Systems for Immersive Storytelling — Les Enfants Terribles

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Charlie Melcher, founder of the Future of Storytelling, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to the FOSS podcast. While in London recently, I had the opportunity to meet with James Seeger and Oliver Lansley, the creative and artistic directors of UK-based theater company, Laison Faul Terribe. James and Oliver founded the company in 2002, and have since created numerous critically acclaimed, traditional and immersive theater productions. Their best known immersive project, Alice's Adventures Underground, was nominated for an Olivier Award during its initial run in 2015, revived in 2017 in London again, and then traveled to Shanghai, China for an additional two years. The show is now returning to London to an all-new space that will finally be its permanent home set to open in 2024. What separates Laison Faul Terribe from other immersive theater makers is that they've not only created engaging story experiences, but also devised complex systems and strategies to run them efficiently. Alice's Adventures Underground is a well-oiled machine that operates with incredible precision and economy while maintaining the high touch that makes immersive theater so special. With this show, James and Oliver have found a model that allows an experience to be both emotionally powerful and economically successful, something that immersive theater really needs to be able to grow. Please join me in welcoming James Seeger and Oliver Lansley to the Fost podcast. James Oli, welcome to the Future of Storytelling Podcast. Such a delight. Have you here? A pleasure to be here. Yeah, great. Thank you very much, Robinus. So I think we should just start this officially with me raising a pint. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. So we're here in London, and you've just given me this extraordinary behind-the-scenes tour of your new immersive venue. And I'm just blown away, even though it's still mostly under construction, you can just see the level of detail and thought and planning and so much work that's gone into this even to get to where we are. Let me ask you to tell us about the show that you're building and how this space came about. Sure. So this show is Alice's Adventures Underground. It first premiered in 2015 in London. And it came from the back of Oli and I wanting to get into immersive theater. But no one was reusing that word back then in 2013 and 2014. But essentially, we were seeing immersive shows. And for us, we were getting a bit frustrated with shows that we were seeing. Because for us, it was missing narrative. And there were too many people. You were missing things. And there were some amazing experiences out there. But for us, we felt we wanted to add something. We wanted to have a story at the forefront of immersive theater. So we started to think about what would make a good immersive show. And I think that's the crucial thing to think about. Because nowadays, there's a lot of immersive shows out there. But sometimes, I think that is a question that you do have to ask, why should it be immersive? What world would you like to go to and disappear into? Absolutely. And we looked at one property and we couldn't really get the rights to it. And we were a little bit gutted with that, with that one property that's very well known. But then we thought, well, what else is out there? And I think it was Anthony, actually, who's a co-writer with Oli. He said, have you guys thought about Alice in Wonderland? And that is very, very us, I suppose, as a theater company. And we thought, obviously, that would be a great immersive show to Oli's point. It's a world. And it kind of started from there, didn't it? And then, you know, going into the idea of going to Wonderland, actually, Alice in Wonderland is a really perfect starting place. Because it's very modular, anyway, as a work. It's a kind of a series of sketches and ideas and characters. So it suited itself to what we were doing. We actually wrote an initial script, which we did a read through of. Do you remember that? Do you remember that we got a bunch of actors and we did a read through of it. And it was kind of bizarre. And then, but we sort of came away from it going, there's something that doesn't quite feel right about the show that we want to make. And we came away from that initial discussion and we cut Alice from Alice in Wonderland. I remember that. Because basically, we realize, you know, Alice, as a inner book, Alice is your, you know, a sci-fi is your way to get into the story. But what we wanted to do was allow our audience to be Alice. And you come into Lewis's carous study, Alice appears in the mirror and she takes you into Wonderland. But once you go into Wonderland, you get to choose, eat me or drink me. And then you're splitting to two. So it's an initial audience of 60. You get split into two. And then from there, everyone is assigned a card, essentially. So every audience member is a playing card. And whichever card you get assigned will dictate your journey on the space. And also all those suits have different characteristics. And, you know, so there's this whole, you know, world that you get brought into. But