DARKFIELD / SEANCE and FLIGHT, created by David Rosenberg and Glen Neath, Two Shipping Containers, Stackt Market, 28 Bathurst St., closes November 9.
A very strange experience has come to town. In fact, two strange experiences have come to town, and both involve sitting in total darkness inside shipping containers wearing headsets.
In one container, SEANCE, you’re at, no surprise, a séance. In the other container, FLIGHT, you are on an airplane.
The first is guaranteed to scare you silly. The second is a mind-blowing existential journey that both Samuel Beckett and Jean-Paul Sartre would have loved.
But these just aren’t any headsets.
Each ear has a microphone which allows the headset to operate in the same way that the human ear perceives sound thus creating a three-dimensional audio experience or binaural sound.
The listener hears the sound coming from all around, including behind, above, below and beside as well as both close and far away.
Thus, a DARKFIELD show replaces visual staging with audio immersion, making the listener feel as though they are physically inside the story.
About Darkfield
DARKFIELD is a U.K.-based company specializing in immersive 360° audio experiences in complete darkness. Each production places the audience inside a sound driven world, seated in a dark space wearing headphones that deliver precise multidirectional sound design.
These productions have striking theatrical sets to create a specific reality before the advent of darkness and the beginning of a riveting narrative. The storytelling is as important as the sound design.
In order to come up with an idea like DARKFIELD. you need a tech guy and a theatre guy, and in this case, they are cofounders and co-artistic directors, David Rosenberg and Glen Neath, respectively.
Rosenberg’s background is site specific and experimental theatre before he pioneered the use of binaural sound in theatrical settings.
He’s responsible for developing immersive soundscapes that simulate real physical environments through audio positioning and for DARKFIELD’s spatial design and auditory engineering.
Now that’s a mouthful.
For his part, Neath is a playwright, novelist, and radio dramatist. He provides the narrative and structural core of the productions.
Known for sharp compact writing that works perfectly in immersive formats where the listener’s imagination fills in the visual world, his scripts supply the storytelling depth that balances Rosenberg’s technical experimentation.
Together, Rosenberg and Neath form the perfect creative fusion that blends immersive audio engineering with the dramatic structure to produce theatre that happens inside the audience’s mind.
SEANCE
SÉANCE
Photo: Jack Rintoul
When you enter the container, you are seated around a long table on plush red seats reminiscent of a Victorian parlour.
SEANCE begins with the sound of a man entering the room, and it is so utterly realistic that it makes you jump as he walks around and then leaps onto the table.
He then asks you to put your hands on the table and to never take them off.
The sound of his footsteps on the table, the menacing tone of his voice as he challenges people, do they believe, and the fright in their voices as they answer – they could be your neighbours right there in the room with you, the very ones you walked in with.
Needless to say, the leader senses someone in the room and he summons that someone forward and so things begin to unfold, and I’m going to stop here because I don’t want to give anything away.
I can watch all kinds of blood and gore and Texas chainsaw massacres, and yes they make me cringe in horror, but it is not the same kind of sheer terror that the occult and the supernatural can induce in a person.
Fear of the unknown is particularly petrifying and script writer Mr. Neath certainly knows how to play on our nightmares, especially when the spirit in SEANCE gets personal and whispers in your ear. It is a hair-raising experience.
I’ve been to lots of immersive shows, but not like SEANCE where it is impossible not to feel sucked in on some very intense level. This is immersive with a capital I.
And a warning, don’t take your hands off the table.
FLIGHT
Photo: Axis Productions
FLIGHT is unsettling on a completely other level.
Where SEANCE strikes deep into superstitious dread and our primeval fear of the unknown, FLIGHT’s narrative takes an intellectual approach inspired by quantum mechanics and the belief that many worlds exist at the same time.
However, when you are on an airplane, and the shipping container is set up exactly like an airplane, and two different journeys are happening at the same time, one with the plane crashing, and one with the plane landing safely, the disorientation factor can be quite unnerving as these images come, pardon the pun, flying at you simultaneously.
The airline captain’s voice becomes fragmented first, and then the cabin crew, and yet you can easily track the different fragmentations in your head.
You are in parallel universes, hearing about a sunset, yet hearing the sounds of a storm, hearing contrary advice from the cabin crew – everyone gets a drink from the cart but there is nothing for you, everyone has to change seats but you are in the lucky seat.
The absurdities come in waves.
What life choices have you made that has brought you here? What possible outcomes are you being forced to face?
Talk about an exercise in multiple existentialism.
This experience of split realisms, and the disquiet that it brings with it, makes one decidedly happy when the lights come back on, although you can’t stop thinking about the fragmented journeys long after you get off the airplane.
A Theatre Person’s Take on Things
As I was experiencing being frightened at SEANCE and confounded at FLIGHT, at the back of my mind I was in awe of the script writing and the voice casting.
Both are acts of genius which is not to negate the sound experience which is phenomenal.
When the leader of the séance is prowling around that room, and every time he comes near you and you are terrified he’s going to speak to you, and yet you know that it is impossible, that is a superb combination of voice and writing.
And when the flight attendant with her cart is coming down the aisle, it is unbelievably realistic the things that she says and does in the multi-worlds in which she is operating, and that you can tell it is multi worlds, that too is exquisite voice theatre.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a combination of voice and sound as brilliantly put together as these DARKFIELD creations.
Bits and Pieces of Necessary Information
SEANCE is 16 minutes long and believe me, that’s quite enough. FLIGHT is 22 minutes long.
There are five weekday showings of SEANCE and four weekday showings of FLIGHT, with two more showings of each on the weekends.
Make sure to see SEANCE before FLIGHT which is the order I saw them. Go from the more direct to the more complex.
Future Viewing
It seems that DARKFIELD has three other shows making the rounds and they sound equally as intriguing.
Here’s a short description of each.
Eulogy.
Set in a mysterious hotel, the audience is complicit with the events that unfold in encounters with guests and staff.
Coma.
The audience lies in beds and hears disembodied medical voices that blur the lines between care and control.
Arcade.
The listener is plunged into the world of video games and the idea of reward systems.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if DARKFIELD brought these shows here even though they sound just as unnerving and disquieting as SEANCE and FLIGHT.