This was an immersive theatre experience funded by a brand which is quite common, especially as theatre companies often find working on events for commercial companies a good way to fund their main theatre work.

 

Whilst it was an experience that enabled “participants to discover how sound transforms their surroundings”[4] it failed to show how these speakers could be positioned within the home as you couldn’t see them.

 

It was very predictable once you were inside the experience especially as due to its slow place I felt I’d got over a scene before it had finished and was ready to move on but had no control over whether I could.

 

I struggled to lose myself if the world of the inner ear and the mind because the realities of the space were very apparent and badly constructed. At one point an audience member opened a door that shouldn’t have been opened which killed the alternative world aspect of the experience.

 

Throughout the experience we followed the instructions of a recorded voice which I’m sure can work very well but here it felt slightly restrictive. I don’t know what would have happened if any audience members had chosen to disobey the instructions, no one did. Les Enfants Terribles has used this technique in other shows (e.g. Alice’s Adventures Underground) where the audience follow a guide, performer or recorded instruction to move from scene to scene and it was very successful.

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You could also hear other parts of the experience that we hadn’t got to yet because there was an audience being rotated through the experience ahead of us.

 

I was fortunate to be able to have an informal discussion with two audience members about their experiences of visiting the IKEA experience.

 

One of them has been to lots of immersive theatre shows and performs in them which jaded her experience as she pre-empted all the activities they had to do in each room. Her husband who has been to lots of immersive shows liked it a lot and was better able to lose himself in the experience. They went through the jealousy pathway whilst my group went through joy. These were the same but with a different recording for each group in the holding room with the footprints.