Ellie Higgins sees three very different interactive shows at Summerhall for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024: You’re Needy (Sounds Frustrating) from Irish company tasteinyourmouth; Werewolf by Binge Culture from New Zealand; and Arcade, the latest shipping container show from UK company Darkfield

I sit in the sun outside Tills bookshop, expectantly waiting for someone with a Summerhall lanyard to greet me. Instead, a person dressed all in black asks me if I’m waiting for Carrie. I think I must be. I’m led up to a top-floor flat of a building close by. They ask if I’ve been counting my steps. I haven’t, but not to worry as they’ve been counting them for me. Once we reach the flat, I’m handed a small basket of things to give to Carrie. A door opens and I enter into the dim, steamy bathroom. I perch on a stool next to Carrie who is in the bath, her body wrapped in plants and cling film, with a beaded gel mask covering her face and cucumber slices strapped to her eyes. She moves towards me with an unnatural physicality, angular and slow as if she’s studying me, when a voice instructs us to repeat an affirmation: ‘It’s easy to relinquish control.’

You’re Needy (sounds frustrating) is a one-to-one performance from Dublin-based theatre company, tasteinyourmouth. The performance explores individualism and the effects of self-care and the wellness industries. This is a topic I’m hugely interested in, and so for the first section of the performance my mind is making links to the big issues: underfunded health care, and the insidious nature of capitalism. But as the piece progresses we begin seeing more of Carrie, in moments when she isn’t carrying out requests from the unknown voice. She showers, unveiling herself from the cling film and face mask – I’m splashed by the warm water. Carrie talks about how she’s always been obsessed with taking pictures of herself, seeking to control her image. She asks me to take a Polaroid picture of her frown lines, then she takes one of mine. I’m given the picture and the voice tells me to look closely at myself, at all the things I can change. This moment affected me in a way I didn’t expect – hyper-focusing on my negative aspects is something I try to avoid and I became quite upset. I decide to look away. Soon after, Carrie submerges herself in the water, giving me a brief moment to myself in what has been an intense one-on-one. 

There are so many interesting aspects to this performance: tasks for me to carry out, questions for me to answer and a lot of complex ideas to interrogate. As I sit now writing, the Polaroid is beside me on my desk, reminding me of the effects of our actions and our responsibility to look after each other, as well as caring for ourselves. 

In the basement of Summerhall the women’s locker room has become a safe house, where we must remain for 7 days (one hour) until the infection has been contained. In the years following the Covid pandemic, you could think this would be a risky way to stage a production, but Werewolf was one of the most joyous shows of my Fringe. New Zealand company Binge Culture have taken the classic drama game, Werewolf (more well-known here as Mafia) and elevated it to an immersive theatrical experience. Staged in the round, each audience member is given a card with an instruction to carry out at some point over the next hour, their part to play in the game. The three wardens, Stella, Joel and Hannah, guide us through our confinement, with classic deadpan Kiwi humour as they squabble over the hierarchy of their roles, at one point resolving with a game of rock, paper, scissors.

For the first half we are riotous with laughter, but as the ‘days’ pass we venture deeper into the game. An emergency radio broadcast tells us to be wary of each other: everyone is a suspect. Each day ends with the sun setting to complete darkness, accompanied by a delightfully eery soundscape of footsteps, howling and rattling doors. At points my heart is racing, either because it is my turn to play or from fear of what might happen in the dark. The game is expertly held by the three wardens, with unexpected plot twists and character revelations. The audience leaves with gleeful grins, congratulating each other on the parts played – we made it out together.

Where Werewolf provides an exciting thrill, Arcade by Darkfield is genuinely unsettling. Darkfield are well known for their innovative, immersive binaural experiences and having seen both Flight and Eulogy in previous years at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I knew what to expect.

Inside the shipping container are two rows of old-school arcade machines. We stand side-by-side, familiarising ourselves with the buttons we’ll need to use to choose our journey, before being plunged into complete darkness. Resting my hands on the arcade machine I feel a thumping heartbeat, as if I am part of it. Set in an unknown war zone, you play as a character called Milk and are given options to choose ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to various questions: Kiss? Kill? Play guitar? Other characters appear with the same name as you, so it seems everyone in the container is playing the game together.

There are quite a few jump-scares and at one point the sound is horrifying, but I don’t allow myself to take off the headphones. As the game goes on, I continue to lose lives and start over, the end point always seeming to remain unchanged no matter what options I choose. Given the current backdrop of war and genocide, Arcade makes me reflect on how much one person can make change. I emerge from the darkness with a strong feeling towards collective action: we can’t keep playing as individuals, we can only make change together.

There seem to be a good number of interactive shows on at the Fringe this year, beyond the three Summerhall shows I’ve written about. There’s the likes of clowning shows Garry Starr: Classic Penguins and Luke Rollason, Luke Rollason, Let Down Your Hair, which offer plenty of hilarious moments arising from audience involvement. There are numerous takes on game shows, karaoke, and pub quizzes. Then, the more experimental work such as Burnout Paradise by Pony Cam Collective, where the success of the show is dependent on the willingness of the audience to get up on stage and help out. Red Flags is an immersive theatre show delving into the complexities of coercive control. Temping is an interactive solo show performed by the sole audience member/participant who enters a work cubicle to find a Windows PC loaded with Microsoft Office, a corporate phone, and a laser printer – the show’s writer Michael Yates Crowley mooting the idea that inanimate objects and technology could be performers. Brendan Bradley’s Non-Player Character:  Live Virtual Reality Musical, presented by Zoo Venues at Yotel, is described as ‘a  boundary-pushing fusion of immersive, improvised theatre and video games where no two performances are the same’.

t’s interesting to note the increase in styles of immersive theatre alongside the broader move towards co-creation and community engaged projects across the arts. Involving the audience, in both making and performing, can present a valuable means to demystify and democratise theatre. The importance of the audience is aways at the forefront, and regardless of how much participation is expected of us, theatre is intrinsically a shared experience that brings us together.

Featured image (top) tasteinyourmouth: You’re Needy (Sounds Frustrating). Photo Simon-Lazews

tasteinyourmouth: You’re Needy (Sounds Frustrating), Binge Culture: Werewolf, and Darkfield: Arcade were all seen at Summerhall, for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024. www.summerhall.co.uk  www.edfringe.com 

Ellie Higgins took part in the Total Theatre Artists as Writers 2024 programme, which was delivered June to August 2024, in collaboration with Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh.