Richard Crawford’s immersive Secret Theatre back in Hong Kong: prepare for Project Mayhem
You don’t know where it is going to be or what it will involve – but with Crawford’s brand of ‘immersive theatre’ you know you can get in on the action which, as he explains, throws up a number of challenges for performers
That is unless you go to one of Richard Crawford’s productions. Crawford, the founder and artistic director of Secret Theatre, creates among the most innovative, risk-taking productions around. He is a pioneer of so-called immersive theatre, for which people buy a ticket without knowing where they are going or what they are going to see – just that it will be something completely out of the ordinary, and they will be involved in the action. He has held his productions in Hong Kong for the past two years, with a run of his latest scheduled from November 3 to December 10.
Born in Scotland and based in London and New York, Crawford is a member of the Actors Studio in New York and a former student and performer at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in the same city. But during his years working in traditional theatre, he increasingly felt that something was missing – that it was failing to connect with its audience.
Russian pianist to play all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, in order, over eight concerts in Hong Kong
His jump into immersive theatre, however, happened by accident. “I was living in New York, where putting on a play is really expensive. I was living in a 20,000 sq ft loft with nine other people in Williamsburg – before it became cool – and we thought, ‘Why don’t we start putting on plays here?’ It immediately became secret and site-specific, and we couldn’t afford chairs, so it became immersive.
“It’s so fun and adventurous and exciting to do this. I once got asked to direct Hamlet at the Edinburgh Festival, and I was just bored. I really miss the extra layer that the audience can provide.”
Crawford estimates that about half of a typical Secret Theatre audience is made up of people who don’t usually go to the theatre. His best-known immersive productions include an adaptation of Edward Scissorhands in 2010; Reservoir Dogs in 2013; Freakazoid in 2014, in which the central performer, in the role of an artist, has a meltdown; Romeo and Juliet in 2015; Evanesce, about wrongful imprisonment, in 2015; and futuristic courtroom drama Code 2021 in 2016.
