creatively with Chronic Insanity as their vision and production style is truly unique, and they're entrepreneurs of fringe theatre and genre evolution.
I enjoyed the devoted development sessions that we got as actors for our creative input on the piece, this really allowed the whole team to explore the narrative scope of the work and how this could be creative implemented into live and digital iterations of Penumbra.
The Void as a space has a palpable air of escapism and seclusion, something truly unique as a space within Nottingham, and a joy to work in as an artist. This was wonderful to experiment in and allowed our guerrilla style shooting (fast takes, using creative intuition and method acting) to enhancing the impact of Penumbra's immersive, unfurling mental claustrophobia.
Overall this was such a freeing experience of mutual creation of an immersive escape room project.
Rebecca Goh (Assistant Director):
I was involved in the project as its Assistant Director, and it was eye-opening and exciting all at once. Creating an immersive horror experience digitally can be in itself a challenge, but to stage its events in a subterranean space adds an entirely new dimension to that journey. It's wonderful to see the deliberate mapping of the venue's history and original / existing architecture into the narrative, as that enriches the dramaturgical world of the play.
Filming the show in the caves in such a site-specific and hybrid manner meant that I was involved both creatively and as a 'test' audience during the process. There were no dressing rooms or backstage areas to hide in - so we had to consider sight lines from a different perspective, and everyone in the cast and crew were present in each scene one way or another. I've always had a passion for working in found spaces, and Penumbra felt very much like a collaboration with the caves themselves. There were non-conventional storyboarding, rehearsal, and performance techniques that had to be utilised due to the nature of the play and the venue, and their incorporation was extremely interesting to watch as the action of the story unfolded. The precision that went into filming each segment of the 'choose-your-own-adventure' experience with just one camera was something that I'd found helpful to observe on site as well.
Harry Kingscott (Performer, The Caretaker):
Performing in Penumbra was a positive and surreal experience. The caves feel so remote and detached from the real world, that nothing else exists whilst you're down there. It was an exciting challenge learning to use the (lack of) lighting and bizarre acoustics, to find dramatic moments and create the story. The caves have a strange effect of taking you out of time, space and season, that coming back out of them is a bit like returning from a spooky, darker Narnia.