On 31st October 2022, Doorstep Youth Theatre (DYT) and the Doorstep Arts Team hosted an exciting immersive event at The Stage left space of the Palace Theatre in Paignton.
It was a buzzing night of games , activities , live music, immersive/interactive scratch performances and in-house trick or treating with our resident Witches!.
DYT are currently working on ‘Awakening The Magic’ this term by exploring site specific and immersive theatre with facilitators Sam Parker and myself, Amy Mellows. DYT had to pitch a Halloween event idea to us that Doorstep could then fund for them, to invite our Doorstep Arts friends and Families to.
Alongside pitching this event, DYT staged a scratch performance (testing out performance material) to explore the art of interacting with audiences on site specific/immersive theatre. DYT worked with Doorstep’s Sam, Amy, Jade & Rebekah to stage their immersive circus ideas ready for the 31st.
Set in the Palace Theatre site, DYT’s strange ringmasters led the audience around the theatre into different areas, where unusual circus scenes would take place for the audience. The piece (with tech support from Rebekah and the Palace Theatre’s brilliant Clive) ended with the audience replacing the circus troupe on the stage, with ominous applause from DYT (who now sat in the audience themselves).
This was a wonderful opportunity for the new DYT to perform together for the first time (after just 3 sessions of rehearsal!) to a closed audience. Immersive and interactive work is extremely challenging, and requires a completely different skill set and devising approach for actors and their promenade guides.
We are taking learnings from that scratch to feed into our work this term, in the lead up to a full scale site specific immersive piece next term… Exciting!
After this performance, Baran from DYT brought his newly formed band ‘Faultless’ to the stage for their debut performance, and indeed they lived up to their name! It was wonderful to share this moment with the band and our 12+ audience, who danced, sang, held up lights and pogoed to the brilliant pop up rock gig. Well done Faultless!
From pinning the smile on the ghost, to decorating spooky hats, puppets, paper chains, 5 legged monsters and plunging into apple bobbing and slime, Doorstep stage manager Rebekah brought these activities into reality.
Polly, Erin, Faye, Holly & Mair from the Doorstep team came together and then brought these activities to life for our participants and their families from 6-7pm on the night. Supported by DYT and 3 talented applied drama students from The University of Exeter, this fantastic team pulled off a wonderful night of magic, mystery, horror, and plenty of sugar!
Thank you to everyone who came along, the Palace Theatre team and everyone at Doorstep who made the night happen, we couldn’t have done it without you.
We hope you had a spooktacular Halloween!
