“An ecosystem of care”. That’s how Riptide’s Alex Palmer describes the principle underpinning the company’s approach to making highly personalised, interactive theatrical experiences. He talks to us about what happens when you try to combine Punchdrunk’s narrative storytelling with You Me Bum Bum Train’s shock and awe approach, how to really get to know your audience, and how Riptide can combine theatrical thrills with a genuine, eve therapeutic, sense of connection.
voidspace:
Welcome to the voidspace, Alex. If we could start off just with a bit of an introduction to who you are and what you do at Riptide.
Alex Palmer:
Thank you for having me. I came from an immersive theatre background before setting up Riptide, working with the likes of You, Me Bumbum Train and Punchdrunk, and then decided to make some work in the north [of England]. We started about eight, nine years ago, making interactive and site-based work.
Riptide takes many forms. We’ve got the large-scale immersive theatre, 300 people in the same space type events, but we’ve also got one audience member at a time experiences. They range from being digital and your own intimate experience, to create-your-own-adventure book style things. The Lucky Ones, which is probably one of our most successful shows, ran across a month and was basically your own Truman Show, if you’ve seen the film. You had a letter through the post that said, “Katy, today is day one. Anyone you meet from now could be part of your performance”, and then you’re left to explore the experience.
We pride ourselves on giving genuine choice to audience members. In many of our shows, maybe all of our shows, there are multiple endings, depending on what audience members choose to do. We’re interested in the audience member as a player. We call them audience because we’re a theatre company, but we do think of it like playing a game.
voidspace:
I think the lines between the two are actually pretty blurred nowadays. It’s interesting what you say about the ability to influence the endings of your shows, as a matter of scale. I can understand how that would work in your more intimate, one on one type pieces, but how does that work on a larger scale?
Alex Palmer:
For example, in one of our larger shows, you could decide to follow a package, and if that package wasn’t delivered, it would change the ending of the show. We had people try and intercept it, we had people try and open it – and that’s another ending, if it’s already open by the time it gets to its endpoint. So, we like to put in different variables. The show still stays kind of the same, but you might leave with a different feeling, potentially.
voidspace:
You said that you’ve worked with Punchdrunk and You Me Bum Bum Train. How have these companies influenced your work? How have you departed from their approaches? They’re quite different in their approaches, anyway.
Alex Palmer:
You Me Bum Bum Train was a beautiful, crazy show. I was really excited about the one-on-one journey, and how that had a really profound effect on individuals, especially people who didn’t anticipate seeing a theatre show. People quit their jobs, people left relationships. It was kind of a self-discovery thing for them. I think You Me Bum Bum Train, if it does nothing else, puts you in positions you would never find yourself in otherwise – from conducting a 40 piece orchestra to driving a JCB – unless you do those jobs.
When I was working at Punchdrunk, my interest was within the one-on-one sphere, in The Drowned Man. So, I became interested in how you go from spectacle to intimacy. From speaking to many audience members, it seemed like the ‘game’ of Punchdrunk was to get a one-on-one. That was the reward at the end of the show: if you got a one-on-one, you’d somehow ‘won’ the show. I found some of Punchdrunk’s elements a little bit problematic in the sense of, as an audience member, I always felt like I was missing out on things. I was arriving too late to a room or things had just finished.
voidspace:
Big FOMO, isn’t there?
Alex Palmer:
Yeah. I think FOMO is part of the thing that’s built in consciously. You always feel like you can explore more. I maybe didn’t get on board with the competitive, elbows out mentality of that. Our first ever show was called You Are Here, and it was set across the Leeds city centre, and it took about an hour and a half. It was epic in scale, because you crossed a city, but it was intimate because you were the only person doing it. I think what I’ve always been interested in is the narrative storytelling of Punchdrunk and the one-on-oneness of Bum Bum Train, putting those two together. You, Me, Bum Bum Train does not have a narrative at all. It doesn’t matter.
voidspace:
With You Me Bum Bum Train, you’ve got one audience member at a time going through this series of scenes, where there can be hundreds of people, there can be a handful of people waiting for them. It’s all about the shock, isn’t it? The shock of being thrown into a series of new situations in quick succession.
Alex Palmer:
It’s a theme park ride, basically, and it’s a brilliant one, but it doesn’t have a narrative. It doesn’t matter who you are, and the choices you make in each setting don’t follow on. You could say something really profound in one setting, and it would end as soon as you walked out of that space. Whereas what I really want to do is with Intermission is for those choices to line up, and to account for something at the end.
voidspace:
Tell me a bit more about Intermission and how that’s going to work. To the extent you can.
