Hi Bertie, can you tell me a bit about CoLab Theatre?

CoLab Theatre is about building immersive theatre experiences with narrative at the core. We tell tales by putting people in the middle of stories and giving them the option to actively or passively watch as the story comes alive around them.

Your first project, the Fifth Column, involves some interesting technologies – what can you tell me about the digital aspects of the performance?

The Fifth Column is a spy story. We're using augmented reality to declaim part of story in the first section where audiences are gallivanting across London. They follow a digital breadcrumb across the city to discover different parts of the story as it unfolds. It's an amazing tool and when you see part of your landscape come alive from behind a screen, you're suddenly given this experience that is completely personal. It plays on that feeling you get when you know something others don't.

We're also using geolocation to get audiences to spot people in a crowd. There's a section in the show where you have to identify another audience member to swap information without ever having met them before. It's incredibly exciting – that moment when the person you're tracking is right in front of you and the password is said.

Another thing we're using is near field communication (NFC). It's amazing that now you can just swipe your phone on an NFC communicator and suddenly you're given a whole bunch of information. Putting that into a show is incredibly handy for the speed and usability for declaiming narrative.

And as an unintentional bonus, I've noticed the languages tool that Google provide on Android devices means we're able to do this show with people who don't speak English. The translator tool is so efficient that we could actually get audiences to interact with each other without even speaking the same language.

Why did you approach the play in this particular way?

I wanted to make a spy show but didn't have any money, so I needed to make it cheaply, if not for free. I knew we had to reduce the amount of actors but I didn't want to sacrifice the quality and production value, so I thought: why can't the audience be actors?

Audiences have changed as immersive theatre has become more popular. They're investing so much more into shows; they want to be part of it as much as possible. I've even seen people spend an additional £100 on getting a costume. All of this made me think about agency and what it means to be an audience member within an immersive show.

I'm always frustrated by a lot of the bigger immersive experiences and how they seem to offer you agency but actually provide a passive experience. Audiences should work against and with each other, essentially by becoming actors themselves. How do we do this? We give them a narrative to play along with on their phones.

What are the challenges of implementing these technologies and platforms?

I've struggled with marrying gaming with theatre. I want the narrative to be paramount but as with a lot of game-style shows, audiences get so wrapped up in objective they don't spend enough time registering the cathartic arch – especially with mobile phones. I think audiences will have a lot more of a tendency to just think of the videos as preamble than key narrative.

It's something I'm trying to work through now. I think it could be cured in several ways: training the audience on how to watch the show before the show (which ideally wouldn't need to happen); having them meet the character beforehand so they know who they're talking to; or longer shots of the character so you feel like you're getting to know them in a cinematic way. It's an ongoing struggle but one I'm enjoying.

Do you think there's ever a danger that technology could trump creativity?

No, so long as it's rooted in narrative. The reason I came up with the Fifth Column was because of monetary confinements and using tech meant I could do it. Technology is making shows possible that could never be imagined before. It's truly crossing that boundary between live performance and gaming.

Look at the video games industry: it's the third biggest industry in the world after steel and mobile communications. That's massive! It's showing that people are getting more and more invested in new ways of experiencing stories.

Saying that, cool gadgets can sometimes get in the way. Again, it comes down to narrative; tech should never be used for the sake of it, only when it adds to the story. That's why action films with an unnecessary amount of explosions are never that great. It's the same with immersive theatre – sometimes people get away with giving enough of an experience to cover up the fact that there's no story. I disagree with that.

This interview was co-commissioned with Arts Industry magazine

Bertie Watkins is founder and director of CoLab Theatre – follow him on Twitter @Bertie_Watkins

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