This was Day 2. Operation Black Antler – “an immersive theatre piece by four-times BAFTA nominated artists’ group Blast Theory and critically-acclaimed immersive theatre company Hydrocracker that invites you to enter the murky world of undercover surveillance and question the morality of state-sanctioned spying.” I don’t need to write a review of it – here’s one: http://www.theartsdesk.com/theatre/brighton-festival-operation-black-antler-secret-location
More useful I think is to talk about what I thought of the experience. My initial reaction? It was fun! Others in my group described it as “complex”, “macho”, “confusing”, “moral maze”, “intrusive”, “playful”.
For me it was not an experience I’d have chosen for myself. Being a bit of a scaredy cat and never one to willingly put myself in a situation where I’m not sure what’s going to happen, I’m normally happier sitting in a dark auditorium as part of a less visible audience, but part of the excitement and for me, the value, of Collidescope is going to events I wouldn’t have chosen for myself, so this is a good one! I decided I’d just have to throw myself into it and go with the flow, secure in the knowledge that nothing really bad would happen and no-one would have big expectations of me.
The format was a recipe for success – we were briefed and sent off “under cover” to a party in a pub – this was a good start. Our mission was to gather information on right wing extremists at the party and report back to HQ. The pub was a good old Brighton back street venue; the party was in full swing and the characters were suitably diverse – and extreme. Conversations flowed easily though to start with it was difficult to know who was actor and who was “real”, and it wasn’t long before the fictional characters began casually to introduce extreme right wing issues into the conversation, which we were then expected to use to develop the conversations in directions which would allow us to gain the “important” knowledge we would glean and feed back to HQ . We had 45 minutes to identify and talk to our asigned “POIs” (Persons of Interest) and try to gather information about their plans before we were pulled out and told to report to an agent in a backstreet round the corner before being stood down.
In the post-event discussion, opinions were divided about the experience. I think we all agreed that it didn’t really do what it set out to do i.e. really make us think deeply about issues of privacy and surveillance. Perhaps it was over-ambitious to really try to get to grips with these issues in an hour or so, but it did make us all think about all sorts of other things, especially the issue of being asked to take on a role which required us to say things we didn’t believe. As one of the group said “Who am i? Who are you? … and what the f*** are we all up to??!”
