"Lockdown" and the divided world
“Lockdown”, the boogeyman that many of us discuss in hushed whispers these days, and not for bad reasons. It took away our looks and touches, leaving behind ominous glowing images on a monitor Despite being trapped within the confinements of a screen we must with restriction. So, what if one asks someone to be in a lockdown within a lockdown. To take away, what little we have now and focus only on that one sensation. The show, Lockdown,” illustrates a world of conflict and cooperation through interactive theatre and participants' imagination. And through the interactions, it asks: “What does ‘unity’ mean in a divided world?”
To start with, I am biased in this review somewhat. The show costs 45 pounds per viewing and the production is not exactly high tier. And because of the online "zoom" nature of the show, your viewing experience may vary significantly. So, keep that in mind while reading my review.
LockDown is a show design by the UK group Morpheus to be an immersive online theatre experience. The piece was produced by Yana Greene, who adapted the piece from its original Russian story. Its real-world counterpart originated from a UK-based group “Punchdrunk” in 2000. The goal of an immersive theatre is to ask the audience to participate in the story by either directly influencing the outcome of a situation or act within the world to immerse themselves. Locked Down adapts this to an online format without cutting out too much of the core of interactive theatre.
The performance is done over a zoom call which includes 4 types of channels; a Game Master channel (who acts as the narrator), a character channels (who play the majority of the characters in the play), an effect channel (that play music/ sound effect on cue) and the players’ channels. The audiences who participate are required to wear a blindfold and must have their video/ microphone active for the duration of the experience. The structure of the play goes as follows: A Game Master (GM) describes a scene and then asks the group to describe their actions following that. The actions described by the players will affect future narrative beats and pacing. The setting for the world is one ravaged by a mysterious virus, the players awaken in an abandoned hospital and must figure out a way out.
There is a distinct atmosphere of dread and suspense set up by the GM, which the blindfolds help to compound the effects. And the world is described to be run down, with various detailed narration enhanced that atmosphere. The show is also designed as a puzzle to be continuously solved by the group. Hints and info provided by the GM’s narration are often relevant for the extent of the performance. But the hints are only provided if the participants did actions in the game to warrant it. From the start of the performance, there is a constant theme of illness and the cure. At the midpoint, 2 different warring factions (that the GM intentionally gave very little info on) are introduced added to the tension while providing an alternative perspective on the entire incident. Also, the theme of cooperation is reinforced every time the group needs to solve a problem or a threat. It is important to note again that the show is created in collaboration with the players, as actions performed by the player will have everlasting consequences in the subsequent scenes. For example, during a scene, a patient was found dying in a room. Our group left the man to die and moved on, only to find out later that we needed info from said man to solve a puzzle.
The LockDown seems to be inspired by the lockdown of London in "28 days later", with the character waking in hospital while the world goes to hell. It reflects the desperation and the fear of people in a pandemic, though the show is very dramatized on the effect of the disease. The “illness” of LockDown is described to cause the victim to lose hair and yellowish eye-white, these symptoms are often depicted in a horror movie to show the victim’s humanity fading away. The puzzle of the GM setup required a lot of teamwork, which shows the effort required to combat such a trial. There was 2 warring faction introduced later in the narrative that seems to provoke human nature to fight each even amidst chaos. The fact that so little info was given to the players before they were forced to pick a side indicates the desperation of the civilians and the lack of creditable humanitarian faction. And the little was provided paint both as a possible danger to the surviving world. One faction was described to be an anti-government gang group, while the other was a corrupt military outfit. Also, since the consequences of the player's actions will play out differently based on their action, choices made by the player will carry that much more weight. Also, the GM would add external sources of tension to heighten the anxiety when the group is deciding on an action. These effects help to sales the burden of making such difficult choices in stressful situations.
The choice of which of the two factions to aid reminds me of the final few months of 2020. While I am not involved in the politic of the US, I felt invested as a neighbor and an affected minority. I was told that picking one side over the other was “harm reduction”, and the promise of “normalcy”. For months before the election, the two-side bickered over the little compensation for the citizens during the outbreak. They argued over the rights of the policemen to kill minorities and then claimed all the praises of how to work they did through the squabbles. It felt like being in a pressure cooker where everything is on the line, and yet the feeling of things changing never arises. While there is no magical cure for the virus similar in the show, there is one thing that they have in common. The promise of fixing the broken only to be delay later for arbitrary reasons. Heartfelt gesturing that does nothing to help, and yet must be done again and again so that the people feel calm. In the show, our group went through hell, cooperating and adapting to reach the ending point where the story carries on in our imagination. In the real world, the cooperation to get us this US presidency seemed to have ended as Biden fails to address some of the pressing issues and went back to endless gesturing.
All in all, “Lockdown” did a good job presenting and immersing its audience in its world but the price does seem steep for the content on offer.
Work Cited:
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/nov/19/locked-down-the-scariest-show-you-will-never-see-review
https://morpheus-show.co.uk/lockdown
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