For King & Country offers audiences a chance to immerse themselves in a gaming style experience where decisions taken in the bunker will shape the course of history! Reinventing the wheel of immersive theatre, Parabolic Theatre present an escape room-like experience with a high level of interaction where the audience determine the direction and flow of the story.
We spoke to writer and director Owen Kingston to find out more.
What can you tell us about For King and Country?
For King and Country is an epic story set in an alternative history where the Nazis invade the UK in 1940, right at the start of WW2. It is also a story that puts the audience in the driving seat of the narrative – the audience are required to work together as a makeshift war cabinet and make the key decisions about how best to repulse the Nazi invasion.
What inspired you to make a show about WWII?
I’ve long been fascinated by the period, and we were offered the opportunity to use a brilliant underground space that feels a lot like the actual cabinet war rooms, so creating a show set in that period seemed an obvious choice. The show is also in part a response to what is going on in our country at the moment with Brexit. The pro-brexit camp have used a lot of rhetoric rooted in our success as a country during WW2: the island nation that stood alone against the rise of Nazism, the spirit of the blitz, we’ve been on our own before so we can do it again – that sort of thing. It is true that we were the only European country actively involved in the war that was never properly invaded, and I think that has coloured our relationship with the rest of Europe. Although the European project was hugely supported by Churchill and wartime Britain was anything but isolationist, that period has now somehow become a token of our modern isolationism. I wanted our audiences to consider how things might have looked for Britain if we actually had been invaded – how would this affect our modern, somewhat jingoistic ideal of a country that stands defiantly alone against the rest of the world? By placing our audience members in the key decision making roles of that time, we get them to empathise with both wartime politicians, and the modern politicians trying to work out the detail of a difficult situation that many of them never wanted to face.
Why do you think For King and Country makes a better immersive experience than straight play?
Precisely because it forces the audience to actually consider what they would do in that situation. It’s one thing to watch a group of actors wrestle with the tough decisions of the time, it’s quite a different experience to be required to make them for yourself, and then see the consequences play out around you. It’s also a far more positive experience. Its very easy to write a depressing play about making tough political decisions, but it’s much more interesting and enjoyable to offer the audience the opportunity to make those decisions and play out the consequences around them. It gives them the opportunity to be the hero in more ways that one – it puts them at the centre of the action, certainly, but it offers them the opportunity to walk in the shoes of great national heroes of the past, and equal or better their achievements. Who wouldn’t want a shot at being the guy or gal who turned the tide against an invading Nazi army? What a story to tell your friends over a drink!
Do you need to know the history to be able to take part?
It certainly helps, but it’s not necessary to know much. If you know when the war was and who the countries involved were, then you’ll be fine. Watching Darkest Hour is a great introduction – our show takes places roughly at the same time as the events of that movie, and some of the lesser-known political leaders we talk about in our show, are also characters in the film. It’s also worth bearing in mind that For King and Country is set in an alternative history timeline, so even if you know the actual history really well, there are things in the show that you won’t be expecting. Churchill, for example, is not the Prime Minister in our story, which is partly why things have gone as badly off the rails as they have.
There’s no script, and every night is different, how do the actors know what to do and say?
Although there is no script in the conventional sense, our show is very tightly structured. There are certain events that fire off at particular times in the show, and the audience are required to complete a series of tasks related to managing the country – they have to broadcast political speeches to the nation, try and make deals with allied governments, and issue orders to the Army and the RAF. They have a team of advisors (our actors) who facilitate all this, and each of the actors knows the period really well and is able to respond in-character to the things the audience ask. The show always ends at essentially the same point, but the journey to get there can be very different depending on the decisions the audience collaboratively make. We rehearse for as many different scenarios as we can anticipate, but one of the joys of the show is that audiences are constantly surprising us, and when they do we make every effort to build their ideas into the show – both at the time and in future performances. In this way, the show has grown loads since we first started working on it. Some actors would no doubt find this very intimidating, but the actors we have are some of the best improvisers I’ve ever worked with. They do a great job of incorporating the audience’s ideas whilst holding on tight to the narrative events that we’ve pre-planned.
Is the outcome of the night completely down to the audience’s decisions?
There are certain events that will always happen, other events that will sometimes happen, and the show always ends in essentially the same place (which is how we keep it running to time), but the journey that the audience goes on over the course of the show can be wildly different depending on the choices they make. There is also one aspect of the ending that is always different and is decided randomly before the show starts – but I don’t want to give away too many of our surprises – a large part of the fun of the show is in not knowing what is going to happen from one moment to the next.
For King and Country is at The Colab Factory 18th April – 10th June.