that happens, you know, again, to get the numbers through, you have 60 people every 15 minutes. And then you have 30 plus actors. And so you, and they're all on their own tracks. So you've got audience one going through in them, 50 minutes, the next audience come in. So you've got at any one time you might have two or three or four audiences in the space, all at different parts of their journeys. And then you've got all these different actors all playing. And this is the thing that I think is one of the craziest things for people watching the show. So you might see a character in the first five minutes of your show and your talk to them for two minutes. And then in, you know, in the middle of the show, you'll meet that character again and they'll have another interaction for a minute or two. And then right at the end of the show, you will see that character again. And they'll have another interaction. The actors are on this constant 15 minute loop, whereas the audience can go through this journey and then see them at the different points in their story. But in the meantime, the actors are then talking to audience number three, or audience number seven, or audience number one. And, you know, there's this crazy scene right at the end of the show, which is the court case at the end of Alice in Wonderland, where we have all of these characters popping in and running up and turning up in the court. And it's just insane because you literally have actors running from their sets across the whole building, going running through Wonderland, getting in, popping up, doing their kind of 30 second moment in the court, ducking down, and then rushing back to where they go. So it's the backstage show is probably as interesting as exciting as what the audience actually get to see. What makes something uniquely a Les Enfanterie show? Good question. I mean, it sounds a little bit big-headed or a bit verbose, but I. Because we've been trying to ask this question for about 21 years. And only in the last year, I've probably thought about it, because I got a little bit worried, to be totally honest with you, that when we created what Ali was saying, the mechanics behind Alice, that other people would copy, I suppose, and use this very unique thing, because in 2015, no one in the world had ever done this time code and the system of a show to what Ali was saying earlier about how the actors get to one place and how the audience move. And essentially, the whole show is run on the computer, but the system is called a time code. So basically, that every single cue in the show or in every different spaces. So there's around 40 different sets and spaces and 35 different actors. In every lighting cue, every sound cue, every sound effect, every piece of music, is all triggered by the time code. And so the time code starts at the beginning of the show, and it finishes at the end, it runs all 15 shows. So you could have no actors in there, and nothing in there, and it would still be happening. And that, again, I think it's one cue every seven seconds, or seven cues every second, I can't remember. So for many years, because that was very unique to our immersive blend of theatre, and I thought, well, maybe that sums us up. But then, when other, I guess, companies were doing it, and third play to them, doing that, they weren't doing what we were doing. And I guess the essence of what we are is, I guess, Holly and I, as creators, as directors and as writers. We worked with some amazing designers, and you could say, on looking at it from afar, our style is quite gothic, timber and esk, playful, entertaining, lots of music, lots of puppets, lots of physicality. But essentially, what we are as a theatre company is story-led, story-driven, whether we do an immersive show, an outdoor show, a stage show. You can still see similarities between a stage show and an immersive show, because our importance is on storytelling. And we as a theatre company are storytelling. But I think that's what sums us up. I'll show you the audiences always part about shows. Even if it's a stage show and it's on a stage. We nearly always break the thought wall. We engage with the audience and we kind of have a relationship with them. And I think that's at the heart of what we do. And then so obviously, when you then get into the world of immersive, that is opened up into a whole new level. And so you are the protagonist, says, you know, as we said, like you are Alice in Alice in Wonderland. What we really try and do is curate an experience which will feel completely unique to every individual audience member, but will feel hopefully equal to all the other audience members. We don't want one person to have the best night of their life and the other person to go, "Oh, I spent two hours in an empty room, I couldn't find anyone, I didn't find any actors." Like, we want to make sure that we hold everyone's hand and make sure that everyone gets out of the show, what they came to get from it. Right? I read one review that said that, quote, "You're a company very adept at showing how physicalized storytelling is at the heart of some of the best theater around. And I love that expression of physicalized storytelling. And I wonder, can you explain?" We try and make our work