90s Raves, Reimagined Classics and NASA: Immersive Experiences in Coventry
Being “sent to Coventry” used to be a bad thing, but with the city taking the UK city of culture crown for 2021 and investing massively in innovative experiences, I am pretty keen to get out there.
The shows coming out of the Midlands city are diverse as they are edgy - from space art created by computers to reimagined classics. Here are my top picks:
The Great Middlemarch Mystery
Part-immersive theatre experience and part-mystery game, The Great Middlemarch Mystery invites audiences to step into George Eliot's Middlemarch with a modern twist.
Follow the interwoven hopes, dreams, disappointments and scandals of the Midlands townsfolk and help them unearth a terrible secret at its heart by gathering clues as the drama unfolds.
No experience will be the same as the audience chooses which locations to go to throughout Coventry’s city centre.
The Great Middlemarch Mystery is on 7 to 10 April and starts at Draper’s Hall, tickets are £10
In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats
Wish you had experienced the 90s rave scene the first time round? In this virtual reality show you and your friends can be transported back to the very beginning in 1989.
From travelling in a banged up Peugeot and trying to carry out pirate radio instructions in roadside telephone boxes to run ins with the police and, finally(!), getting to the rave, award-winning filmmaker Darren Emerson sought to capture the entire messy business.
You can apparently also interact with your friends in VR along the way, so you really are experiencing the adventure together, which is just very cool.
In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats is on at The Box @ Fargo Village, standard tickets are £10
Machine Memoirs: Space
Artist Refik Anadol’s exhibition Machine Memoirs: Space is the product of a long-term collaboration with NASA. It uses artificial intelligence to reimagine two million publicly available images taken by satellite and telescopes, transporting visitors from the centre of Coventry to the deepest regions of outer space.
It is a 360 degree experience that will be held in The Reel Store, the UK’s first dedicated immersive art gallery and possibly the most hotly-anticipated gallery opening of 2022.
Machine Memoirs: Space is on at The Reel Store in Coventry from 13 May
