As the theatre industry and wider society reels from the unprecedented shock of the coronavirus outbreak and COVID-19 pandemic, many producers and artists are taking the initiative to share work and support each other during these difficult times.
The team at IMMERSIVE LDN (the West End venue dedicated to developing and staging theatre-led immersive experiences, which like all London and UK theatres has closed its doors for the foreseeable future) today announced that they will be curating the Housetrap Theatre & Arts Festival, which will be streamed live on Friday 3 April from 6.30pm – midnight.
The Festival is donation based, so audiences can give as they are able, and the money raised will be shared between the artists performing (with a small percentage going to the running costs).
Performers can apply to take part via the website www.immersiveldn.com/housetrap and potential slots will be between 15 – 50 minutes in length.
Louis Hartshorn of Hartshorn-Hook Enterprises said, “At IMMERSIVE | LDN we work with a wide range of excellent professionals who make this industry great. The recent outbreak of the COVID-19 has in a single motion entirely disrupted our world and cost countless people their jobs.
Access to culture and entertainment has come to an immediate halt while the demand for making and consuming theatre and the arts burns ever bright.
That’s why Immersive LDN have come up with the Housetrap Theatre & Arts Festival using our in-house kit and artists’ domestic technology to create the closest thing we can to a Work From Home environment for an industry built on human interaction. We hope Housetrap Festival will come from living rooms all across the UK and end up in living rooms that may not have had access before the pandemic – and we hope to continue this afterwards.
Our venue was destroyed during the second world war – the middle was literally blown out of it. In the rebuilt apex in the centre, we now have the set of The Great Gatsby. While we’ve had to close the show on Government advice, to devastating effect on the cast and crew, it will be back – and we are absolutely committed to continuing the work IMMERSIVE | LDN has started and want to create the opportunity to keep artists working, not as a charity cause, but as a robust industry that hasn’t been knocked down before.
Housetrap follows the makeup of the traditional festival, with the exception that it’s entirely remote. It will, however, be organised by a team with over 50 years of festival experience between them (from Brighton to Edinburgh and Singapore to Adelaide), with performers programmed into a curated evening of entertainment with a mix of genres and audiences.”