Alex Palmer:
Intermission is a therapeutic immersive experience. It’s a one person at a time show, across 80 minutes and about nine or ten different treatment rooms, which is what we’re calling our scenes. We’re trying to find out how genuinely therapeutic, in the widest possible sense, immersive experience can be. How do we genuinely affect, and potentially transform, audience members’ lives? We’re working with trained life coaches, mental health professionals, massage therapists, tai chi masters, each of which will be put into a different type of scene, which will hopefully have an end goal of relaxation and reflection. It’s put together to help you try and think about different parts of your life.
voidspace:
You’re saying how you’re hoping that people’s choices in one scene will track through the whole show. That must be quite a challenge, logistically. How do you manage that? I suppose only having one person at a time makes that possible.
Alex Palmer:
We’ve got many people in the show at the same time, so we do have to track them. It’s something we’ve honed across years of making these types of shows, how to track those choices. We’re working with AI technology to try and help. A Riptide trope is that we know a lot about our audience members before they step through the door. You fill in a preshow questionnaire that gives us a lot of information, in terms of logistical things like allergies or any medical conditions, but also things like what your favourite cocktail is, or how you take your tea, or what’s your relationship with your mother, or what’s the name of a significant other in your life. And those things start to come through into the experience. I think the end result, is that it feels a lot more bespoke to you and that you could go with a friend and come out with completely different feelings.
voidspace:
You mentioned that you are using an AI tool in Intermission. What’s you take on the use of tech in this kind of show? To what extent can it draw you in, and to what extent can it push you away?
Alex Palmer:
It would be easy for us to make a Black Mirror style, spa like experience that pulls the rug out from under the audience at the end of the experience. Especially because there is a VR meditation in this experience, there is use of AI. I think that’s the challenge – audience members who have seen our work before may find it difficult to relax completely, knowing that some of our other shows have had that rug pull. But this time, there’s no reveal. This is just about how we can make it truly reflective.
I guess for us it’s a matter of how you can harness the technology for good. The AI helps us track the choices that make it feel more bespoke. The use of VR is all about breath work, actually, and about accessing meditation for those who don’t do it regularly, as a visual representation. There’s no data scraping. There’s a trope out there that, “oh, your data has been stolen”. There’s none of that.
voidspace:
I suppose on the flip side of that, again, which you’ve been touching on when you’re talking about the rug pull, is the importance of emotional safeguarding as well. I think it’s a question nowadays, isn’t it, that everyone has to grapple with. How can you deliver an experience that is moving and powerful, but also isn’t using that experience cheaply or in a way that could have unintended consequences.
Alex Palmer:
Exactly. It’s so easy to fall into that trap, I think.
I think things like Black Mirror haven’t helped, as brilliant as it is. As soon as something is set in the near future, or is using a bit of innovative tech, you think “Oh, well, what’s the lesson here?” Rather than what we’re trying to do, which is be a bit experimental but with a goodness to it.
voidspace:
Is that something that’s always been part of your mission statement from the beginning, or has it emerged as you’ve made more work?
Alex Palmer:
It’s really important to me that care is at the centre of all everything we do. We’ve coined a term internally, an “ecosystem of care”. That starts right from interview, to contracting, to fair pay, all the way through the process as an artist, or a stage manager, or a designer. And that’s not even speaking about the audience. That’s just as a team.
Then we’ve got the kind of culture of care when it comes to audience members. I think that came a little bit from my experience at Punchdrunk. I think there were a couple of stories about Sleep No More a few years ago, but I think generally they’re very good at looking after audience members. Generally, for us, within the context of Intermission, it’s really important that the aftercare of the show is inbuilt into the experience. At any point, you can stop the experience and have a safe space to go. There is a crisis protocol that’s inbuilt in the show, so that if audience members do need to exit, they can. Although everything in Intermission is an invitation. You’re never forced to do anything. You can just watch. It’s that kind of show where the more you put in, the more you get out, but it also it works on a spectrum of engagement. I think that’s really important.
voidspace:
I know that over the pandemic, you’ve done quite a lot of online work as well, haven’t you? I’d be interested to hear about the differences that you’ve encountered when starting that kind of work. Any lessons that you’ve carried forward.
Alex Palmer:
We ended up doing The Lucky Ones, which is that month long thing over WhatsApp, and we also made Project Intimacy, which is a socially engaged project. The start of making that show has pulled us into a more care-led approach. That show is a 14-day long experience, where you connect with a like-minded stranger, and is created based on the science of how we make connections and friends, what has to happen in a certain time-frame, in order to call someone a friend. Things like reciprocity, sharing a secret is really important to build that trust, finding common ground early. Also, feeling like you can share opinions and not have that backlash is really important. Maybe that’s the difference between a work colleague or an acquaintance and a friend, having that open debate. Project Intimacy is currently still running. It’s been running since March 2020.
voidspace:
How do you find people have been responding to that?
