So here we are in the queue. Me and Ernie the pug, my doggie companion for the evening, plus his human, Eliza. Ernie makes great noises, almost like talking or singing, a kind of wild monkey-chatter yap. Next to us is Tati, a small and rather elderly lady doggie who stands with dignified poise as passing dogs sniff her bottom. A big-pawed spaniel puppy called Angus is with a human friend who has borrowed him for the evening. He’s pretty wriggly and excited by it all. We’re leafleted by a woman who is putting on an artists’ open house called The Dog Show – eleven artists showing dog-inspired art.

Behind us and in front of us are dogs of all shapes and sizes and colours. Quiet dogs and loud dogs. Jumpy dogs and sniffy dogs. Jittery dogs and calm dogs. As we file in to take our places in the tiered auditorium that is Brighton Open Air Theatre, I look around. Wow! So many dogs all together in one place. What an extraordinary thing. Someone is selling doggy treats. Owners are chatting about their dogs’ diets and habits. I overhear someone say that chihuahuas always have trouble with their teeth, so his dog has had her teeth removed.

There are interesting waves of sound. A bass note from a big dog who barks almost continuously; a mid-range mulch of intermittent barks; and peaking top notes provided by the yaps and barks of all the smaller dogs. Sometimes there’s a lull and sometimes a bark is picked up on and a chorus of barks builds. The twilight bark and then some. It’s great – a marvellous doggy symphony. And this is all before Laurie Anderson has even stepped out onto the stage.

And here she is! Just Laurie, a smile on her face, ‘tape-bow’ electric violin in hand. She moves to the mic behind the keyboard which is set up under the awning. She thanks Brighton Festival and she thanks BOAT founder Adrian Bunting, whose ashes are right there, buried in the centre of the stage area, she tells us. She welcomes all the dogs, and has a special few words for the excitable terriers in the audience. I feel slightly sorry that my grand-dog Mabel, a little terrier that I’m sure Laurie would notice and love, is not with me. Apparently she doesn’t get on with other dogs too well (she lives with four cats so maybe she thinks she’s a cat), so it was felt best not to bring her.

And so, although we’ve already had a pretty full-on immersive experience in the arrival and settling in, the concert proper starts.

Music for Dogs is very much what it says on the (dog food) can. It is music, and it is for dogs. But it is also music by dogs.  And of course it is for us humans too. A shared experience. Close to the start of the concert, Laurie repeats the story referenced in the publicity. She was backstage at one of her own concerts, looking out at the crowd, and she said to a colleague: ‘Wouldn’t it be great  if you were playing a concert and you look out and everyone’s a dog.’

Being Laurie Anderson, pioneer performance artist who loves a new idea, and a renowned dog-lover, her word became action. Or almost, maybe ideally she’d like just dogs, no humans? The first Music for Dogs concert was at Sydney Opera House in 2010, footage of which featured in Laurie’s Brighton Festival show in May 2015, and again in Heart of a Dog (the beautiful film about the later life and death of her own beloved terrier, Lolabelle, seen in Cinecity 2015). I vowed to myself then that I must get to see this concert. The second Music for Dogs was in January this year at Times Square, in her hometown of New York. The third is this appearance at Brighton Festival 2016, one of a number of shows and events curated by and/or performed by the artist (she is this year’s guest artistic director).

It lasts for twenty minutes, which feels about right. The compositions played include the regular Anderson sounds of treated violin, synth/keyboards, and vocals that fall somewhere between spoken word poetry and song, although at altered frequencies to be especially dog-friendly, with some sections featuring sounds that are only audible to the canine ear. Being human, I can’t say exactly when those occur, but there are certainly moments when most of the dogs seem to prick up their ears and stare intensely at the stage area. There is a lovely moment when she suggests that when speaking to your dog, you might like to change your voice – and demonstrates this with her trademark vocoder (or whatever technology it is these days) which brings her voice down a couple of octaves to a deep and rich growl.

Ernie has by now settled down on his human’s lap, quietly listening with ears pulled back. But Eliza and her partner are musicians, so he’s used to sitting in the corner of the rehearsal room or music studio; it’s all familiar territory for him. Nick Cave is behind us, and his dog is quiet too, so there you go. Tati is also very quiet. I’ve never seen her so attentive, says her human, Nicky – who thinks that Tati would like the other dogs to be quiet and listen to Laurie.

Occasionally we get snippets of stories familiar from other Laurie Anderson shows, or from Heart of a Dog. We hear that when Lolabelle got old, she went blind, and she found this very upsetting, until she was encouraged by Laurie and her partner Lou Reed (who is never mentioned by name, just part of a gently inclusive ‘we’ in the storytelling) to play the piano. She says this as if it’s a kind of normal thing to happen. This is the third of fourth time I’ve heard this story from Laurie Anderson’s lips, live or filmed, but I smile anew on each hearing. She has the classic storyteller’s ability to repeat a story exactly as was before, no embellishment, but as if telling it for the first time. People came round to their home to hear Lolabelle play, she says. I imagine it as a kind of Victorian salon evening.

