the village | Persona- New

The Village - Site-Specific, Immersive Theatre in Soho & Chinatown

The Village was a multi-location immersive theatre piece devised and staged by Persona Collective inside Soho & Chinatown. The live shows took place from 30th March until 19th April 2023. This project celebrates the diversity & tolerance of Soho’s local community & indie businesses with a narrative based on real voices and in real unique locations in the local area. This projects was supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England

The audience found themselves stepping into an intimate journey across multiple secret locations throughout Soho & Chinatown; weaving through hidden passageways. Their journey was a multi-sensory experience - somewhere between fiction and reality. Each group of audience were following one character’s story, whilst witnessing threads of multiple narratives throughout their journey. Audience members described the experience as “being immersed inside of a film” or as “hyper-real, it was never clear whether something was reality or an artistic construct”.

Through out the project we worked closely with the LGBTQ+ communities and Soho’s local businesses & residents. Together we co-created a multi-location immersive theatre & build a set/installation in a gallery, all in Soho.

Since December 2022, the collective were running a series of free workshops with the members of the community and surroundings through the community programme called LOVE+ project. Participants from PERFORMANCE+ had the opportunity to learn how to act, dance and get ready to perform in front of an audience, while the other group of participants from DESIGN+ were learning to design the lighting and sound as part of the live show.

LINK GALLERY - THE VILLAGE

Photo by Edmund Fraser, performer Emily George

Photo by Edmund Fraser, performer Ning Chou

(...) The colourful contrasts remind us of of Hitchcock when the intermittent flashing lights are in perfect sync with the actors’ movements (...) The show is not only screaming David Lynch’s imagery and atmospheres, you are inside them!

- Marcela Iriarte Villalobos

Click here to full review

"The experience was something between watching a fragmented movie, being in a haunted house, and being in touch with your memories all at once, as the story that was being told was not in chronological order. The interactive way that we walked through the building added an extra element of voyeurism..."

Click here for full review

Photo by Edmund Fraser, performer Ting-Ning Wen

Photo by Edmund Fraser, performers Sally Sally Plowman, Amanda Kamanda, Valentine Bordet, Anna Fill, Tony Towell

"Persona Collective immersive theatre shows, are the most prolific and ambitious projects I have come across in the past few years. 'The Candidate' , 'The Halfway House' & 'The Village' are undeniably pushing the boundaries of experimentation, constantly questioning what live performance means today. Their scenarios are visually and conceptually curated to the minimum detail, and yet they leave space to the audiences to be part of it. I truly believe Persona Collective artistic research will have a big impact on the theatre community and beyond." - Marcela Iriarte Villa Lobos

Documentation The Village