Big news for September onwards :)
- Chronic Insanity
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
Hello everyone, thanks for clicking through to read this blog post laying out our plans for the rest of the year!
Sorry if you haven’t heard from us for a while, the summer was both busy and complicated for us here at Chronic Insasnity in many ways, so we haven’t been as loud as we’ve wanted to be. However, it’s clear skies ahead for September and we’d like to let you know about how we’re doing and what we have planned moving forwards :)
To start with, I (Joe Strickland) was made redundant from my day job at the end of May. However, I’m trying to make the most of this opportunity so can now announce that I will be officially hired by Chronic Insanity as our AD/CEO from September 1st! Being able to finally make running this company my full time job after 6 years feels brilliant, if not a bit terrifying, but hopefully it'll be full steam ahead now that this can have my full attention!
And it couldn’t come at a better time given that bumper crop of shows we have planned for this autumn.
COLAB Residency:
In September we will be taking up residence at COLAB Tower in London Bridge every Saturday for a different interactive theatre experience.
Firstly, we are presenting our longest running interactive show, All Falls Down, at SIDE/STEP Festival on September 6th at COLAB Tower at 14:45 and 18:00. All Falls Down is an interactive storytelling adventure where the audience guides a group of friends after a plane crash in the Pacific Northwest. Based on the Dread RPG system, navigate the wreckage and surrounding wilderness, making choices that determine your fate and survival against a new hidden danger every show.
The week after, we’ll be bringing our playful revenge tale, Andy’s Coming, to COLAB Tower on September 13th at 15:30 and 19:30. Toy Story meets Kill Bill, the audience becomes the revenge seeking childhood toys of a university student after they've been abandoned at a charity shop. With the guidance of their magic 8 ball, the toys plot their comeback in this fully interactive TTRPG theatre show. Journey through the high street to find allies and supplies, before confronting your one time owner in a thrilling climax.
Following that, we’ll be bringing our H.P.Lovecraft inspired horror tale, Imprisoned with the Pharaohs, to COLAB Tower on September 20th at 15:40 and 19:30. An immersive horror experience inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s Imprisoned with the Pharaohs, as magicians and archaeologists exploring a pyramid, your choices will determine the story’s twists and turns. Will you confront the ancient foe or escape to safety? Every performance is uniquely crafted by you; How you respond to the adventure, how it responds to you, and whether the tower of bricks at the centre of it all, ready to be excavated, will instead topple and seal your fate.
Finally, during COLAB’s invitational theatre festival, we will be bringing two brand new shows to stages for the first time. Tate Accompli is a interactive storytelling show about a midnight heist that goes magically wrong inside the TATE Modern and will be performed at 17:00 and 20:30 on September 27th. We are also bringing an interactive storytelling magic show based on a series of shows we used to produce before we started Chronic Insanity, called Strangers: A Magic Play, for a special one off performance at 18:30 that same day.
However, if you can’t make it to London any of those weekends, do not worry! We have an exciting new avenue for us as a company happening that will allow you to experience our immersive and interactive work in your very own home.
All Falls Down: Sorroborough:
We have spent the last few months working on a play-at-home mystery adventure, based on our interactive stage show All Falls Down. All Falls Down: Sorroborough follows the story of five friends who survive a plane crash in the depths of the Pacific Northwest forests and have to try and solve the mystery of their crash while also contending with whatever threats or mysteries the forest might hold for them.
The game is fully written and illustrated, and about to be sent off to print a limited run of 100 units, but we are pre-selling copies over on kickstarter for £30 if you want to support us! You can also get prints of the character and box artwork, or even the naming rights to a character in a future game because this is not just one game, we are releasing but the first in hopefully 3-4 games a year that we’ll create as play at home experiences.
This style of collaborative role playing mystery game is called Jubensha, and is massively popular in Asia but little known in the UK. We are hoping to change that, and part of that change includes not only creating our own games, but creating a home for other games to be played in too.
Insanity Heights - Jubensha Parlour:
Back in February we got the keys to a new studio space in the heart of Hockley in Nottingham City Centre and we’ve been trying to figure out what we could do with the space. We’ve used it for storage, and for a few audio recording sessions throughout the year, but we always wanted to host more immersive experience there and create a home for small scale immersive theatre and gaming in Nottingham.
Now, we are introducing the space as Insanity Heights, Nottingham’s home for immersive and interactive storytelling. We’ll not only host our own Jubensha, but the other small number of English language Jubensha in existence, imported from all over Asia. We’ll also host similar interactive storytelling games and experiences every week, as well as an invite only interactive music event once a month, Allsorts Jamz.
Find out more on our ticket tailor page but clicking on the venue name, or to book our first event, a Nottingham exhibition of TATE Accompli. More to be added soon, so keep your eyes peeled for weekly events to staisfy all your immersive and interactive storytelling needs!
FableMosh:
Our online theatre streaming service FableMosh, has had it’s most recent original production added this past week. This means we have 6 original shows online for you to watch, as well as a plethora of work from Chronic Insanity and other theatre makers from the past few years, including:
Sluts With Consoles:
After a phenomenally successful Edinburgh Fringe run this summer, plus stints at Brighton Fringe and Camden Fringe, Sluts With Consoles will be touring the UK this autumn. We’re heading to Oxford on October 5th, Cardiff on October 10th and we might even be showing in Nottingham if there’s interest!
Ada:
In September we’ll be presenting the premier reading of Emily Holyoake’s play Ada at the UK’s national convention for the Python programming language, PyCon. I’m not sure if you can come along if you're not registered with the convention, but if you can we’ll be at Contact in Manchester on Friday September 19th at 18:30. Let me know if you wanna come and I’ll try and get you smuggled in maybe :P
Keep in touch:
As always, please do sign up to our newsletter to keep in touch with everything we have going on as a company. We keep hearing people say that they’re missing what we’re doing as social media isn’t showing them what we’ve been getting up to, so the only sure fire way to keep abreast of all the wonderful things we are doing is through our once-a-month-at-most newsletter.
We have even more planned this year as well as all this, in Nottingham and further afield, so do keep your eyes and ears peeled and, as always, if you have an idea for a show you think we'd be interested in please don't hesitate to get in touch with us to discuss :)
This month marks the start of our 7th year running Chronic Insanity, here's to many more!
All the best,
Joe
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