By Steve Cooke
This Spring Oldham Coliseum Theatre presents a welcome and much needed season of online events and experiences for audiences of all ages to enjoy, using interactivity and digital technology to transport audiences to different worlds and put them at the heart of the story.
From Friday 9 - Sunday 25 April Oldham Coliseum Theatre and Front Room Productions present Whodunnit at the Coliseum? – a tongue-in-cheek interactive murder mystery set at the theatre in 1954 on the opening night of The Scottish Play.
It’s moments before curtain-up and Front of House Manager Edward Fitch is found… dead! Everyone is a suspect – and it’s up to you to figure out whodunnit.
Front Room is a female-led theatre company existing to create site specific theatre in unconventional spaces. Whodunnit at the Coliseum? is part theatre, part film and part video game, all taking place online. Audiences can return to the theatre for the first time since March 2020 without physically leaving their homes. A series of choices will determine which scenes are seen and players have the opportunity to explore the theatre using a special game board.
In real life actor Harold Norman was accidentally stabbed during the 1947 production of Macbeth at the Coliseum, later dying of his wounds in hospital. Whodunnit at the Coliseum? is set during the theatre’s first production of Macbeth since the tragic event.
This March the Coliseum is supporting Riptide to present Project Intimacy from Thursday 4 – Thursday 18 March and working in partnership with Riptide to present The Lucky Ones from Saturday 20 – Friday 26 March.
Project Intimacy is a two-week experience which aims to forge new connections and combat isolation with people from across the country. Each audience member is paired with someone for a two-week experience in which they receive daily instructions and through SMS text messaging form a remote pairing, and maybe even a friendship. The experience is based on scientific evidence on how we make friends.
The Lucky Ones is a week-long experience that is part theatre, part video game and part escape room, coming to audiences via their phones, computers, and letterboxes. First contact will be made on Day One (20 March) and from there audiences will have parts of the narrative fed to them across the week. Audiences can play individually or in a team of up to four people.
Visit www.coliseum.org.uk