Promax- Channel 4 Conference

RIFT were commissioned to curate a corridor in the Faraday Royal Institution for a Channel 4 conference called 'Promax', focusing on the Future of Storytelling. This took place during the days of the 31st of October and the 1st of November 2014. We also had a £150 budget for actor's rate, costume, hair and make-up ect.

The concept we used in terms of the corridor was that it was part of a Grand Exhibition of time travellers. Some of the inspiration and research included time travel, early broadcasting, Victoriana, body parts, inventions, cabinets of curiosities and more.

As part of the project, myself and Martha Rumney of 'Dogs Of War Theatre' created the character of Frankenstein's Creature, employing Joanne Wells as our hair/ costume/ make-up artist, as well as employing Riley Madincea to write us a few monologues for the actor (Callum Cameron).

Frankenstein's Creatute inhabited the space and interacted with the conference attendees over the two days, using the monologues and structured improvisation to convey a wider stoty/ concept.

The concept was as follows:

'There is a Time Station, which has monitored humanity from the dawn of time and chartered their progress and evolution.

It is made up of various objects which act as its internal organs, such as a notebook or a pair of glasses, and these are strategically placed around the world like a web so that the Time Station can monitor humanity.

Throughout history, these objects have been discovered and moved (such as one in the Amazonian Rainforest, another in a cave in France) by various figures who have therefore hindered the workings of the Time Station.

It has pulled them all through rifts into the 21st century to place the objects back into the Time Station, so that it can redistribute them around the world and continue monitoring.

Frankenstein's Creature has been tracking the movements of this device and has been trying to find it for years. He thinks that by re-uniting all the objects back into the Time Station that he will be able to control the opening and closing of rifts.

He feels that to create his perfect woman, he can use parts of historically significant and powerful women such as Joan of Arc and Mary Magdalene, and by controlling rifts in time he will be able to travel backwards and forwards and harvest them to build his perfect female counterpart.'

Although this was a fairly complex narrative to convey over two days, the extremely hard work of the actors meant that the guests/ audience sensed there was some sort of 'bigger game' in play.'

To get the chance to work with Channel 4 was an incredible experience, and we also were given the chance to build and design our own characters from scratch, and experiment with varying levels of audience interaction.