The Flight & The Seance

(Pitch)

An alternate reality game and interactive theatrical performance. Depicting the doomed inaugural flight of The R-101, what was at the time the largest airship in the world, and the seance two days later where the spirit of the captain explains what went wrong. The game takes place on a conjoined set depicting both the HMS R101 and The National Laboratory of Psychical Research in the year 1930 in London.

On Oct. 4, 1930 at 6:24pm the airship HMS R101 took off from Cardington, England on a passenger trip to Karachi (then part of British controlled India). On October 5th at 2am eyewitnesses in Beuvais, France watch the airship crash, catch fire and explode. Of the 54 people on board only 8 escaped the flames.

Two days later on October 7th a psychic named Eileen Garrett holds a seance, in an attempt to speak with the recently deceased author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research in London. Instead of reaching the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Garrett was inhabited by the spirit of Flight Lieutenant H.C. Irwin, Captain of the R101, who then went on to give an account in detail of the crash. When a subsequent seance was held with a member of the Air Ministry who knew Irwin and several other members of the crew he was convinced that Garrett really was contacting Irwin.

This is a ‘true’ story.

(It should be noted that whether Eileen Garrett truly was able to contact the spirit of Irwin it makes for an intriguing world to play a game in.)

This project would require the building of two sets and the scripting of two separate events that are linked by theme, timing and in the audience's’ ability to participate. Audience members will enter either The Flight or The Seance. In each scenario there will be a variety of different ‘missions’ built in to the performance. Players will be able to interact and play those missions which if completed will lead them to a memorable moment or interaction that they can only see if they finish the mission. Players can spend their entire time in The Flight or The Seance and play all of the missions in that scenario. Although at certain points in the campaign they will be able to cross over to the other scenario. Both events will have satisfying elements for audience members that stay in the same space the entire time but if they move between each space they can experience much more of the story.

Players will receive an invitation to The Seance or a ticket to The Flight. For anyone who starts in The Flight they will find The Seance to be a new secret world and vice versa. Since this an alternate reality game the information will begin being sent to players before they arrive. Utilizing old fashioned snail mail we can start the story before arrival. Sending a package specific to the experience they will be having. The Flight will have challenging gameplay as will The Seance but when finishing a mission on The Flight the kind of rewards and interactions will be very different from those in The Seance.

Example of a game mission on The Flight. A player can choose to follow a mute character, The Daughter. This character, who will not have spoken at any point in the story so far, loves puzzles. The mission start would take place in her stateroom where she brings a team of players and shows them the first in a series of progressively harder escape room style challenges. Once they follow through all of the puzzles which will have a focus on music and singing it will culminate in a secret operatic performance from the “mute” character for those that complete all of the steps.

During The Seance several of the guests will be depictions of true crime figures like Walter Sickert, an artist obsessed with Jack the Ripper who was suspected of actually being Jack himself. Players that follow Sickert utilizing visual clues hidden in the artwork he is studying throughout the Laboratory can find themselves led to a ‘gallery space’ depicting horrific works of grotesque art. If the player makes it through to the end their ‘reward’ is a final scene watching Jack The Ripper’s notorious final murder of Mary Kelly. This will be like living though a horror movie in real life.

In either case each mission will work with a set of reasonable parameters and will take some time to finish. If the players stop before finishing the mission they will find themselves missing out on a unique and wonderful experience. That said a player can leave a mission if another presents itself or if the opportunity to leave for the other scenario makes itself present.

The sets will be built back to back and conceivably a player could finish missions in both scenarios in one play-through. The hope would be to create enough content to keep them from finishing everything in a single evening and to keep them interested in multiple different elements the entire time. The game ends with the crash of the R-101 which ends both The Flight & The Seance. Players in missions may find themselves able to see into the other game world during the crash. This would be beneficial because if someone played in one scenario the entire time they would at the end be shown that there is something more happening in the game.