Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog

For this second Brighton Festival site-specific, immersive show, I was texted with the location just twenty-four hours in advance It soon became obvious that nine of the others at the same place were there for the same reason. We were soon texted another location around the corner. This was the Ops Room where we were given our instructions to go under cover on a mission to infiltrate a domestic extremist group and get information about individuals within it. We were split into smaller groups and given directions to our next location, a nearby pub where a party was in full swing, band playing and bar serving drinks.

I mingled, approached and talked to people and eventually found my ‘target’, who after much persuasion introduced me to someone else who recruited me. After a while we were instructed to leave and meet our handler for a debrief. What was clever about the piece is the choice of a group unlikely to appeal to people attending such an event, so you didn’t automatically sympathise with them. Though I was a bit nervous during the briefing, I found myself adopting my chosen persona and getting drawn in to both the group, saying some shitty stuff that would never normally pass my lips, and the mission itself. When we were thanked for the info. we obtained, I felt strangely proud of my undercover skills!

It was a rather sociable experience as you worked in small teams and spent a lot of time talking to people, albeit most in character, though it wasn’t at all clear who were ‘audience’ and who were the 30 or so real ‘actors’. Like the brilliant BBC series Undercover, it certainly made me think about the whole issue.