A new immersive theatre show, The Apple of Discord, comes to The People's Hall Notitngham. We speak to Director Joe Strickland...

For anyone who’s never dipped a toe into immersive theatre before, what can they expect from Apple of Discord, and how is it different from your more traditional, audience-based show?

To answer your question the other way around, I think immersive theatre is different, because in traditional theatre we already know what the rules are; we know we are going to sit in the dark and passively observe the story. There’s a fourth wall between the audience and the action, and we don’t have to cross it in order to keep up with the story. That's good because it means that we know what to expect, but it's also bad because it limits the types of stories we can tell. It limits the parts of the story the audience can follow. If a character leaves the stage, we don't get to know what they do afterwards- the author and the director decide what story we get to see. And it's always one story.

Whereas with immersive theatre, there's much more agency for the audience to interact with the story, to follow characters they choose and see how those stories play out, or to sit down in one location and watch the story as it comes to you. It doesn't have to erase any of the benefits of traditional theatre; it just adds on more choice for the audience.

Apple of Discord is a sort of combination of three different types of immersive theatre. We've got the themed event, which is the wedding that bookends the show and is going on throughout the show on the ground floor. There'll be wedding entertainment, a bar, a cabaret, and then also characters in costume that you can talk to and be amongst in the wedding of Thetis and Pelias.

Then there's the promenade theatre style, where the audience will move around a space and see what performances are happening in different rooms, in different parts of the venue. Again, that more passive audience style where the characters can't necessarily see you, but you are there like a ghost, observing all these other things happening in the realm of the gods rather than the realm of the mortals.

Thirdly we also want to do sort of a live video game style as well- so we'll have quests. Characters will give you little jobs, tasks, expeditions, problems to solve, and you can then go and perform those throughout the show, whether that's finding or discovering things, solving puzzles, trying to get characters to talk or back together, doing little kinds of errands for some of them throughout myths and legends that we've all come to love. I think there's something there for everybody!

Apple of Discord takes its cue from Greek mythology. What was it about that world that made you think ‘this needs to be immersive’?

I think that there's a lot of familiarity with these stories, and because Greek mythology has been passed down it’s very much an oral storytelling tradition. It's only written down eventually. There also isn’t a single path of story, there are lots of different ways the characters can be expressed in different situations and talk to each other, where stories can sometimes have completely different outcomes depending on who's writing and what they're trying to say. Because these are myths that exist in isolation, they reflect society, politics, culture, life, family, death and grief, love and all of these things that are human rather than just ancient Greek or ancient in any way.

Plus, this story in particular is a really lovely paradox in the gods having absolute control over mortals, but also needing their belief because that's where the power comes from. And I think there are lots of modern, powerful, political people this is very similar to, trying to scramble for the last bits of power in the world before it all gets finished and capitalism is over. We're done and now everyone gets to kind of just live in new fiefdoms, but that power only exists if we care about it.

So, I think there are lots of messages already in the mythology that make it incredibly relevant as a story to tell, for an audience to experience, move through, decide where they put their attention. I think that's why we chose Greek. It's recognizable, a thing that people want to immerse themselves in and know more about; a lot of people grow up really loving Greek myths.

You’re staging the show at The People’s Hall, which is a Grade 2 listed building right in the heart of Nottingham. What made that venue the perfect playground for the show? Did the building shape the story in any unexpected ways?

We've been trying to find a building in the city centre to do a large-scale, immersive show for a number of years. And it's difficult because we don't have a massive budget, and landlords and letting agents don't always want to just hand a building over to a bunch of artists that they don't know. It really takes a lot of trust!

When we chatted to The People's Hall, it was clear they had a vision for their building - to turn it into a cultural centre in the city, especially with places like Nonsuch closing. There's not a lot of places for performance outside of the Playhouse and one organisation can't run a city's worth of culture. You need a variety of places.

They'd already hosted a couple of events there for Hockley Hustle or for the skateboarding festival - but those were always in one room downstairs. Wanting to reopen the whole building and explore potential for all the space, we saw the venue first, then chose a story and wrote a script for it.

There's a long tradition in our company and in general, about site specific and sympathetic work; the idea of writing a show to fit into a space that you have. Sometimes it is about logistics and resources - why write a show set in the ocean, or in the desert, or in the jungle and have to bring all of these props, set and costume pieces in when you already have a beautiful building that looks lovely. You just have to write a story that makes sense- and a slightly dilapidated, previously grand building felt like a good location to hold a folksy wedding, as well as look at the downfall and collapse of the power structures within the realm of the gods on Olympus.

