With nearly 4,000 shows on offer across the month of August, planning a visit to the Scottish capital is a daunting task. Here's our guide to five interactive and immersive shows at Edinburgh Fringe that are worth your time.
Spreadsheets at the ready! The Edinburgh Fringe has returned for 2024. With nearly 4,000 shows on offer across hundreds of venues in the Scottish capital, the month-long arts festival is a daunting event to tackle - even for those who have been multiple times. To help out, we've combined our top five recommendations for interactive and immersive shows at Edinburgh Fringe. While this is by no means an exhausting list, it's a solid jumping-off point for anyone looking to see what the Fringe has to offer this summer.
Darkfield - FLight
Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic
Darkfield has been a staple of Edinburgh Fringe for a number of years now. Staged with a 40ft long shipping container made to resemble the interior of an Airbus A320, FLIGHT is an immersive audio experience that takes place in total darkness. Over the course of 30 minutes, visitors will experience two different realities - one in which the plane lands safely, the other in which it doesn't. It's an intense experience that's unlike anything else at the Fringe.
📍 Pleasance Dome, Potterrow Plaza - Container 1 (Venue 23) 💰 From £12.00
🕒 31st July - 26th August 2024, 30 minutes 🎟️ Book via tickets.edfringe.com
Temping - Dutch Kill Theatre Company
Temping is an interactive solo show performed by the audience with the collaboration of a Windows PC, a corporate phone, a laser printer and Microsoft Office. The pace of the show is dictated by the audience member: how many emails they respond to, how fast they complete the tasks, and how much of the office they decide to explore.
Writer Michael Yates Crowley said, “I was interested in the idea that inanimate objects and technology could be performers. That I could write for a phone or fax machine the way you would write for an actor. Or at least that characters could speak through these devices—just as in our lives, particularly during the worst moments of the pandemic, the people that matter to us appear as messages and phone calls and streaming video. The last two Edinburgh Fringes and the Adelaide Fringe gave us such insight into how different cultures react to the piece. Every performance is unique and it is really fascinating to watch diverse audiences react to the piece so differently."
Contrasting the anonymity of recording births and deaths in Excel spreadsheet with furtive moments of human intimacy, this interactive show from Dutch Kills Theater and Wolf 359 examines mortality, capitalism and the value of a human life. Sarah Jane Tully, a 53-year-old actuary, has gone on vacation and the audience member steps in to cover for her. As they update her spreadsheets, they realise her job involves calculating the life expectancy of strangers. Meanwhile, an intra-office romance is spilling out of the printer, the phone bleeps with recorded messages, emails land in the inbox, and all the inner life of Sarah is there for anyone who has access to her cubicle and computer. Temping is a show with no performers, just an audience and the ether.
📍 Assembly George Square Studios (Venue 17) 💰 From £15.50
🕒 3rd-25th August 2024, 50-70 minutes (audience dependent) 🎟️ Book via tickets.edfringe.com
Non-Player Character: A Virtual Reality Musical
A leader in combining live theatre with virtual reality and gaming, Non-Player Character: A Virtual Reality Musical is the latest in Brendan Bradley’s experimentation with innovative storytelling tools to reach new audiences.
Since 2010, he has been writing, producing and performing a range of online series and from 2017 has been looking at more ways to merge technology into live performance. For this version of the show, Bradley is offering other artists taking part in Edinburgh Festival Fringe the opportunity to be the four ‘Players’ taking part in the musical each night, similar to a Twitch “let’s play” but live, on-stage.
A boundary-pushing fusion of immersive, improvised theatre and video games where no two performances are the same; this virtual reality musical invites the audience to influence the narrative through on-stage and spectator participation. Award-winning actor and creator Brendan Bradley portrays a non-playable character (NPC) of a fictitious video game who is joined on-stage by four ‘Players’ wearing VR headsets, along with seated spectators and audiences watching from home through a live stream who assist in creating the story via a mobile web app. After the hero dies, participants travel through the five levels of the game’s open-world setting that represent the five stages of processing grief, set to a soundtrack of original songs inspired by hit Broadway numbers, pop music, and the chiptune musical style found in video games, along with improvised music reflecting the evolving narrative from an onstage musician. Non-Player Character aims to make a deeper connection between the audience and performer.
📍 Imaginex at YOTEL Edinburgh in association with ZOO (Venue 572) 💰 From £15.00
🕒 2nd-26th August 2024, 21:00, 60 minutes 🎟️ Book via tickets.edfringe.com
Burning Down THe Horse - Fishing 4 Chips
After an award-winning run in 2023, Fishing 4 Chips return to Edinburgh this summer with Burning Down the Horse. Bigger and better than ever, this immersive comedy epic tells the “true” story of what happened on the Trojan Horse. The audience become soldiers and are witness to the build-up to one of the most precarious military missions of all time. All goes well until lowly carpenter Epieus gets stuck onboard - unwilling to be wheeled towards certain doom, he starts a revolution and the soldiers that surround him are forced to choose where their loyalties lie.
Burning Down the Horse is an immersive comedy play written by two best friends who hate immersive plays. Dotted through the show are pockets of audience interaction alongside a pre-show that starts from outside the venue - a unique brand of gentle immersion that has proven to be a hit with all audiences. Last year, Burning Down the Horse won Best Comedy Performance (Sean Wareing) and Best Director (Maya Shimmin) at the 2023 DarkChat Awards alongside ‘Best Ensemble’ at The Stagey Place Awards. Fishing 4 Chips first performed the show at last year's Edinburgh Fringe after being finalists of the Charlie Hartill Reserve, selling out the entire month-long run and receiving an OFFIE nomination. This show is perfect for the Edinburgh Fringe - silly, funny and interactive but with a genuine heart.
📍 Pleasance Dome - Queen Dome (Venue 23) 💰 From £14.00
🕒 31st July - 25th August 2024 (excluding 14th), 13:00, 60 minutes 🎟️ Book via tickets.edfringe.com
Darkfield - Arcade
ARCADE is the latest show from Darkfield, and first debuted at Lakeside Arts in Nottingham earlier this year. It's an immersive choose-your-own-path experience that immerses players in alternate environments, allowing you to navigate a conflict in which your choices have consequences...
Speaking on the arrival of ARCADE at the Fringe, Darkfield had this to say.... “We're very excited to be returning to our home at Summerhall, with our most ambitious show to date, ARCADE. It's been a long time in the making. We really hope our audience enjoys exploring the world they are immersed in, aware that there are many other paths through it they could have chosen. We're really looking forward to the conversations the audience will be having with each other afterwards, and hopefully seeing them return to discover new paths!”
ARCADE is the latest immersive audio experience from Darkfield. Using the nostalgic aesthetic of 1980s video games, ARCADE's interactive narrative explores the evolving relationship between players and avatars. Over 30 minutes in a completely dark shipping container, this choose-your-own-path experience will fully immerse the players using 360 degree binaural sound, sensory effects and a bespoke Darkfield Arcade machine for each player. Players will be asked existential questions about free will and consciousness in a world where some may win and some may lose...
📍 Summerhall - The Terrace (Venue 26) 💰 From £13.00
🕒 31st July - 26th August 2024, 30 minutes 🎟️ Book via tickets.edfringe.com
For more news on immersive experiences, follow Immersive Rumours on Instagram.
Comments