The New Yorker:

The minds behind “You Me Bum Bum Train,” which has sparked a ticket frenzy, discuss re-creating real-life scenarios, crafting a show that gives people “epiphanies,” and why they ask participants to sign an N.D.A.

By Anna Russell

Somewhere in London’s theatre district—I can’t say where—there’s a nondescript office building with a neon sign in the lobby that reads, in blue cursive script, “You Me Bum Bum Train.” The illuminated sign, and the handful of nervous-looking people that gather outside four evenings a week, are the only clues that there’s something odd going on. “Bum Bum Train,” as it’s known, is an immersive theatrical experience, which invites one audience member into its surrealist world at a time. It is also, for people who like that sort of thing, one of London’s most coveted tickets. What happens during the hourlong show is a closely guarded secret: participants are required to sign a nondisclosure agreement, and the website reveals almost nothing. “For the show to have maximum effect, the less you know the better,” it reads. “If you want tickets, do not research into you me bum bum train.”

O.K., sure, fine. That’s all well and good for the strapping extroverts, the clown-class veterans and the front-row-comedy sitters, but what about the rest of us? If you are not in the habit of blindly submitting to novel experiences—perhaps, like me, you were the person who wanted to know where the mushrooms came from—you might do a little recon. I did, and it gave me pause. “Bum Bum Train” turns the dynamics of theatre on its head. Instead of many audience members watching a smaller number of performers, a cast of hundreds faces an audience of just one. (About seventy-five people see the show on any given night, one after the other.) Participants, called “passengers,” move on their own through a series of real-world scenes—a doctor’s-office waiting room, for example, or a crowded train—in which they must quickly discern what is happening and respond. To add to the precarious nature of this enterprise, the cast is made up entirely of volunteers who could walk off the set at any point.

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