From the team behind summer 2020 cyber smash-hit show Plymouth Point, comes a new live experience, The Mermaid’s Tongue. Combining the artistry of live immersive theatre with the thrill of an escape room, The Mermaid’s Tongue builds on the new wave of COVID-19 prompted home entertainment. Inspired by the phenomenon of true-crime – this is audience participation but not as we know it.
The Mermaid’s Tongue begins with audiences and their teammates taking part in the True Colours online life-drawing class. It quickly becomes clear that there will be no time for sketching, as a spilled secret quickly plunges you into a murky underworld. Each group of detectives have to hack into an art gallery CCTV, outbid a high-end art dealer in a live auction, and decipher messages from beyond the grave. Every click, log-in, call or code immerses players deeper in the mystery to discover the artefact, before it falls into the wrong hands. Let the hunt begin.
The first show in the series, Plymouth Point (designed and produced in April – May 2020) provided a rare shared live-entertainment experience in lockdown. Born out of digital tools widely available to the public, it successfully blurs fiction and reality to create an hour of entertainment for socially distant friendship groups and theatre-goers. Follow-up The Mermaid’s Tongue steps deeper into those blurred lines, turning audience members into live protagonists of the experience. As audiences and theatre makers continue into a disrupted and unknown time for live events, Swamp Motel invite audiences to another piece of innovative entertainment two months in the making.
Swamp Motel specialise in immersive entertainment, and with the closure of events spaces and theatres, they set out about building a new way to play. Company Founders & Creative Directors Clem Garritty & Ollie Jones commented:
“We’re excited to unleash Mermaid’s Tongue to the world. With the mad, sad and strange events of 2020 we got to thinking: what we really love, ultimately, is expressing new narratives to audiences and subverting their expectations along the way. People weren’t able to leave their houses, they were using video-call constantly, so our challenge became: how do we make that exciting and can we use the internet as a new platform for us – as experience makers – to engage audiences? As we quickly discovered – there were endless ways to get theatrical – and we’re now so very excited to welcome audiences to our latest Swamp Motel creation.”
The Mermaid’s Tongue is part theatre, part crime mystery thriller, part night out. All from the comfort of your own home – with friends and family safely, in theirs.
Praise for Plymouth Point:
★★★★ “Fiendishly Good Fun” – Metro
★★★★★ “Thrilling Whodunnit” – Upcoming
★★★★ “Plymouth Point is seriously gripping stuff” – Guardian
Audiences do not have to have played Plymouth Point to enjoy The Mermaid’s Tongue but it may help! The first show in the series will continue to be available to book for teams through the rest of 2020. Team size can be 2 – 6 people for both shows.
For further information, images and interview requests please contact Miriam Attwood 07825642225 miriam@storytellingpr.com Emma Costello emma@storytellingpr.com