Immersive theatre often blurs the line between audience and performer. How brave does the audience need to be - and what would the best way be for them to interact with the show?

I think the most important thing is that with our show, you don't have to do anything. It's very much signposted clearly which areas are interactive and which are more passive, and levels of interaction, too.

The communal area is a more traditional cabaret space and there are some costume characters, if you just want to sit down, have a drink and watch some cool stuff happening. It's very much a space where you could dip your toe into anything the show has to offer. And then upstairs we have more traditional immersion, where you're not actually interacting, you're just watching stories happening around you, the characters aren't seeing you and you're not talking to them. And then we've got the questing, which is much more active and interactive.

So yeah, we really designed this to try and look at the whole breadth of what ‘immersive’ could be and to bring that to Nottingham. One of the big things about this is to try and make it affordable, bring it out of London and make it easy to access for people, because it's such a great art form and we want people to experience it. If we just did one type of immersion, we wouldn't be letting people experience its full force; so we wanted to try and bring as many different ways of interacting to new audiences as possible.

There'll be people coming in who know exactly what they want to do and also (we're under no illusion), people who are dragged because friends and family want to come see, and they're like: “Oh, okay, I'll come along, but I don't know about all this immersive stuff”. And that’s fine - you can sit and treat this as three shows in a row that are all thematically linked if you want, or one big show, or lots of little, tiny experiences going on, like a farmers’ market of different cultural stuff happening that you can engage with. 

There's no correct way to approach it, and the best way to come is with zero expectations. A lot of people say to imagine you're walking through a dream. You just turn up, be a body in the space. And if you have an instinct to go in a certain direction, follow a certain story or performer or take part in a certain way, then go ahead.

On a more personal note, what drew you to immersive theatre as a director? Was there a particular show or moment in your career that made you think, ‘this is the kind of storytelling I want to do’?

Chronic Insanity has done a lot of immersive theatre; when we started the company six years ago, we did a lot of site-specific work. We were doing plays, sometimes traditional, sometimes new writing we'd made in rooms above pubs, in basements, at museums, in Wollaton Park and outdoor spaces. We just did stuff wherever there was already a cool space, we couldn't really have lighting or sound design.

Over the last six years, we've acquired all the equipment and all the people we need to do a larger show, because you can’t fill a five-story building with only two performers! We now have over thirty artists working on this show, writers, performers, designers of all shapes, sizes, styles and art forms, as well as a few other people involved. We have dancers, acrobats, we're even hoping to get a magician, loads of musicians, it's going to be full of stuff to give that sense of grandeur that the gods and a wedding needs!

We've done a lot of different immersive work over the years as well, like digital immersion with sound design, and we've done virtual reality shows with performances all around the country, but this is definitely our largest to date. And it's going to be bringing everything we've learned into one show to really put the immersive industries and Nottingham’s artists on the map!

Finally, Greek myths are famously dramatic. Without giving too much away, what moments from Apple of Discord are you most excited for people to experience? Are there any vignettes that you want to make sure audiences don’t miss?

Firstly, I think it's important to say that it is impossible to see everything. We’re making a show that is so vast and so big that if you come in for the full three hours you can't sit down and complete the show. You can see almost all of it, but there are going to be little one-off events that only happen once a night and you need to be in the right place at the right time in order to experience them. A lot of those are going to be some of my favourite parts of the show when they happen. They'll be moments, particularly going into the bowels of the building, the basement, and the cave areas.

There’s also a lot of music built into the show. I'm really looking forward to the way that we've helped weave modern music and all of the genres in with different myths, both well-known and lesser-known, too. We’ve been collaborating with the classics department at the University of Nottingham to help write the story and consult on it, and we were bringing up things that some of them hadn't necessarily even heard of before. So even if you feel like you're a big fan of Greek mythology, there'll be some stuff in here that you might not be familiar with, and that's great! You get to discover stuff as well as everyone else - there's going to be a lot of those elements.

But when it comes to other moments, it’s always difficult to say because we can't fully rehearse an immersive show until the audience is there, right? So, half of our cast (the audience) aren't going to turn up until the performance, as it were. We have to be ready for them and rehearse what we can, but I know that those moments will be the best moments, the things that we didn't necessarily plan for. They're going to be moments of improvised, amazing stuff that will take shape once we start getting people in there and seeing how they play with the show; how we react to that and how they react to it. Now they're co-creating with us and we're all communicating and building something together!

Apple of Discord, a large-scale immersive theatre show takes place at The People's Hall from Mon 30 March until Sunday 5 April 2026.