The Immersive 5 with Swamp Motel’s Clem Garritty and Ollie Jones
The endlessly inventive London team talks immersive fundamentals ahead of the opening of ‘Saint Jude’
Swamp Motel, the London based immersive entertainment company, has been impressing audiences with their storytelling prowess since first making a mark with the Isklander series of online adventures and made their live-action mark with the much buzzed about The Drop.
Now the team, led by creators Clem Garritty and Ollie Jones is gearing up for their live action adventure with Saint Jude, set in a world where cutting edge technology allows people to go inside the unconscious minds of those thought lost to irreversible comas. What could go wrong?
The Immersive 5 series asks creators across the various immersive disciplines the same five questions in search of both their approach to crafting work, and the elusive nature of immersive work itself.
For more on Swamp Motel, check out our podcast interview with Clem, and our review of The Drop.
NO PROSCENIUM: What does “immersive” mean to you, and what terms do you use when talking about your own work?
SWAMP MOTEL: Ultimately, anything can now be called immersive. Someone could probably find justification for describing walking into a room and eating a chocolate digestive as an immersive experience. Is that good? Bad? Both?
I think for us ‘immersive’ isn’t just about creating a physical space that audiences can explore and interact with, but also creating real moments of surprise. We believe you’re more genuinely immersed when the lines between reality and fiction are carefully blurred and your choices are able to affect the narrative in a meaningful way.
NP: What should every creator be thinking about first and foremost when designing for the audience?
SM: Well, firstly: who is your audience, and what are their expectations? If you’re creating an experience for an audience coming to a gig, their expectations are going to be different from those coming to an escape room. Ultimately we like to try and play with audience expectation. Our last live show, The Drop, was marketed as a thrilling escape room, but really it was just a front for a more free-form, decision-based theatre experience.
Our next show, Saint Jude is completely different. It relies much more on player choice, decisions and gentle storytelling. It’s a very personal experience where we’re exploring telling a story in a totally different way. Which is exciting!
NP: What did you wish you knew when you were starting out with this stuff and what’s the one thing you’d tell a creator starting out today?
SM: The financial model tends to be pretty horrible, so be inventive. Part of the reason we work with brands is because we’re able to channel some of the profits into our independent projects to make them feasible. Essentially you want to tell stories that can take any form imaginable. You don’t need to hire a building or a room to do that in. Our big break came entirely online. We were the fortunate recipients of circumstance with a lockdown audience, but the canvas for thinking outside the box was still there.
Also — find your tribe, meet people, collaborate; the best way to make the best work is to do it with talented people.
NP: Why do this kind of work and not something more “traditional” that might have more mainstream appeal at the moment?
SM: If you look around the ‘immersive scene’ in London at the moment it could well be argued this is the mainstream choice — it’s such a vibrant mix of games, attractions and experiences that it’s not fringe entertainment for those ‘in the know’ anymore.
In terms of why — it’s a platform that allows you to explore not just theatre, but gaming, escape room mechanics, diverse narrative ideas, audience interaction and unique approaches to using a space. We feel it offers both us as creators and our audience much more than traditional approaches.
NP: What inspirations — and anything is fair game here — are currently shaping your creative practice?
SM: The gaming world informs a lot of what we’re currently creating, whether that’s exploring how narratives are crafted within video games, or how rewards are earned in board games, it’s an artform that has always given its audience agency and invited them to explore and uncover the narrative at their own pace — we think that’s exciting. Ultimately those large scale immersive experiences we’re all familiar with are trying to do what video games do: build an interactive world that you can explore with the illusion of total freedom, where your role changes what happens within that world in a way that’s unique to you.
With Saint Jude this all remains true — but on a much more intimate level, where you take the hand of a single character and go on a personalised journey together.
We’ve also enjoyed some really brilliant books this year: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, The Premonitions Bureau by Sam Knight, Neuromancer by William Gibson, Eight Detectives by Alex Pavesi and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon.
Please go to www.saintjude.ai to learn more about the new show!
And follow us on Instagram @swampmotel and Twitter @swampmotel (if Twitter still exists by publication)
Discover the latest immersive events, festivals, workshops, and more at our new site EVERYTHING IMMERSIVE, new home of NoPro’s show listings.
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