MAGNA MYSTERIA
@MagnaMysteria was brilliant! A modern technical show with an olden day story that really gets you thinking
"It's a kind of magical mystery tour, in which you sign up at a beautifully crafted fairground sideshow fortune- telling booth, receive a sort-of tarot card (mine was The Sisters – there's also a Policeman, a Siren, and a Magician), and then await instructions, which arrive some time later by text”
"..you become a participant in the creation of the story (which is a kind of post Angela Carter / Erin Morgenstern tale of shady alternative reality happenings in Victorian music halls)"
Dorothy Max Prior, Total Theatre Review on Magna Mysteria at Brighton Festival
“It has been a few days since the Magna Mysteria performances ended and the dust is still settling. During the last week it totally consumed me. When I spoke to others about Mayfest and found out they weren’t going to Magna Mysteria, I tried to stifle my disbelief behind a glazed smile. How could they not be involved?!
Whilst penetrating the city, it apparently remained quite hidden, it was playful, a game, yet had a serious quality. The level of engagement through technology was innovative and exciting as it meant the story, characters and other audience members were with me all the time. They were inside my handbag when they sent text instructions or tweets, they were at work when they emailed, they were part of my social network as news and responses were fed through facebook.”
The Listings Site
Mercurial Wrestler (Becca Gill & Jay Kerry)
Magna Mysteria
Mayfest 2012
Without Walls 2013
Writer: Tim Atack (Sleepdogs)
Created at Pervasive Media Studio, Watershed, Bristol
Magna Mysteria draws on the Victorian era of magic and illusion and combines that with ubiquitous digital technology. It is an immersive, interactive experience which takes the people on a journey, infiltrating their consciousness and teasing them with conflicting stories, delivered through performance and mobile communications.
The performance begins with the audience collecting their tarot card from a Fortune Telling Machine, and then unravels. Age-old stories emerge from out of nowhere, mysterious characters tell conflicting tales, and the audience choose who, or what, to believe. It's not a game, there's no right or wrong, but there are many paths, and no one experiences Magna Mysteria in the same way.
Magna Mysteria was funded by Arts Council and commissioned by Bristol City Council, Mayfest and Bristol Ferment and supported by Theatre Bristol and Pervasive Media Studio it premiered and sold out at Mayfest, Bristol 2012. Magna Mysteria was then funded by Arts Council to be developed as an outdoor piece which was commissioned by and toured with Without Walls nationally in 2013 to large audiences at Brighton Festival, Stockton International Festival, Hat Fair and Stoke on Trent - Appetite.
