So a friend says, “Hey, let’s go out tonight to this thing in a shipping container. I don’t know what it is, but it’s in the dark and supposed to be really cool and there’s something about a séance. I dunno…”

You want me to go where to do what…in the DARK?

 Yep. We get that a lot.

To prepare you for DCPA Off-Center’s next big thing, we wanted to give you the FYI to avoid any FAQs so you don’t PYP.

What is DARKFIELD?

In a nutshell, it’s a multi-sensory auditory experience. Participants enter a 40ft shipping container in small groups. There, they step into a room that visually sets the stage for the experience. Once the participants take their places, the lights go out and the experience unfolds through 360-degree sound and sensory effects.

The Denver engagement of DARKFIELD features three different shipping containers with three different experiences: SÉANCE, FLIGHT and COMA and You can experience your choice of experience or you can opt to do all three.

But you said something about a séance. Are there ghosts?

While SÉANCE itself, at its core, is an immersive experience — a story, if you will — it is not intended to wake the dead. It explores the psychology of a group of people who have been bombarded with suggestible material. As the producers describe it: “SÉANCE is an intense sonic performance for 32 people at a time, lasting 20 enthralling minutes.” According to The Guardian, it is “a creepy and manipulative miniature which unsettles and makes you question not just your senses but what you actually believe.”

Ok, so you don’t intend to conjure up a ghost, but COMA? What the heck?

COMA is an entirely different immersive experience. You will not be put to sleep or knocked unconscious, but the audio narration will ask you to consider what it might be like to be in a coma: there but not there, alert but unresponsive. Participants are invited to lay down in bunk beds and slip into a collective dream. According to ScotsGay, “…a thrilling, chilling and ultimately stunning experience…you don’t watch COMA, you experience it, the further you’re willing to let yourself go and embrace what’s happening around you, the more you will gain…”

If SÉANCE is about connecting with the dead and COMA is about a semi-conscious state, is FLIGHT about a near-death experience?

Well, just like when you board an airplane, anything is possible. The producers explain that FLIGHT takes “audience members through two journeys, two worlds and two realities. There are many worlds in which this plane lands safely.” Reassuring? Perhaps not. But Ben Kulvicht of Exeunt Magazine sums it up perfectly: “FLIGHT…harness[es] the very uncertainty of pretending, and in doing so creates an experience that’s properly exhilarating. It’s a perfectly programmed high-art theme park ride, a reminder of one’s closeness at all times to death that spits you out into the sunlight feeling palpably, certainly, alive.”

What are audiences saying?

DARKFIELD has toured globally, entertaining more than 500,000 audience members across the UK, Asia, Australia and Mexico. Now, it launches its US premiere in Denver this July. Audiences across the globe call it suspenseful, awesome, one of a kind, intense and fabulous.

HEAR THE REVIEWS 

It sounds scary.

While more than one review said that DARKFIELD is not for the faint of heart, it is definitely for thrill seekers and people wanting to try something out of the ordinary. But if it helps, take a friend. Take a stuffie. The point is that DARKFIELD is a one-of-a-kind experience that you won’t want to miss.

Details
DARKFIELD: SÉANCE, FLIGHT AND COMA
July 11-Aug 11, 2024  |  The Bird Lot at 2532 Larimer St., Denver
TICKETS