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“Cleverly connected, utterly compelling.”
-Josephine Machon, Associate Professor and Programme Leader at Middlesex University

unReal City is a virtual reality experience for two audience members at a time

Blending live performance by learning disabled artists with virtual and mixed reality, unReal City explores what personal connection means in a world that is increasingly digital.

Discover your new home at our Virtual Reality showroom, with a private viewing of our fully accessible, hi-tech apartments. Opening soon in the latest Smart City district, our virtual apartments put the city at your doorstep.

Once immersed in our virtual-living world, you’ll meet other guests, connect with future residents, and explore the virtual city using the latest technology on the market.

As we stand on the verge of a new Metaverse, unReal City asks vital questions about how we relate to each other in our increasingly virtual world: Is it easier or better to connect in the flesh, or as an online avatar? Are connections stronger and more real in person, or can the digital world be a gateway to meet others and re-invent a new version of ourselves?

This was a developmental performance of a new production.

Download the Easy Read Visual Guide

An experimental collaboration between dreamthinkspeak and Access All Areas

Dates and Venues

Brighton Dome | January – February 2022

Battersea Arts Centre | March 2020

Cast

Kirsty Adams

Cian Binchy

Housni Hassan (DJ)

Terry Huggett

Dayo Koleosho

Lee Phillips

Charlene Salter

Emma Selwyn

Eden West

Nelly Lewis

Carlotta Webber

Creatives and Crew

  • Director
    Tristan Sharps
  • Director
    Nick Llewellyn
  • Producer
    Patrick Collier
  • VR Director
    Piotr Nierobisz of Munching Square
  • VR Director
    Andy Baker of Ixxy
  • Sound Designer
    Gareth Fry
  • Video creator
    Umut Gunduz
  • Production Manager
    Dominic Seeber
  • Production Carpenter
    Sam Stuart
  • Production Carpenter
    Luke Stuart
  • Scenic Artist
    Jack Siddall
  • Scenic Artist
    Owain Gwyn
  • Company Stage Manager
    Cassie Harrison
  • Deputy Stage Manager
    Sammie Richards
  • Technical Manager
    Enrico Aurigemma
  • Audio Describer
    Di Langford
  • General Manager (dreamthinkspeak)
    Jennifer Rodrigues
  • Project Manager (dreamthinkspeak)
    Sarah Crompton-Howes
  • Access Manager
    Elinor Keber
  • Access Manager
    Sarah Saaed
  • Creative Support Worker
    Kathryn Bond
  • Creative Support Worker
    Georgia Carnaby
  • Creative Support Worker
    Layla Hignell-Tully
  • Creative Support Worker
    Hayley Hill
  • Creative Support Worker
    Lydia Hunt
  • Creative Support Worker
    Heather Johnson

Rehearsal – Behind the scenes

Behind the Scenes – in Brighton!

I experienced unReal City as a work in progress in March 2020, shortly before the first UK lockdown. I was getting increasingly critical of the video call technologies that had wormed their ways into our lives so quickly in the early years of the pandemic, but unReal City made me think very differently about their potential benefits for disenfranchised neurodiverse people. It also made very inhuman digital platforms seem profoundly, intimately, human.
Adam Alston, Senior lecturer at Goldsmiths College, and author including Beyond Immersive Theatre Aesthetics, Politics and Productive Participation
unReal City is a great thing: it’s fun and seductive, but also asks serious questions about where we live, how we live and how we expect each other to live.
Dr Gareth White, Reader in Theatre and Performance, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
Without spoilers, it’s the point at which the virtual and physical realms combine (you’ll literally feel it when it happens) that the real power of unReal City and the expertise of Access All Areas and dreamthinkspeak come into their own. Cleverly connected, utterly compelling.
Josephine Machon, Associate Professor, Programme Leader MA in Theatre Arts, Middlesex University

Developed by Access All Areas and dreamthinkspeak

Supported and presented by Brighton Dome.

Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and The Foyle Foundation.

Originally commissioned by Battersea Arts Centre.

Developed with Battersea Arts Centre and supported by the National Theatre Immersive Storytelling Studio.

Images by Stephen Allwright 2020 and Chloe Hashemi 2022