really three-dimensional. And I've sort of stopped myself from saying the word immersive them because it's so overused and it means so many different things to so many people. But I do think immersive is a sort of appropriate word for what we do. We want you to be able to come into our shows and disappear into another world and feel it on every level. And that's why there's so many things in our shows, whether it's live music or puppetry or physicality or storytelling. It's very, you know, all of it is serving the story. And I think the key to that sense of physicalized storytelling, I suppose, is trying to make what we do feel really tangible. And I think we always address the fact that our shows are theatrical. I don't know, that sounds a bit strange, but we embrace the theatricality of the world. I think every show that we have ever done is almost like a show backstage as it is in front of the stage. And that is because everyone has to pick this up a prop and it's very choreographed like that. In terms of puppets or instruments or whatever we use to tell the story, we throw it all out there. And I think that's where the choreography and the movement and the physicalized nature of who we are comes from. But you're also giving that physicality to the audience, right? So they're getting to experience it in a multi-sensoral way, in a way that's more emotional and powerful because they're living it. Yeah, so I sound touch, smell, taste, you know, again, and I think that's the magic of a narrative and well-building if you create a world like you want to be able to play in it and you want to be able to like influence it. And there is something about that when you do it well that you experience it differently as a human because your body is experiencing it in the same way as your mind. It's under your fingernails, you know, and I think that changes the way that you interact with stories, I think. If you think about the way that we consume media, whether it's computer games, which are very much about you being at the heart of these stories. But even in the way that we experience cinema and music and television, you know, cinema, you know, now, if you go to the cinema, it's about the experience. It's about the kind of surround sound of the iMac screens and the popcorn or television is now you, you know, it's not something that you're not passive. You have all of these things at your fingertips and you can choose what experience you want, you know, you don't have to wait for something to be on a certain network at a certain time. Now you are in control. It's the same with music, you know, streaming, but also I think one of the key things is we do it in our own lives in social media. We curate our own stories and our own avatars in ways that, you know, previous generations never had. And you can see you go on Twitter or you go on Instagram or you go on tiptock. Everybody wants to be the protagonist of their own story these days. And I think that is really the heart of why immersive is blown up the way that it has. You are so singing my tune. That's something that I talk a lot about and repeat theme in this podcast in a future story telling in general. I really do believe we've entered this age where people no longer want to be passive consumers. They want to be active participants. They want to be co-creators. They want to be heroes in their own adventures. It's just another way of saying what you just said. The complexity of being able to provide that kind of bespoke and carefully curated or choreographed experience for 60 people at a time. And then put another 60 people through 15 minutes later. That's a whole other level. Like it's a different part of the brain, frankly, than the one that's doing the puppetry or the choreography or the writing. Talk about how you developed that piece of it and give me some numbers. Like, James, how many people can go through the show in a day? On a normal day, it's 660. On a Saturday and a Thursday, we have an extra six entries. So that boosts up numbers. But then also, which we've not talked about, we also have another version of the show for kids called Adventures in Wonderland, which is a lot more simple, I suppose, but a different version of the show for kids between the ages of four and nine. And we have that on weekends. So Saturday and Sundays, and there are like six entries, run about the same type of number of audience, 60. And then on the school holidays, that's every single day. So on a Saturday, we could have like 1,400 people on a Saturday, every Saturday. So let me just understand this correctly. So for the children's show, it's shorter. Yes. But you still take 60 people at a time. And it's the same set and cast. No, different cast, same set, completely different story. Slightly less intimidating version of Wonderland. And when we say the other, you know, Alice's Adventure Underground is Adol. It's not Adolting in terms of content, but of course, I think. I think in the UK, I don't think in the US, this is a type of property that is applicable to all. But I think when we started developing this, you know, there's a lot of maths behind it, and there's a lot of logistics behind it. But the audience are never aware of this, or should they be? Right. You know, it all