How Do I Find The Library?

It’s been a long while since I’ve written a process blog, and Shh! At The Old College Library Open Access Day is as good a reason as any other.

I was commissioned by the M. R. James Pleasing Terrors Festival, via producer and longstanding collaborator Tonnvane Wiswell.

If you don’t know M. R. James, he’s the guy who more or less invents what we consider the classic Edwardian ghost story: upper middle class man goes to a strange place, eventually encounters some centuries-old horror, runs away.

I was asked to create something that felt like being in one of his stories. So where to begin?

Over the years, I’ve come to view my role as an interactive experience designer as similar to a composer-lyricist: design everything, all at once, using each form to its best.

Since I consider the unique quality of interactive theatre (as music is to opera) to be its centring the guests as free-willed human beings, that means it needed:

a) Mechanics for guest agency

b) Worldbuilding and characters for guests to live in

c) A dramatic structure placing guests at its heart

d) An interesting theme for guests to chew on, which the mechanics, structure, and characters express

All to achieve the brief.

Early-stage designers always do a) and b), sometimes c), and really exciting ones do d), which is less obvious when you attend a show, so people at the early imitating-things stage often miss it.

I usually do d) first, because it’s easier than doing it last. Then I run up and down the ladder. So:

d) Core thematic question. After reading almost all James’ stories, I was struck by his patrician answer to “how should we hold a troubled past?” As an ex-historian, giving that question to the audience felt obviously interesting.

Also, I strongly object to James’ view.

a) Mechanics. The brief basically requires borrowing and reading Mysterious Old Books.

Mental note that, for some people, loads of reading is basically hell, so we need some social mechanics to complement that.

Limitation: they’ve hired one of me. They want 40-50 guests. The mechanics need to be self-sustaining.

c) Structure. It’s a James story. Mostly, it’s mundane but increasingly sinister. Right at the end, there’s a supernatural encounter. That’s much easier than the other way around.

b) Worldbuilding and characters. My default position is that it’s easiest for people to engage as themselves, in the actual year. So that means the show’s set in a Jamesian location in 2026. The commissioner seemed keen on a research focus, so… a library! [SOMETHING MYSTERIOUS] happened there.

Why are the guests there? The library’s been forced to open up its collections to the wider public.

So… the facilitator character is a librarian running that event. But they’re not the character who knows the most, because then why ask the guests to do research?

a) Mechanics. It’s clear this show’s got lots of reading, but how do you make that both fun and easy to learn from? Cross-referencing texts, showing the links explicitly - this is a huge improvement on previous research shows I’ve worked on, and I’m pretty smug about it.

And then regular seminars - both to give guests a chance to share what they’ve learnt, and to discuss moral questions (i.e. something a non-reader can happily do).

By this stage, I’m building what one guest called a “human-driven machine.”

b) Worldbuilding. Guests have backers to guide their research a little, make sure they don’t all jump on the same thing, and give a few hooks into the world and to other guests. Socialisation happens if the host introduces guests to one another - I often use LARP’s ‘three circles’ theory.

d) Theme. I want the worldbuilding to invite guests to think about how we thoughtfully hold historical legacies that blight our present - destroy it? Protect it? Limit access to the truth? These are classic ‘culture war’ questions.

b) Worldbuilding. I can use these backers to express the theme: I made a 5x5 grid, with one side listing classic James characters (academics, religious scholars, lawyers, workers, and yokels), and the other ranking them by respectability. Then I filled it in: 25 different answers to the core thematic question.

Also, usefully, 25 different invitations to the world for guests. Each backer’s introductory letter includes 3 different ways to engage - which is useful for guests unfamiliar with this type of work.

c) Structure. To ensure guests don’t solve the mystery immediately, the library has a restricted access system. Guests have to pass exams to reach the really juicy stuff. Which means I can pace things a bit.

I also want to ensure nobody gets left behind, so I decide that if enough people pass an exam, everyone has access to that level of material.

I don’t decide what ‘enough’ is. That will depend on how guests play, and whether they need a helping hand.

a) Mechanic. I realise that there’ll come a point where guests want to have access to almost everything, all at once. The ranking system means that, when it no longer feels fun to restrict access to a tier, I can just place it for anyone to access.

If, on the other hand, guests don’t want to borrow books, I can just do more seminars, talking through the collection. Everyone has moral thoughts.

And, somewhere along the way, a show happens.

There’s more deviations from this path.

In fact, the path is closer to a confluence of various rivers from all previous shows. I used ‘scrap paper holds a secret clue’ in Into The Dreamlands, ‘facilitator character is having a guest-induced breakdown’ in The Estate Sale of Randolph Carter, and research mechanics in many other shows.

But I hope this gives some sense of the main channels and how I work.