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Event Review: Saint Jude
Frank Wainwright went to one of the last performances of the immersive
theatrical AI driven drama, Swamp Motel’s Saint Jude. Here’s what he discovered.
TheriseandriseofAIis
something to love and something
tofear.IfSwampMotel’s
immersive theatrical production is
anythingtogoby–andIassure
you that it is – then there are
engagingandcreepyexperiences
lying in wait in the near future.
Whatmightbrandsdowiththis?
Once upon a time – and I use this
curtain-raiser of a phrase advisedly –
brands finally latched onto in depth
storytelling. Story immersion, story
gameplay at events, often tallied creative
scriptwriting with the experience. In
recent years some storytellers have
added a VR headset to draw participants
into their new world, though too often
these fall down when the tech is devised
to replace rather than engage the
imagination.
From the get go, I found myself
questioning everything around me. From
a personal level, I know these buildings. I
have been a reporter in the dark political
nests behind the tourism facades in the
Kremlin. I have found myself lost in
Ceausescu’s private underground station.
More recently I was wrongly held under
suspicion in grimy towerblock in Jakarta.
This place set off stay alert chills. I knew
I was going to be manipulated, and I put
up my defences – calm face, fake name
and fake DoB already at the ready.
As volunteers we then heard from smiling
Stefan. He was the calming-yetcalculating scientist who set out the rules
of communication with sleepers – and so
the premise of the game. He soon had us
going along with him to a clerical booth
set out with an ‘Echosump’ machine, a
phallic microphone and an incongruous
Saint Jude aims to immerse and build the little box of sand and mini rake. Older
generations: for the Echosump, think
engagement with tech, but without the
awkward big glasses. It uses real building, Commodore 64, BBC Micro and Blakes 7
real people acting, and a basic interactive and you have the vibe.
device – headphones and a mic. You put Headphones deployed, and we were
these on in character. They are part of
drawn into a question and answer
the script, so that putting them on forces interactive story told over the
you to more comopletely abandon the
headphones by an AI voice character.
person you arrived as and play along with Tech is advancing so quickly that the AI
a theatrical game. It is a game that will
has surely been outdated by a couple of
bring you to your own unique ending…
generations in the months between
scripting Saint Jude and the end of this
I’ll start back at the beginning, and also
production run. This lead to at least one
with a spoiler alert, though with Saint
Jude’s extended run now finished, there’s damning review, but most open-minded
reviewers played along the game and
probably nothing to spoil now.
doing so became immersed, as I did, by
We – the audience participants – arrived truly excellent and unsettling storytelling.
at 100 Petty France. This is the building
The chat and response method with the
that both neighbours and looms over St
AI worked like the page turner fantasy
James’ Park station. This run-down
novels
of the 1970s, and also owed a debt
municipal edifice is all classic beige and
of
heritage
to choose-your-direction
grey council style on the inside and
perfectly chosen as a setting for this grim games from the classic Deus Ex to the
more recent Detroit Become Human.
dystopian vision. St Jude is a social
science hospital lab where the volunteers These games force the player to align
themselves with or against the
– ‘us’ – come to communicate using
authoritarian machine. Talking to my
Orwellian tech, with ‘sleepers’, coma
sleeper with the right open questions and
patients.
12
Summer 2023
direct answers triggered further different
scripts to respond to.
I’m a natural rebel, but have also been an
investigator, so I kept my cards close to
my chest, checking my sand
surreptitiously (discovering the hidden id
card), whilst lying to the AI and playing
the role of a good obedient worker.
And that – kind of – was the ending that I
got, handed a good boy compliance report
card at the end, though mitigated in my
mind because it had my faked information
printed onto it.
Only I, and perhaps the actor playing
Stefan, knew something of the fully
unique ending that continued to play out
in my head. Stefan called me to his office
for my ascribed ending where some
heinous actions of the Saint Jude
organization were revealed to me. I like
to think I left Stefan with a glimmer of
doubt – had I been a prole who had been
brainwashed into siding with the fascists
or was I in fact the super-inspector of the
facility coming to mystery shop Stefan’s
out of hand operation? He and I will never
know, especially as my impro skills were
not up to speed with his excellent acting.
The astonishing thing was, though, that
we had got to this point in about half an
hour. In that mere hiccup of time I had
been told a story in an immersive and
interactive way that connected well
enough for me to be creating my own
ending whilst having a stab at acting back.
The potentials of Artificial Intelligence
are legion. But the human brain is a very
complex place where multiple scenarios
can be played out concurrently. I was an
actor in the script, a cog in the machine, a
reviewer at a play and a visitor to the
theatre all at once.
Swamp Motel understands this human
complexity wonderfully well and St Jude
was a very fine slice of immersive and
interactive storytelling. I cannot praise St
Jude more than to say that it is not
jarringly out of place in the canon of its
classic lineage of stories from 1984 to
Deus Ex.
From a brand experience perspective, my
main take away is this. Technology allows
you to engage with people in new ways,
but storytelling remains paramount to any
immersive event. Since our parents first
read to us, we have been attuned to the
shared story experience and human
interaction. If an event causes you to ask
questions – of yourself or of others –
then you have created a deeper
engagement.
Saint Jude asked many questions of me,
including some I hadn’t anticipated. It was
truly memorable.