Alex Palmer:
It’s brilliant. The reason why it was set up was because we had lost that ability to connect with new people, because we were locked in our houses or flats, as I was, and it opened up a thing that we couldn’t do. Now that’s all gone away, there’s still a need to connect with people. The science shows that we are the loneliest generation to ever live. We are statistically more alone than our ancestors. We’ve lost our tribe, we’ve lost our ability to connect with a community. People might find that in things, butthere was a study done in the UK and America – I think it was done about 20 years ago and then again recently. 20 years ago, the most common answer to the question, “How many people can you turn to in a crisis?” was about three people. I’ve got about three people I can turn to in a crisis. Nowadays, the most common answer is zero.
voidspace:
Wow. That’s so depressing. I feel like we make our own communities a lot more than we used to, but then the strength of bonds within those communities are weaker, when you have communities of shared interests and whatnot.
Alex Palmer:
You might have the community, but how much do you actually know about the people in the community? You might be part of a million people who love LARPing, but how much do you actually know about the player opposite you?
voidspace:
I think that’s something that’s familiar to a lot of people, actually. Possibly especially people who seek out these sort of experiences.
Alex Palmer:
Potentially. I think for us, there’s a difference between standard audience members in immersive or interactive things, and our audience member. If you go to a Punchdrunk show, it doesn’t matter who you are, and it also doesn’t matter if you walk out. Whereas in our show, it fundamentally matters who you are, your context, what you’ve decided to do prior to the show, what you decide to do in the show. You fundamentally matter to us. This is not a slight – it’s just a different format.
voidspace:
Do you find that you get the same audience coming back? It sounds like you sort of get to know your audience a lot better than other than other companies might.
Alex Palmer:
There is a replay element to our shows, because of the difference, wondering “What would happen if I chose this?” I think you get that with choice-based experiences. A lot of our work relies on word of mouth, so someone taking the plunge with a ticket, and then other friends or people close to them going, “What is this thing that you’re doing? It looks amazing”, and then getting involved.
voidspace:
It sounds like the kind of interaction you’re offering at Riptide, it’s both affecting what happens in the show, but also, it’s very much dependent on the individual’s preferences, choices and personality. It sounds like it’s the most individualised approach I think I’ve heard of in this kind of space.
Alex Palmer:
I think it’s what we’re aiming at, really. The challenge for us is, how do you scale that? I think we found a model with Intermission that achieves that. We can run, and run, and run and still get that bespoke nature, because it’s built into the show. That’s exciting for us.
voidspace:
Sounds very exciting.
Alex Palmer:
It could be completely transformational – you could quit the job that you hate, or you could do something radical in your life – but it’s also a spectrum of engagement. You could just take it as an 80 minute reflective rest from the busyness that is November or December in this country. You get that 80 minutes’ pause, which you don’t necessarily have, unless you meditate or do yoga.
voidspace:
That sounds delightful, I’ve got to say. Sounds very restful. Do you know your plans for the future yet? Are you hoping to pursue this line further? Are you going to see how this one goes first?
Alex Palmer:
We know we’ve got an interesting show, so we’re hoping that that is successful first. The aim is to transfer it to somewhere like London or Manchester. It’s been a while since we made a live show, and the purpose of this is to find the model that is self-sustaining and is not just a flash in the pan that then disappears. There’s a lot of immersive theatre crumbling before it starts, especially the large scale shows with the big IPs. We want to build it slowly and to have it be sustainable.
We’re calling this series of work Lost Connections. Project Intimacy is the first one of that series of work. Intermission will be the second. In those two projects, you’ve got a lost connection. In Project Intimacy, the connection is talking to others, and in Intermission it’s connection with yourself. There are two other shows in the pipeline. The first is about a connection to nature, a rural retreat for audience members who will spend a long weekend, say, in a rural setting, which will be curated. Think of the best Airbnb experience you’ve ever had.
voidspace:
Punchdrunk Travel, but make it therapeutic.
Alex Palmer:
There we go. That is exactly it.
Then the next one, after that is exploring “What is the religious experience for people who don’t follow a religion? What does a religious epiphany feel like?”
That starts as an individual experience, and ends with a big collective community, probably over the course of a day.
voidspace:
Count me in.
Moving on to my last question: What advice you’d have for aspiring creators in your field?
Alex Palmer:
I created Riptide because there wasn’t the space for it, although there wasn’t the opportunity to do something like this, so I made it myself. The same with you, right. Riptide started in my bedroom, alone, with no one else, and has now, nine years later, become part of something bigger.
So don’t be afraid to just start. And there’s all things like: get a mentor in the space, go for coffee with them, pick their brains. I actually run a podcast series called The Director’s Diary, which is the answer to this question. It’s talking to different directors, writers, designers, and talking through their own choices and how they got to where they were.
We‘ve spoken to people like Owen Kingston from Parabolic, and Gecko theatre as well. And it’s not just for directors, it’s producers as well. The reason why we set that up is because we got that question a lot: “What advice would you give?” So I realised that we just needed to create an archive of different people’s answers.
voidspace:
The voidspace will definitely be tuning in to that. Thank you.