Laura Langrish is a writer for Lemon Difficult, the UK-based immersive experience company behind The Locksmith’s Key and Key of Dreams. We caught up with Laura to find out more about The Key of Dreams.
STARBURST: How would you pitch The Key of Dreams to someone who likes big parties?
Laura Langrish: We do say The Key of Dreams is a revel. If you like big parties for the people, there are a lot of social elements. There can be up to 30 guests plus the actors and crew in the house – but the house is huge so it doesn’t feel crowded. There’ll be things to work at collaboratively, social dining – especially the amazing banquet dinner, and maybe even the odd party game.
I would also say, if you’re like me, and go to big parties because your partner or friend is going, there are quiet places to get away for a while and even a library – that’s my kind of party!
Where do you start when it comes to writing an event like this?
My focus is and will always be the stories. The joy of working on a show like this is that there is the capacity for lots of stories, and guests can explore and experience a range of them as the interest takes them.
As humans, we look for connections and often find them even where they don’t exist. I like to pull on narrative threads from the real world, and working in a place like Treowen, there is so much history to play with. I take these histories, and elements of folklore, and in this case, the plethora of weird fiction, and weave them together to create something new and exciting.
This leads to starting with a lot of what I enjoy, which is the nerdy research bit. You wouldn’t believe the amount of documents I create that are not a part of the show. While I would never refer to it, or consider it to be ‘world-building’, it does help everyone who is involved in the creative process (writers, actors, composers, artists) know when and how all the pieces fit. I also get to spend a huge amount of time reading historical and genealogical records, which I enjoy more than I thought!
How different is Key of Dreams from Locksmith?
We learned so much working on Locksmith’s Dream – which is still running and I am very proud of – and saw the ways in which some of the aspects that the guests enjoyed could be extended and developed.
The interconnected nature of the stories, the interactions with the characters and the feeling of consequence were all things that felt meaningful and enjoyable. We, therefore, set out with those ideas being at the core of the KoD experience. With Locksmith’s Dream, a large part of the experience is following a narrative to its end and discovering the outcome and the object at its heart. While learning the story is satisfying, and the objects are wonderful – they are a fixed point, although the outcomes for characters are affectable. For Key of Dreams, we decided to make the stories actually ‘unfinished’. As a guest, you will follow the story through its progression over the course of the day. However, how they end, who they affect and what the outcome of them will be is up to the decisions you make and the actions you take during the Hour when ‘The Door is Open’. The following morning, the guests and characters will have to face the choices that they have made and observe the outcomes of their actions.
What was the most challenging part of the production?
The nature of making everything interconnected means that it’s really difficult to ‘finish’ one thing, as everything relies on something else. Additionally, as the scope of this production is pretty vast, we have a bigger team than previously working on it. So, trying to coordinate directors, writers, puzzle designers, props and costuming, composers and actors is a real challenge!
As with Locksmith’s Dream, each individual part of the production is delightful; the stories are great, the props are beautiful, the soundscapes and effects are magical (composed and produced by the incredibly talented Ben Reid) and the actors are phenomenal. But the real magic happens when all of it comes together and it becomes more than the sum of its parts.
How is a script for this different from a theatrical script?
A theatrical script gives you words and stage directions, the order and manner of the things that happen. That is not something that works for a production where the audience has so much agency. Parts of the story are scripted, and the structure of the overall experience is mapped out. But the actors are mostly provided with stories to learn and understand, backstories to internalise, an understanding of their world views, and how they feel about the other characters and the stories. They have to know ‘if that, then this’ scenarios throughout the experience.
This is a challenge and we have a phenomenal team that pull it off so well. Having written scripts for short-form content, it is wonderful to hear your words living in the body of another. It is quite another feeling altogether to create a world for a day and see it inhabited and really living, where I don’t know what combination of choices will occur and therefore, even as a writer, how it will end this time.
Does horror always need to be personal to work?
I think there does need to be a personal connection, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be personal to you. In a horror story, the nature of the horror might not be something that you might find immediately scary for a variety of reasons. However, if you’ve made a connection with and developed empathy for the main character, you can understand why they would feel fear, and that way, you experience that vicariously.
At The Key of Dreams, that is at least partly the aim. There are characters present in the house through the actors and those that exist in the stories that you uncover. The recognition of the terrible things that happen to them and the reasons that are discovered should develop that creeping sense of dread.
In a show where you are involved so deeply, the stakes have to feel real and believable. At no point would you believe that the fate of the world really rested in your hands. However, you can genuinely affect the character that you sat with at dinner last night and choose to help them or not, and witness at least part of the result of your choices.
What’s next for you?
I’d like to say sleep, but I know that is not how my brain works! I’m already booked to attend a writing conference event the weekend after the shows.
Other than that, I’ve got a Key of Dreams epistolary subscription that I’ve been working on that we will be launching as a subscription in which subscribers will receive monthly letters and ephemera which develop the world further for those who have attended events and can also be a way into the world for those who have not. We’ve also been working with a fabulously talented puzzle designer on a boxed narrative puzzle experience, which is very exciting – so keep an eye out for that.
What other works would you like to adapt?
Honestly, I’d love to do something with the Rusty Quill team, particularly around The Magnus Archives, I think that could be wonderfully atmospheric. Ivan is keen to create a Lovecraftian Wind in the Willows. As someone with teenagers who are desperate to be involved, and I’m aware that several of our guests are in the same situation, I’d certainly be interested in developing a family experience.
Why Lovecraft? Why are his stories still so popular?
While many of Lovecraft’s works are ‘of their time’, the ideas explored are still very relevant. Lovecraft was writing in a time of great change and discovery. While many of his fears – of which he had a great many – are things we would now be very unhappy about using, his idea of being afraid of the unknown, of power that you can not understand let alone fight, is still a fear that everyone understands today. In a world of secretive governments, terrible disease and the vast unknown of space, that we now have an idea about just how vast and unknowable the universe is, cosmic dread is a real thing that people can identify with.
Simpsons or Futurama?
Simpsons probably
Bats or Rats?
BATS no doubt
Truth or Beauty?
Truth all the way – even though it can be scary.