started from thinking, "We want this show to be intimate, and we also want a story." Again, one of our. You know, if our first biggest thing was realising that we needed to take the protagonist out of our show to allow the audience to become the protagonist, the second biggest lesson, I think, was understanding in immersive theatre, what the audience don't get to see is as important as what they do get to see. I love that. And like, you know, because that's how a world works. You don't see everything in the world. You know, you have your journey, and then you come into the bar and you meet your friend, who went off in a different path, and they're like, "Oh my God, did you see the frog?" "Oh, no, did you see that room where it rained?" "Or did you see the caterpillar and the great projection stuff?" And everyone's like, "No, I didn't see that. How do you. " And you realise, actually, the joy in it is creating a world that feels like it exists whether you are there or not. And of course, it now, with that, has the fringe benefit of people wanting to come back and do it more than once, right? Yeah, that's right. I mean, you get people. I think the main thing for me is that, in most of theatre, is asking the question, "Who are you in this world?" "What is your role? What is your reason?" And every time we've brought this show back, we've really asked ourselves that question, "What does it mean to be a diamond or a heart?" And I think every time it's really interrogating that. So people really affiliate themselves to diamonds or clubs or whoever they are in this show. And that's great because then there's this camaraderie, but there's also this rivalry with when they see the space or clubs or whatever. But also, as you say, they think that's amazing journey. What's it like if I come back and do it? Well, the other thing that I'm talked about, again, is that all of our actors play roughly six different characters each. Partly because we were worried we would send them insane if they had to play the same characters 15 times a night, every single night. So basically you have these teams of actors in every night they rotate. So for example, in the Tea Party, there'll be a pool of six hatters, six hairs, six door mice, and they all rotate. Once we tried to get a mathematician to figure out the probability of being able to see the same show twice, and he couldn't figure it out, because basically every single show, even if you go on exactly the same route, even if you have the exact same card, you're not going to see the same performances from the same actor. So your Tea Party is going to be completely different with it. We'll have this hatter, this hair, and it's almost impossible to see the same show twice. And that's the thing in theatre, if you're going to do a show in the West End for a year, you're going to be able to see the same show twice. people do it for longer than that. You are doing the same scene over and over again. And actually, weirdly, for Alice, you're very aware that you're going to do the same scene with the same people in the same place. And not to mention the fact that every single audience member is going to bring something to that scene as well, and they're going to react differently. So it is a really strange, organic, amorphous beast of a show. So tell me about this new space. I mean, you said it was 60,000 square feet that you've taken. That's a lot of space for a production. And you also mentioned you have a 15-year lease. Yes. Those are two very threatening things for most people in the theatre. How did you get comfortable taking that on? I think we were very frustrated that when we did the show before, we only had the residency for six months and the show sold out and so sold really well. And then we had to leave. And we were like, this is crazy. Why are we leaving? So when we licensed it to China and China did it for two years, we thought, you know, what? There is scope to do this. So after it ran for two years there, we started looking for spaces in London. And it's quite hard in any major city to find that amount of space in a really good location. This space used to be where the Eurostar ran from in London when they moved it over to another station, King's Cross. The space has been completely empty and we knew they were redeveloping it. But because it was an underground car park, when people used to park their cars and go on the train to go to France, the car park was down there. There's lots of pillars. And for a lot of people, I think, who looked at the space, that was an obstacle. But then for us, it was like, well, actually, we can use these pillars to form the rooms. And the landlord wanted to put something that was entertainment. This whole development, the top level, is shops and then the ground floor, first of all, is restaurants and bars. And then the displacement that we've got, they didn't know what to do with it. But they wanted entertainment. They wanted something different. And they knew about our show because it's very close to where the vaults was. And someone showed me it and I looked around and thought, you know what, this could work. I think it's reflective also of our ambition for the Labyrinth project, which is the venue's called Labyrinth. And also what we