Step Inside a Stranger’s Mind: The Immersive World of bold new theatre show Where We Meet

In an age where technology often isolates us, a bold new theatre performance ‘Where We Meet’ dares to do the opposite—using cutting-edge motion capture, XR, and spatial audio to forge deeper human connections. At the heart of this immersive experience is Clemence Debaig, Artistic Director of Unwired Dance Theatre. Her innovative approach transforms the stage into a dynamic, interactive space where audience members don’t just watch but actively shape the performance. We caught up with Clemence to talk about the magic of dance, tech, and the unexpected beauty of eavesdropping on a stranger’s thoughts.

Hi Clemence! Thanks for talking to us about Where We Meet. Can you describe the show to us in your own words?

Where We Meet is a joyful and communal experience made possible through innovative technology that allows the audience to access the inner thoughts of the characters. Our starting point is that we can really never know what is happening in someone's mind and we wanted to give access to those inner worlds to spark a new kind of empathy. Each character is revealing their own challenges and vulnerabilities as a way to get to the point and connect faster at a deeper level. The audience who pick the Active Participant ticket will move around the space to decide which character to engage with, it's a sort of "chose your own adventure" format. As they approach a dancer, thanks to our spatial audio technology, they will have the feeling of entering the character's mind while seeing them embody that inner monologue through choreography. At first, it might feel like eavesdropping into someone's mind and slightly voyeuristic. But as the piece develops, the dancers can trigger moments of interactions to build a rapport. Those can be gentle gestures, or grounding meditations. This leads to joyful shared moments between audiences and performers and even between audience members themselves.

Now, this show uses wearable technology, motion capture and XR. Can you break down how these elements work together in real time?

We subvert motion capture and XR technologies to enable the spatial audio part of the piece. We track the position of the audience in realtime in the space to stream the audio accorsing to where they are in the space and who they are looking at. To give a more tangible description, by knowing how close they are to a dancer, we can enable to correct level of audio, similarly to getting to someone talking in real life. The audio is also directional, so we sometimes have situations where the audience can stand in between 2 characters and hear one monologue in one ear and other character in the other ear.

We use wearable technology mainly for the dancers to control the performance. They are the ones pacing the piece and deciding what is being shared with the audience in real time. Through the device attached to their arm, they have access to various categories of content, from more intimate thought to group interactions. And this is how they can react to the behaviour of the audience in the space and made each performance truly unique.

The whole system runs in real-time and synchronously. So if a dancer makes a decision on their end, it will impact all the participants around them in real-time so everyone can live this communal experience together. It's a lot of devices connected and a lot of networking!

What inspired you to integrate this level of technology into a dance/theatre production and how do you see this kind of technology shaping the future of live performance?

I have been working at the intersection of dance and technology for almost 15 years now so this was pretty natural to include this in our creation process. Similarly for my co-director Livia-Massarelli who has worked with tech before. But this project as a slightly different origin. It was born through the Dansathon 2021, a European dance-hackathon, inviting Creative Technologists, Dancers, Designers and Producers to explore a concept together over 3 days. Our original idea won the Grand Prize for the event and we started from there.

Interestingly, having worked on other complex dance-tech projects involving motion capture, VR, interactive projections, etc. The tech can quickly be forgotten in Where We Meet and recentres the attention on the humans in the room. Which was our key intention where the project started, still in the middle of the pandemic. Being surrounded by so much technology, especially for communication, we wanted a way to reconnect, human to human.Where We Meet is described as an exploration of human connection in a disconnected world. What do you hope audiences take away from their experience?

We want audiences to leave the space having found a renewed joy for reconnecting with others. And feeling that sharing more about our vulnerabilities is what can help us empathise and relate to others. We also believe that the technology we use everyday can give us this constant illusion of being connected but to truly connect with someone it requires active engagement.

What are your hopes for the future of Where We Meet?

We would love to bring Where We Meet to broad range of audience around the UK and hopefully internationally. We love see different people interact and hearing how the audience relates to the work. So we can't wait to take it on tour!

Additionally, we are starting a new R&D, funded by the Arts Council England, to explore new modalities to make the work more accessible, with a specific focus on mobility, deaf and hard-of-hearing participants and sensory needs. With the innovative format we are offering for the show, we have identified that traditional theatre access guidelines are not always relevant. And it is important to co-create solutions with consultants and disabled participants directly. As part of the project we will also publish our findings and guidelines for other artists and makers to use.

What’s one piece of technology (real or fictional) that you wish existed for theatre-making?

I would some magic technology that take away all of the admin, funding, production and marketing activities so we can focus on making innovative theatre!

Where We Meet is at the Cockpit Theatre from Friday 28th February – Sunday 2nd March, with up to 6 performances per day. For more information,visit: https://www.thecockpit.org.uk/show/where_we_meet Tickets from £16.45