RAW TRANSPORT™ 

RawTransport™ is a travel company that can take you anywhere using the magic of virtual reality. All you need is a TourGuide™ headset that allows you to experience another world with all five senses.

When I heard about Electrick Village’s immersive theatre experience, I was excited to try out of a VR headset, and was a little disappointed to find I had an ‘economy class’ ticket, which was viewing only. Watching someone in a VR headset have an experience in front of you is quite odd, but I think having ‘economy class passengers’ is essential for the production. The actors play manically-positive flight attendants, and make the experience fun for the viewers, as well as for the VR travellers, but in the end, the show wasn’t wholly satisfying. RawTransport™ is an exciting idea, and a project which has the potential to be really fun, but just needs a little more polish.    ★★★☆☆

SURGE  

Performance artist Channie B has created Surge as a piece of theatre addressing and questioning stereotypes and prejudices. She moves silently around the stage, while sound, created and performed by Curtis Arnold Harmer, is layered over the top. The soundscaping is beautiful, but the production gets off to a rather slow start, not really hitting its stride until halfway through. At first, I felt that some of the poetic allusions and symbolism were slightly heavy-handed, but as the performance developed, there were moments which were really moving, such as the actor becoming distressed at the sound of recordings of young people of colour being stopped by police for nothing more than the colour of their skin. There were some real moments of emotional connection with the audience, and the more than the artist develops these, the better this production will become, and the more she’ll be able to convey her important message.   ★★★☆☆

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