Hiding Behind Masks: How to Survive Interactive Theatre in One Piece

Put on your masks. I repeat: there has been a tuberculosis outbreak, put on your masks!

And so, in the reception room of the funeral parlour, amid closed caskets and surrounded by three dozen or so other flummoxed folks, my friend and I obediently put on our paper face masks. You know, your typical Thursday night.

We are participating in ‘A Midnight Visit’, an immersive theatre event held at the Edgar Allan Poe inspired funeral home ‘House of Usher’ in North Melbourne. We don’t really know what to expect. In part, this is because I haven’t bothered to read up on it, so I am oblivious to the fact that:

“Midnight Visit contains adult concepts, uneven floor surfaces, stairs, small spaces and low-level lighting. Ticket holders enter the venue at their own risk.”

The experience is a bit pricey — my friend agrees to accompany me only under the condition that we dress as goths. I do. I regret the velvet dress, the fishnets, and especially the high heels as I’m crawling into trunks, up ladders, and sometimes on all fours. Still, it’s out-weighed by the fun.

It won’t surprise you to learn that I also neglect to do more than skim-read the accidents and death waiver. By the way, they have us sign the waiver a full half an hour before the experience starts. It takes only a few minutes to sign, even if you do read it. Whatever are we to do in the meantime… Oh look, there’s the bar.

Ingenious.

My friend, on the other hand, reads the waiver so closely you’d think it was a prenuptial agreement. I’m glad she does for this line catches her eye: There is to be no jumping into the ball-pit. (A ball-pit? It just doesn’t get any better than this!) There are two other rules: no photography, and strictly no talking.

Ah, so that’s one reason for the masks.

What can I say about the experience? It starts as an ordinary haunted house, sans the jump scares. There are rooms littered with dismembered rubber appendages, walls covered in (fake) human hair or plastered with the paintings of an obsessive madman. That sort of thing. The best room contains a ‘hideous beating heart’ underneath the floorboards. (You get to enjoy this room a second time after you exit, as it’s located just above the bathrooms. It’s soothing, like being back in the womb.)

It’s when you venture a level deeper that things start to get interesting. Sometimes my friend and I were all alone in a room: we faced each across a grand banquet table; in a 1940s hospital room, I wheeled her around in an old-fashioned wheelchair, careening wildly; in a throne room she walked up the plinth and sat down, I her only subject. At long last, we found the ball-pit behind the doors to a ‘church’.

Other times, we were not alone (to act like complete and utter prats). That’s when the real fun started. We’d walk into an opium den, a bedchamber or drawing room where a crowd was starting to gather. You see, in ‘A Midnight Visit’ you could be assured that whenever the room reached critical mass, a performance would unfold. Seamlessly. Organically. And you’d be in for a treat.

In the drawing room, a melancholy bride played the piano, her face covered by a veil, the front of her dress crimson with the evidence of a consumptive cough. A slinky cat-girl (‘Pluto’ from the short story ‘The Black Cat’) began a languorous dance at her feet. In the bedchamber, as I lay next to strangers on a four-poster bed, a poet paced, mourning the ‘rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore’. He railed against Heaven and Hell, while a man adorned with glistening inky feathers — the Raven — offered him no solace other than that one word:

Nevermore.

At the masquerade ball in the final ‘Masque of the Red Death’ inspired room, my friend and I spotted a woman in a black Victorian dress complete with bustle. We had not encountered her in any of the 36 rooms; we felt that FOMO and we felt it hard.

The mask which covered his face — or was it really a mask? — the mask which covered his face was so much like the face of a dead man that the nearest eye could not see the difference. And yet all this might have been acceptable — but the masquerader whom no one knew had made himself look like the Red Death itself!

Back to masks. Apart from muffling our voices and thus encouraging quiet to enhance the experience for all participating, the masks served a few other purposes. The actors were able to deliver their soliloquies without having to contend with our shit-eating, goofy, stupefied or otherwise off-putting grins. And as for us, the audience, it made as bolder.

The masks only covered the lower part of our faces, and somehow, with our expressions only partially hidden, we felt more at ease. It wasn’t just the anonymity, for we were all strangers to each other, but something about being able to hide (at least a little of ourselves) behind the masks that did the trick, and allowed us to let go enough to enjoy ourselves.

It’s settled, I’m giving my next presentation from behind sunglasses. Oh, and I’m definitely holding my funeral at the ‘House of Usher’. It’s got a good bar…