There is also a very nice little interlude where humans who feel that they look like their dogs are invited to stand up and be recognised. A whippet-thin girl to my right stands up with her greyhound. Yep. Over the other side, a wiry white-and-grey haired woman with lots of energy leaps up with her – yes – perky white-and-grey wire-haired terrier.

At the beginning of the concert, Laurie has promised that the dogs will get a chance to really sound off and join in – and now is the moment. Big dogs, medium-sized dogs, and small dogs all get a turn. Laurie barks at the required pitch to help them out. It kind of works out, although there are a few rebels who just bark all the time, and some who just sit back and watch and listen.

Then suddenly it’s over. Humans applaud, dogs bark. A jazz trio takes to the stage to play exit music, which sounds good but perhaps a little redundant, as the evening feels complete, and no-one pays them much attention.

And off we go into the twilight, a happy bunch of creatures who have come together for a very special experience. It feels an honour to have been there.

How far would you go to protect yourself, your family, your country? Does the end justify the means? If you are acting under orders, for the greater good, does that absolve you of any harm done to individuals along the way? Is it OK to be a whistleblower? Is it OK to spy on your friends and colleagues? Where, and to whom, do your loyalties lie?

I remember the childhood playground conundrum: if you had a loaded gun, your friends asked, and you were in a room with Hitler in 1939, would you pull the trigger. I always said ‘no’. I understood the logic of ‘yes’ but I believed that you must follow your own moral code regardless – and if you believe it is wrong to kill, it is always wrong to kill. Later, in adulthood, I’ve revisited that question many times. I think my answer would still be ‘no’. But I’m not so sure. Would you pull the trigger to save your children’s lives, say? Yes. Any mother would say yes. There are few moral absolutes.

The means-to-an-end question is at the heart of many works of literature and art. That exact scenario – shooting Hitler, changing history – is explored in Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life. The De Toro film Pan’s Labyrinth brought us the moral dilemma of people fighting fascism who find themselves behaving with the same cruelty. John le Carre wrote eloquently about the life of a spy, and the daily moral dilemmas of living a double life. The petty betrayals in his stories are always the most harrowing.

So, even if you wouldn’t kill, would you lie? How do you fancy yourself as an undercover agent? What, for example, if you were given the opportunity to undermine the activities of the far right? How far would you go? Can you make the grade?

Operation Black Antler is a – well, I was going to say site-responsive, but I think situation-responsive might be more accurate – show that explores the world of the undercover agent infiltrating  a new right-wing organisation. It is participatory theatre to the max – and as such, is something of a Marmite show. You either throw yourself into the scenarios offered and enjoy it, or you sit on the sidelines feeling uncomfortable.

‘You’re very good at this,’ says the man I’m working with in my ‘unit’ of three. He’s our communications officer (or ‘on coms’ as our police handler Gemma would have it). Gemma’s a tough cookie, totally believable – I feel pretty nervous when she tests me on my cover story and breathe out when I pass the test. I’ve taken her advice: it’s easier to lie if you just distort the truth rather than invent something totally new. So I’m an English teacher who went to Teacher Training College in South London. Because 40 years ago, that was true, so it is easy to play the lie. I’m enjoying myself in my new identity. I’ve located the person I’m supposed to befriend, and it’s all going to plan. But the two people who make up the unit with me aren’t having fun. They don’t like role play. They want out. Perhaps, I think, this is a show that only appeals to actors. Professional liars. But no, in the debrief session at the end I meet fellow performers who felt slightly uncomfortable in their roles, and people who had never done a day’s acting in their life completely happy to throw themselves in head-first with great gusto.

Operation Black Antler aims to get its audience talking about the issues raised by such cases as Edward Snowden, the Wikileaks affair, and the recent terrible revelations that certain UK undercover policemen were ‘deep swimming’ so far in that they formed relationships with women they were spying on, even having babies with them to maintain their cover. In this aim it most certainly succeeds, judging by the animated conversations in the debrief session that ends the show.

It is a show that is hard to assess critically as each experience is an individual one, and so much depends on the audience member’s willingness (or otherwise) to engage with it all. I enjoyed the game, and got a lot out of the experience.

If I have a criticism, it is that the show is actually a little too safe, (for me personally, anyway). There was a moment when I found myself being recruited as a right-winger, and I feel I could have been grilled far more rigorously about my beliefs by the man I had been taken to. I believed in him as a character – he pitched it very nicely, reminding me of people I met when I was really and truly ‘infiltrating’ right-wing pubs in Thanet, as part of my research for a show about migration, during Farage’s election bid last year – an interesting coincidence. But I didn’t believe that he would accept my story and take me on board in his organisation so quickly. Not that I want to advocate that actors make audience members feel truly uncomfortable. But that edge could have been approached and played with, as it has been in previous Hydrocracker productions. I would also have liked more double-bluff along the way. Sometimes things felt a little too obvious and straightforward. Once I’d identified my target, she was exactly as the briefing had suggested, there were no hidden surprises in her story. I also felt I was ‘pulled out’ of the operation just as it was getting interesting.

