Something a Taxi Driver in Liverpool Said…

“I wanted to investigate how far it was possible to create a narrative that existed only in the audience member’s head. I wanted to play with the idea of fear and move beyond it.  At the time I created Something… I had recently been diagnosed with MS, experiencing lots of problems with my sight and was terrified of losing it altogether.

Prior to making Something… I had worked with Enrique Vargas and Teatro de los Sentidos over 3 years so the form was immediately where I began to work.  It was only later the term immersive theatre was coined.

There were no words used in the dark, no visual clues - our other senses were explored, especially sound and smell.  I planted various objects in the dark space, specific for me, evocative in another story for the audience: grass, a jacket that smelled of the stables, warm sand and more.  What the audience choose to engage with and where they took their narratives were entirely their own choice.  A performer inhabited the darkness kept the visitor company when necessary.

As the piece matured and responded to every location, I had lost my fear of the dark and became more interested in the challenges of its construction, the functionality, the mechanics that underlay its poetics.  

Renny O’Shea, director