Latitude 2016
Séance
Glen Neath and David Rosenberg
Genre: Immersive, Installation Theatre
Venue: Faraway Forest Latitude Festival
Festival: Latitude
Low Down
We will not prey upon the paranoid, the bereaved, the credulous, the wide-eyed, the weak or the inbred, but in return we ask you proceed with an open-mind.
Séance is an entertainment only and we cannot hold the medium responsible for the outcome. Séance is the third performance by Glen Neath and David Rosenberg, the creators of Ring and Fiction. The performance takes place in a shipping container in absolute darkness and lasts for 15 minutes.
Review
This is a short, claustrophobic piece from Glen Neath and David Rosenberg, where you sit in a shipping container in complete darkness, taking part in a séance. It’s definitely not for the faint hearted or fearful, and reminded me in no small part of the new Ghost Train ride at Thorpe Park which makes similar use of audio technology and vibrations to change your perspective. (That may sound like an insult, but it really isn’t – the Ghost Train is amazing!)
The darkness is impressively total, your eyes are wide open and they could be tight shut. You sit in long rows either side of a table, and don headphones, which make fantastic use of binaural recording. There are also moments where vibrations rattle your seat as frightened whispers fill your ears.
The sound of someone walking up and down the table in front of you, and other audience members coughing or talking around you is so convincing that at one stage I had to take the headphones off my ears to check the sounds weren’t real.
There isn’t a great deal of substance to the piece, it is mainly about the experiential fear-factor of feeling the table suddenly lifting your hands up, or the cloth twitching underneath your fingertips. The domineering séance master is an interesting character who could have been explored a bit further, and perhaps addressed more directly to you as the audience member, as it was so creepily effective when he whispered in your ear.
The only real let down was the ‘monster’ who was raised from the dead by the séance. This felt like a fairly naff touch, as their voice felt more suited to a kids cartoon than an up-to-that-point fairly high-brow theatre show. Overall however it was just scary enough and quite fun to take part in!
