By James Hadley in London
 
Do you ever think wistfully of games of make-believe you played with friends as a child? Such imaginative long-format improvisations - it seems a shame that adults aren't generally expected to play in this manner too. Thanks to the continuing rise of immersive and participatory theatre, such experiences are now being offered to audiences again.

 
Coney is a London-based theatre company founded in 2006 'as an agency of adventure and play at the forefront of developing a game-playing approach to theatre making.' They've been developing an immersive, participatory show called A Small Town Anywhere for over two years, largely through the scratch (work-in-development showings) process at Battersea Arts Centre. Recently I got the opportunity to experience the show that's been developed - living a week in the life of a citizen of A Small Town Anywhere condensed into two hectic hours.
 
One of the most radical things about this format of theatre is that there are no visible performers aside from the audience. Apart from Henri, the Town's Historian, who introduces and concludes the evening's proceedings.

Should you choose to, you have the option of corresponding with Henri by email after you book for the show - you're asked to email him your answer to the question 'where is the heart of a community found?', and in return he forwards you an excerpt from his history of the Town. Further answers to further questions give you access to further excerpts from the Town's history, and during the process you're endowed with a character and an allegiance to one of the two groups that the Town's citizens fall into. I became the Town's Fortune Teller, with allegiance to the Wrens.
 
If you haven't corresponded with Henri, you're soon endowed with a role in the antechamber where the audience is gathered, and each role has a corresponding hat and name-badge.

It's amazing how transformed the audience's behaviour suddenly becomes when they have a character name (all of them are professions: the School Teacher, the Baker, the Publican, the Bookie...). It's also explained to everyone what those who have already corresponded with Henri know: that every character is either a Lark or a Wren. If you choose to be a Wren, it's because you were born in the Town, and believe in preserving its traditions. If you're a Lark, then you arrived in the Town more recently, bringing with you new ideas and a willingness for everything to change. It's this classic dichotomy that is to generate the show's conflict - tradition versus change, the old versus the new.
 
We're then led into a room which is a little like the set of the Lars von Trier film 'Dogville'. The Town square has been marked out in the middle of the room, and all around its edges are little areas marked out as relating to the various characters. A female narrator's voice is heard over the sound system, welcoming us to the town, and inviting us to stand in the middle of the room. The lights dim, and a spotlight goes up on each character's little patch of territory, one by one - when yours is in the spotlight you're invited to take your place, so that the Town is gradually populated and everyone gets a sense of who their fellow citizens are. Next the narrator's voice introduces us to the format of a typical day in the Town. There's a clock on the wall, which now fast forwards through the hours of a day, with the Narrator describing what happens, and the lights brightening and dimming accordingly.

Key is the fact that the daily post arrives for collection from the Post Mistress at 10am each day, and any letters you choose to write to other citizens must be posted with her by 6pm to be received the next day. Also, everyone must be asleep by 11pm. Everyone has a chair, to which their character will retreat to sleep, and on this waits the first of several letters which may prompt or provoke courses of action during the 'week' that's to come.
 
It's a set-up that's clearly been well honed during the show's development period. There's a lot to take in, but you soon realise that whatever happens is what's meant to happen, and you can't really do anything wrong. At first everyone's a bit timid, making small talk, but, as the idea settles in that the Larks and Wrens are clearly rival camps - with the Larks gathering in the Mayor's office for Lark-specific evening radio broadcasts while the Wrens gather in the Publican's bar for their concurrent Wren programme - you quickly bond with those in your 'team'. Everyone is given a feather to put in their hat signifying their allegiance - red feathers for Larks, brown for Wrens.
 
Everyone has their own agenda, as prompted by the letter they've been given at the start of the week, and these quickly generate a bustling interaction of citizens. Behind the scenes, those who conceived of the evening's proceedings are also writing letters to participants, provoking intrigue here and there by encouraging individuals towards corruption or suspicion in their dealings with others.
 
What's ingenious about arrangements is the way traditions start to combust out of tension from progress within the Town. There is a vote among the Townsfolk for who will be on the 'Council of Three' - those who will decide which citizen to be turned out of the Town as the cuckoo. The voting process quickly led to suspicions of corruption in proceedings, and it didn't take long before you suddenly become aware that there seem to be a lot more Larks than Wrens in the Town, which hadn't been the case to begin with. Subtly, tensions rise, and participants start to get more involved in the growing conflict between two rival groups.
 
The turning point comes when it's announced that everyone must now wear a Lark's feather, due to the wider political climate. Those who were Wrens must decide whether to bow to this oppression or not, and the historical parallels to the dynamic give it a sense of weight. The Mayor, who had been an obvious leader of the Wrens all along, now made a striking act of defiance against what he saw as Fascist overtones, and swapped to the Wren side. This was exciting drama with complex decisions revealing much about our characters all of a sudden.

When the Cuckoo is meant to be ejected from the Town, our group had decided not to evict anyone, but this led to a call for someone to volunteer to be banished, so that the Town might avoid catastrophe. Again it was the Mayor who volunteered to take responsibility for the situation, but then another twist emerged: The Balladeer, one of the quieter characters in the piece, had taken her opportunity during the heated debate to simply and wordlessly evict herself.
 
I could go on and on about the ideological complexities of the piece that emerged, all through improvisation, but very much as a result of what Coney had created as provocations. When, after multiple weddings and near-warfare with an approaching army, the piece was over, I was struck by the insights I'd been given into these fellow audience members who stood around me.

The levels of interaction which had been prompted had gone far beyond what I'd expected, so that you almost felt you should be exchanging contact details with everyone else within the piece, such was the sense of having shared a genuine experience with these people.