Some of the most interesting experiences that I had the chance to encounter in Virtual Arcade, Immersive branch of the Tribeca Film Festival, use VR technology only as one of the narrative devices. One such experience is Traitor, the brainchild of Pilot Theatre and Lucy Hammond. This espionage thriller for two audience members and two performers combines live action, interaction, puzzle-solving, and Virtual Reality and is incredibly successful in meshing them.
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| Traitor at Tribeca Immersive. Photo by Asya Gorovits |
As soon as my partner and I enter the room we are immediately put to work. Without skipping a beat, Commander Harris announces that we are the new recruits of the Digital Espionage Division on a mission to find a teenager spy Emma McCoy, who disappeared eight hours ago and might be in great danger. We must find her quickly and have to act in complete secrecy. In a rapid and tense voice, the commander points out the evidence attached to the case. The content of Emma’s backpack is arranged on the shelf in zip-lock bags. The maps of the locations across Great Britain connected to the case are displayed on one of the stands. The most promising clue is a thumb drive with a game that was found among Emma’s belongings and we are offered to begin with it.
My partner puts on the VR set. But the simple-looking game of rolling the ball into a target is not so easy for him because the controllers that allow to move objects in the game are under my fingers. By pushing buttons and joysticks on a massive black console I can clearly do something but I can’t see what exactly. So my partner and I have to communicate to each other what he sees and what I do in order to be efficient in solving the riddles. At some point, we switch and now I am doing my best to be descriptive of what I am seeing in VR while my partner assists on the console.
The puzzles are not too difficult to figure out and there is a second actor in the room with us who gently directs our attention in the direction of the answers if we falter. But the time is ticking and Commander Harris pops in occasionally to check on our progress in her uncompromisingly demanding manner. As we progress in solving the case of a disappeared teenager, we find new layers to it and soon are faced with a dilemma: do we finish the job that we were hired to do or do we follow our own instinct? The decision was made unanimously.
Traitor is swift and intense. The half-hour flies by incredibly fast and it feels packed; not only because of the number of puzzles that you need to solve, but also due to the sense of urgency conveyed through live performances and the ticking timer. Only by working together can the participants solve the puzzles and thus move the story along. There are moments where each needs to lead and the other one needs to follow. Each position, be it in the “parallel dimension” of VR or by the console, provides a set of clues, and only by piecing them together can the whole picture be assembled.
It was especially interesting to go through Traitor with a complete stranger. I noticed that I got impatient when my partner wasn’t describing what he sees in VR clearly enough. But by design of Traitor, I couldn’t do anything on my own so I had to put my ego aside and do my best at spotting my partner and “back leading” in this dance. Besides being an entertaining and thrilling political drama, Traitor also reminds its participants about the importance of tolerance in an attempt to work on something together.
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| Traitor |
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Traitor (World Premiere) – UK
Project creators: Pilot Theatre, Lucy Hammond
Key collaborators: Matt Stuttard Parker, Richard Hurford, Rebecca Saw, Lydia Denno, Jonathan Eato.
Duration: 30 minutes
(This review was published in Meniscus Magazine on May 27th)
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