believe can be the next transition in the world of the immersive theatre, which is, you know, we are looking at this as the West End, or the broad way of the immersive theatre. We want to make a show that can compete with the Lion King or Matilda or whatever it is. You know, as we've said before, we will be working our butts off to make sure that everyone gets their money's worth. And I think that is the key to kind of going, how do we compete on a level where this can hopefully remain open for years? And we touched on it before, you know, in terms of audiences have changed. You know, audiences want to be at the forefront of their own experience and adventures, as we said. So we found that in 2015, where there's so many non-theaters who come to see the show. And that was like, wow, this is amazing. And I think surely that is the golden ticket in the theatre industry to attract people who aren't into theatre to come and see theatre. Whether the show is deemed as theatre or as an experience, that's fine. But I think nowadays, everyone has much more audiences have changed, as we've said. And that speaks to the popularity of immersive and speaks to the popularity of people wanting to try something a little bit different, which is cool. Talk to me though about the financial burden. 15-year lease is scary. Yes, it is. And I think, you know, Oli alluded to it before. And I don't mind sharing, because I think we did an opinion piece in the stage newspaper, which is a UK paper that talks the industry, but they talked to you about your budgets. And the budget in 2015 on the show was £600,000, you know, just over half a minute. Which for us, at that time, was massive. And we, as a company back then, were still raising the money on press night. So the budget in 2017 was double what it was in 2015. We realised we wanted to up things and production values and change the show. But also things change since the pandemic. And especially, well, I think this is worldwide. I mean, we're speaking to some people in America as well. And they say, yeah, this is happening over here. Costs are crazy, crazy right now. You know, over in the UK, wood, for example, is double the price that it was three years ago. And so the budget has escalated since things like Brexit over here. And since, you know, European issues, war in Ukraine. All these things have contributed to the budget being quite high. But also, we're trying to build a venue, you know, like it was a car park. And we're turning it into a venue that hopefully can run for 15 plus years. But that is plumbing and air conditioning and floors. Which we did have to do before. And everything. And what did you, you didn't say, but what is the budget now? Well, it's, I'd say it's in the region of about 10 billion. So it's not just the show. So obviously, when we did the show before, we were just dry hiring the vaults. So it had all the infrastructure in there. We did have to put air conditioning, you know, sprinkler systems, all this into a venue. Because we're thinking long term. And we want Alice to be as, here, as long as possible. And we're building, yeah, I mean, that's the difference. If you're building a show that you know is going to close in six months or one that you're trying to keep open. You have to invest, have a different quality of build. Yeah. I feel like there's such emerging of the craft of theater with operational excellence or innovation. Because you're so hands on literally from writing it to directing it to producing it, have been able to solve sort of for both of those challenges. That's what's needed to be able to get to an immersive theater experience that's so intimate and personalized and the audience is held. But to do it at scale where it can actually be profitable and you can solve that problem of throughput, which everyone struggles so terribly with. Do you agree? How is it that you guys have been able to sort of solve for both sides? It's just all upbringing. When I say upbringing, I mean, theater upbringing at the Edinburgh fringe. The theater company started at the Edinburgh fringe and I don't know where the people have been there, but it's an amazing experience, amazing festival, the biggest festival in the world. Very immersive. Yeah. But we started doing shows there. So Ollie had this crazy idea to put on a show at the Edinburgh fringe. And he just grabbed me and some other friends and we put on a show there 21 years ago. But then we had the thirst for it. And then we'd like, let's go back and do another show. Like really? Okay. And then, you know, all friends and we were just all digging in deep of like, you know, writing, directing, acting, you know, both of us. We're doing all of that. Sometimes both of us were in the show as actors or directors. But you have to do everything. You have to do the fliering and the PR and the marketing and the lighting design and the sound design and everything. And that was our education, our learning to be producers. So we became producers without realizing it. Sometimes people, young people or anyone say, what does a producer do? Well, the answer is everything, really. But it makes things happen. Yeah. And it's like suddenly we realized, only after about seven years of doing this up in Edinburgh, oh, we're