Interview: Jem Wall, Co-Director of Immersive Experience 1984, Talks About 'Making Theatre in the Present Tense', Accessibility and Putting the Audience at the Centre

Big Brother is watching you. And you. And you. The surveillance society envisaged in George Orwell's seminal 1984 is brought to vivid life at Hackney Town Hall this month. Produced and written by Adam Taub of Pure Expression Theatre, this "unique new immersive experience" is co-directed by Richard Hahlo and Jem Wall. As co-founders of their own company Hydrocracker, the duo already have an impressive track record when it comes to critically-acclaimed immersive theatre with a sharp political edge: Operation Black Antler asked its audience to go undercover and infiltrate a fictional far-right group and was called by The Guardian's Michael Billington "serious and challenging". 

We spoke to Jem Wall about bringing this classic and timeless novel to the stage.  

1984 is first and foremost seen as a political allegory but is also a commentary on social mores and a love story. Which aspects of the book most speak to you?

Orwell’s 1984 has had, and continues to have, a powerful political resonance. A lot of our work has been to keep it simple and let it speak for itself. To us, that means a lean script, clear storytelling and a lucid acting style to match Orwell’s language. Simple, of course does not mean easy. Simplicity is hard work!

We are keen to make the love story between Winston and Julia really land. If the audience sense the possibility of what could exist between them, then when it is taken away and crushed the political becomes personal.

How did you come to choose Hackney Town Hall as the site for 1984?

Our producer Adam Taub hit upon the idea of Hackney Town Hall as The Ministry Of Truth and has forged a brilliant relationship with them. The Town Hall has been super friendly and accommodating and excited to have a live theatre event in their building.

Where did the passion for creating site-specific and immersive works come from?

Co-director Richard Hahlo and I are both actors who wanted to explore a closer relationship with an audience. A lot of the work we had done as actors involved the audience sitting in the dark and watching. While a lot of that theatre is excellent, we were excited for the audience to become more active, have some agency and be in it as participants not passive audience members. So we set up our theatre company Hydrocracker to do just that.  

We did five short Pinter plays (One for the Road, The New World Order, Precisely, Mountain Language and Press Conference) as a single work called The New World Order in Brighton and Shoreditch Town Halls; people went on a literal and metaphysical journey from the top of the building to the police cells below. We mapped Joe Orton’s The Erpingham Camp onto Brighton Pier where the audience were either redcoats or campers and, in Operation Black Antler. participants were skilled up as undercover police to infiltrate a far-right anti immigration group holding an event in a nearby pub.

It was on the back of this work that Adam Taub the writer and producer of 1984 invited us to recreate 1984 in Hackney Town Hall. Adam’s script and the perfect casting of Hackney Town Hall as the Ministry Of Truth were irresistible.

Immersive theatre is experiencing something of a boost since the pandemic with both large and intimate shows on the rise. Do you feel that the marketplace for shows such as yours has become more competitive or that the public appetite for immersive theatre has grown since lockdown?

Yes, I would agree the appetite for people wanting to be together and share live experiences since lockdown is strong. Understandably so. Competitiveness though, does not seem a factor to me. I think there is plenty of variety in what companies are offering in terms of “immersive” and "site specific”. It covers everything from escape rooms, themed nights out, installations as well as the more narrative led work like ours.

After three productions for your own Hydrocracker company, 1984 will be the fourth you have worked on since 2020. What sparked this burst of activity? 

Definitely! Lockdown actually gave us at Hydrocracker a (forced) period where we couldn’t work which actually led us to think more deeply about what we wanted to do differently. We realised that almost all our previous work was inaccessible to many people.

We knew we couldn’t do everything at once but started to explore how to work with D/deaf audiences and creatives. Arts Council supported us with an emergency grant and we made a short film Before The Flame Goes Out with D/deaf poet Raymond Antrobus and the wonderful actor Nadia Nadarajah which was made with a creative access aesthetic.

Since then Northampton Royal & Derngate partnered with us and Deafconnect (a hub for the D/deaf community in Northampton) and we made WHO CARES 2032 - a digital experience about the future of healthcare. I have even passed my Part 1 British Sign language qualification. While this production of 1984 is not accessible to D/deaf or visually impaired audiences it is fully wheelchair accessible.

Your work has often had a social and/or political context. Where did this focus originate?

Richard and me were a generation of actors for who theatre was about change. We wanted the audience to feel or think differently about the world or their lives afterwards. But a lot of the work we found ourselves doing was not really achieving that so Hydrocracker was a way we could make theatre “in the present tense”.

This production of 1984 which casts the audience at the centre of the evening as applicants who want to join the Ministry Of Truth really feels like it can have a strong and visceral conversation with people today about freedom, integrity, language and complicity from the world of' long ago' 1984. After all, they "who control the past control the future”.

Finally, what are your plans for 2024 and beyond? 

We hope this production of 1984 might have a life in 2024.

Hydrocracker is developing a new immersive work about taxi drivers and developing a community storytelling project in Whitehawk in Brighton. I will be appear in an episode of the new series of Disney’s Andor and can be seen in the new Steve Maqueen movie both due to be released in 2024

1984 will be take place at Hackney Town Hall with previews from 19 October and opens on 26 October. 

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