Artists David Rosenberg and Glen Neath have been making work
together on and off since 2011. In 2016
they invited producer Andrea Salazar to work with them on creating a series of
dark shipping container shows, using immersive experiences to explore fear and
anxiety and DARKFIELD was born. We spoke with Glen Neath about DARKFIELD’s
latest touring container show FLIGHT and the inspiration behind it.
LPAC: DARKFIELD
are at the forefront of using binaural 360 degree sound in theatre but where do
they get their ideas from?
Neath:
Well, the shows always grow out of our policy of placing each audience member
at the centre of the experience. We then explore ideas that suit our use of
darkness as a tool to free the imagination. For instance, FLIGHT began out of
our desire to put an audience on a replica aeroplane. And that gave us a
license to have some fun with the fears and anxieties around flying.
LPAC:
But despite the sensory effects FLIGHT is definitely no flight-simulator?
Neath:
No, not in a traditional sense, although audiences really do feel like they are
taking off, this is more a simulator of multiple outcomes. In making the show,
we read David Deutsch’s The Fabric of Reality and this inspired our narrative
around the possibility that a number of scenarios might actually be playing out
at the same time. David Deutsch’s book,
is the physicist’s
attempt to draw
together contemporary theories of
how we experience
the universe, and
in a similar way
FLIGHT is a
coming together of
theatre and Quantum Mechanics. “Specifically the many-world’s theory of
the Multi-verse,” the idea proposing that every time there is more than one
possible outcome, all of them occur, simultaneously. Countless worlds of
varying similarity where anything that can happen is already happening – in
FLIGHT you’re on a plane, there’s a couple of versions of the slightly unhinged
captain on the loose, both trying to play out a different outcome… what could possibly
go wrong?
LPAC:
Certainly, audiences feel directly immersed in the alternative outcomes,
and without giving
anything away, one
does feel that
maybe what we are
experiencing is unique to us – a technique that I assume is deliberate?
Neath:
Both David and myself are interested in the role of an audience in the
theatrical event, we always endeavour to place everyone in the container at the
centre of an unfolding narrative. This is the key to the work. We don’t stage plays, we formalise an idea
around how an audience member will engage with the narrative and then work
outwards. On this occasion we hope that how we take audiences to their
‘destination’ is new and unexpected – and makes them glad to feel alive!”