So, I made the big lounge into a 'cooling down' room, where I placed a couple of candles and some props - Complete Works of Shakespeare, and three 1960s travel brochures with ships on them.
Scott cut 3 minutes off the soundscape, and we made it louder at the end.
When the audience came in I noticed straight away that they were speaking in hushed tones. It was already working!
When everyone was here, I handed them each a lantern and said that when they were ready they could make their way to the stairs. That the whole thing would take about 15 minutes and that there was no rush and to take their time.
Then I went outside and waited.
Well, what a huge difference. I could hear that they were much quieter than Friday's audience. They were really listening and taking it all in.
After it was over they were all extremely positive. I could see (and they said) that some of them were really quite taken with it. They all found it very creepy and tense, but they were quite exhilirated and curious afterwards. They said they lost track of how much time had passed and just when they'd felt they'd looked at everything in the room, the sound started to develop so they were listening hard.
They picked up on a lot of the things I was trying to do, like the pictures behind the sheet - how you could see bits of them, but when you put your lantern up you couldn't see anything, so you can actually see more of them without the light.
And they were very taken with the plant dripping, especially once they realised it wasn't part of the soundtrack (when it dripped on someone's head!).
The second audience was very similar, which signalled to me that the changes we'd made, had a big impact.
One person said they felt it was very tense, rather than scary, which is good.
So, in the end, I felt it went better than I expected. I think it is half an idea, but as Christian pointed out, I worked on this for the fraction of the time I worked on Hamlet. So I think I should be fairly pleased.
I certainly learnt a lot about how sound and light can work. And how I work.
More to come in the report.