Of course, I say all of this knowing how hard it is to get the balance right, especially in the opening weekend of a show with this many built-in complexities.

Operation Black Antler is an exciting and challenging new collaboration by two well-established Brighton companies with reputations for creating challenging off-site work. It draws on both their strengths – Blast Theory’s interest in work driven by an interaction with new technologies, placing the audience member at the heart of the action; Hydrocracker’s mission to create intensely political work in unusual spaces, using actors who interact with audience members. Deep swimming indeed… Dive in and you won’t be disappointed. Cower on the shore and you’ll never know the pleasures of swimming against the current.

Here’s flowers for you; hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram…

Digging for Shakespeare takes its audience on a journey that starts on a bus, proceeds through a park, wanders through a woodland, diverts into an industrial storage unit, and dallies amongst the dales of Hollingdean, which are populated with a fine array of allotments, many sporting a quaint wee shed flying an orange flag to signify that they are part of the game. Allusions to, quotes from, and ruminations upon Shakespeare’s plays and poems, and in particular his citing of flowers and herbs, crop up everywhere.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream features, of course: ‘I know a bank where the wild thyme blows…’ is inscribed on a mirror placed inside a glasshouse, with a rather rude looking Puck – or perhaps it is another fairy – in the form of a knitted doll dangles above. These mirrors and knitted dolls (Welsh artist Annie Hardy is the doll knitter) are the uniting visual motifs of the concluding allotment section of the show – which is the section the audience have most obviously come for. People in sturdy walking shoes enjoy testing their own knowledge of herbs and/or of Shakespeare. Here’s one for starters: chamomile. Yes? No? It’s King Henry the Fourth, Part One (Act 2, Scene 4): ‘For though the chamomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears.’ People nod sagely.

It all concludes with a cuppa and a tea cake as audience members swap packets of seeds – artist Marc Rees is sowing a special memorial garden for the project: there’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.

This is all truly delightful – it’s what comes before that it less satisfactory. Because it takes a good 90 minutes to get to the allotments. Twenty minutes of this is bus journey – and yes, this is a good decision, as it gathers everyone together in one starting place, and establishes the herd mentality needed to get an audience through a lengthy outdoor promenade show. Welsh artist Marc Rees (who has a strong track-record in site-responsive performance) uses the time to tell us about himself – as we whizz past the University of Brighton, we learn that he is a graduate of the legendary Visual and Performing Arts course. He then switches mode, into character as a kind of tweed-wearing gentleman gardener, and hands out accolades for biggest marrow or sweetest smelling rose (ah, wherefore art thou Romeo…?)

When we disembark, we are taken to Hollingbury Copse, site of the now-demolished home of Shakespearean scholar James Orchard Halliwell-Phillips. Who, I’m afraid, fails to really grab my interest, despite the fact that he is a genuine English eccentric. And off we trot, to the woods, via a row of splendid flint-stone cottages. Marc Rees, in tour guide mode, delivers mini lectures and homilies throughout the journey, cribbing from notes on postcards, which bothers me. Why didn’t he learn the lines? Is he playing a postmodern game? Any decent tour guide wouldn’t use notes that he squints at constantly; and delivery of Shakespeare’s lines, and his reflections on them,  is often nervous and a little faltering. Perhaps – if it is not a deliberate ploy – this will change as the show settles in.

Costumed characters pop up along the way, including regular appearances by Haliwell-Phillips (danced very prettily by Guillermo Weickert Molina). The walk through the woods is enlivened by a lovely team of young people dressed in Green Man mode (the Theatre Workshop Youth Cast), who scamper and chant and call to each other with shrill sounds that echo the loud and insistent birdcall all around us. I’m very fond of this boisterous ensemble of living plants.

Then, a lengthy ‘lecture’ section inside a storage unit which fails to engage me at all. I learn lots of facts about James Orchard Halliwell-Phillips, who obsessively catalogued all Shakespeare’s work, Charles Nicholl’s tweedy lecture embellished with OHP photos projected onto a screen. But do I care? Not a lot. Perhaps I would in other circumstances.

It feels as if there are two shows here, battling with each other: the story of the Elizabethan garden and Shakespeare’s references to herbs and plants in his plays; and the story of the eccentric scholar, Halliwell-Phillips and his obsession with cataloguing Shakespeare’s work.  Yes, it’s all about Shakespeare, perhaps that’s connection enough, and yes there are attempts at merging these two main threads, but they don’t really marry well. An awkward hybrid.

At last we are let out of that darned shed and set loose to roam amongst the Roedale allotments. With heigh! the doxy over the dale… We gather gardening tips on postcards, sniff the herbs, and read the accompanying quotes. It feels like the time spent in the allotments should be the heart of the work, and thus allocated more attention and resources. Lovely though the dolls are, a bit of live performance wouldn’t go amiss here.

But it is a beautiful sunny afternoon, and everyone is so totally happy to be out and about amongst the flowers and herbs viewing the allotments, that all gripes and grudges are quickly forgotten.

Digging for Shakespeare is a dramaturgical dog’s dinner – but one full of tasty titbits.