producers. It was that late. A lot of producers, the way they producers go, I need this thing done. Who's the best, which is usually the most expensive person that does this thing? Let's hire them. And that can work. But when you are doing something, which is so holistic and interconnected, hiring individual people who do these things in, you know, in a vacuum or certainly in the world of conventional theatre and like, this is how we do this. And this is how it works. And this is how this works is not always the best way to do things when you're creating something that is different and is new. And you need to be able to explore other avenues and think outside the box and sometimes do things in a way that isn't the way that it normally starts. And we've always had an understanding from Edinburgh that if that show financially didn't work, then it came over. We wouldn't be doing it next year. And we've just known that even subconsciously in creating our immersive shows and Alice of like when we were co-producing this show, we were like, OK, we've got 60 people in. And we know that we need more than that. We just know because if it didn't work financially, we wouldn't be able to do that. And we know that we're not going to be able to do that. We know that we're going to be able to do that. And we know that we're going to be able to do that. Even though this seems to be a tremendous focus, it's not the only thing that you're working on. Right? You both have. life's outside of this as well. The thing that drives us is just the desire to do it. And the, you know, the interest in telling stories, you know, like as a theatre company, we're still, you know, we still make stage shows. We've got a stage show opening just around the corner in the South Bank, which is a musical called The House with chicken legs based on a, the selling book. And that is, you know, that is a proper stage musical. - Proper. - Proper. - There you go. - Old school. - Old school, on a stage, you know. And, you know, we got to do that recently and we were, you know, sitting there in a theatre being like, "Oh, God, this is so. " Like, there were lights, there were lights, and there were things, and there was a comfy chairs. Like, "Oh, this is such. " I can't remember when we just made shows in theatres. - Luxury. - Yeah, completely luxury. But then also, you know, we're doing other stuff in the immersive world. We're doing a show in Vegas. In Las Vegas, which we're going to be. Tell me more. Well, hopefully. - Hopefully, we're at that stage of negotiations. - We're in the final stages of getting that in place. And if that happens, that will happen next year. And again, that becomes about a completely new audience and a completely new experience in going, "How do we create something that fits into that world?" You know, we're busy, not just on Alice and the lab of the project, but it was only alluded. There's lots of little things bubbling, and there's lots of exciting things as well of, of like, where can immersive theatre go next? And that's exciting for us, not just technology, but in different genres, which we're exploring at the moment. And also, in America as well, you know, we've done only a few kind of pop-up experiences over there. So it's quite exciting to hopefully do this new show in Vegas next year and to do other shows. - Also, you know, we need collaborators to help us pay for these crazy, expensive shows. So if you want us, we're here. Please contact us. We're available for parties and barmasters. (laughter) Well, gentlemen, I can't wait to see what you do next and to come back for the grand opening. By the way, when are you scheduled to open here? So we're just confirming those dates, but it looks like the summer next year. It could be slightly ahead. I mean, there's been a lot of complications with turning a car park, another car park into a fully functioning venue with, when it's underground, you know, we're running water and electricity and heating. So it's been a few delays there, but big projects I've learned, building projects are sometimes delayed, but it's looking around about the summer, so I'm 20, 24. Well, we can't wait to go down whatever rabbit holes you, you gentlemen, design. I just want to say thank you for joining me today and I huge fans and look forward to more from liaison fauntaribe. - Oh, thank you very much. - And you say our name much better than either of us. - It's been great. Thank you very much. I'm Charlie Melcher, and this has been a future of storytelling podcast. Thanks for joining me. We at Foster dedicated to bringing you the latest innovations in entertainment, technology, media, marketing, and countless other industries where storytelling is key. If you find the podcast to be valuable, please consider subscribing and recommending us to a friend. We'd really appreciate it. We also have a free monthly newsletter, "Fost and Thought," and an annual membership program, The Fost Explores Club. You can learn more about both on our website at fost.org. The Fost Podcast is produced by Melcher Media in collaboration with our talented production partners, Charts and Leisure. I hope to see you again soon for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, please be safe. Stay strong and story on.