Layered Reality’s immersive Gunpowder Plot experience opened at the Tower of London on 20 May 2022. A partnership with Historic Royal Palaces, The Gunpowder Plot brings the world of the 1605 plotters to life and fully immerses the audience as participants.
Starring Tom Felton as Guy Fawkes, the experience builds on the Layered Reality technique, which combines the latest digital tech (virtual reality, projection mapping and volumetric holograms) together with live theatre (live actors, movie-scale sets, and special effects) plus real physical sensations (touch, temperature, smell, sound and music, physical movement, and taste) to create a uniquely immersive, memorable experience.
Andrew McGuinness, CEO & founder of Layered Reality, spoke with blooloop about the hugely successful experience, which follows SOMNAI and Jeff Wayne’s The War of The Worlds: The Immersive Experience as the third experience from the company.
The Gunpowder Plot takes guests back in time
“The War of the Worlds has been fantastic for us,” says McGuinness. “The most important measure is how people review it. What do people think about it? Do people tell others about it? The War of the Worlds has had well north of a hundred thousand people, probably getting on for 200,000 people through it. People really enjoy it.
“The Gunpowder Plot builds on it in that we are using, again, our layered reality technique.”
“However, it’s a very different story. It’s based at the Tower of London, on an incredible site, which had been vacant for over two decades. In order to make the space work, we had to remove one hundred and seventy-five tons of concrete before we began. Part of the project, in fact, has been resurrecting this extraordinary site in the grounds of the Tower of London. From a storytelling point of view, we are telling the story in the place where it was actually born.”
The experience is, he contends, as close as humanity has come to a time machine:
“You step back into 1605. Rather than viewing or reading about history, you become part of that history. You become a participant in the plot to blow up parliament and the King. Ultimately, you have to decide whether you are going to back the King or whether you are going to back the plotters.
“The technology and the layered reality tools allow us to tell that story in a way that otherwise couldn’t be done.”
Participating in history
The Gunpowder Plot experience allows participants to enter the London of 1605, seeing the buildings as they were then:
“You see the Tower of London as it was in 1605, and London Bridge, which was a community then, with people living on it, and some shops. It looked like something from Game of Thrones. You sail down the Thames, as it was, and see Parliament as it was then.
“You’re seeing things, not through our present-day lens of history, but a contemporary one. You are also a participant in a history that is set in the place where it all happened. It’s thrilling, and we’ve been delighted with it.”
‘Immersive’ is an over-used descriptive term, but this experience is truly worthy of it.
“If you can suspend your disbelief, and believe you’ve genuinely travelled back in time, then we’ve done our job correctly,” he says, “You feel that thrill, that excitement, that peril. At one point in the experience, you have to escape and hide in priest holes, whilst a manor is being raided. If you feel that viscerally, not just as something you’re consuming, or that is entertaining you, but you feel that fear, we have achieved our goal.”
Telling the story from both sides
Participants are offered a more nuanced glimpse into the events that took place than a cursory knowledge of the story affords:
“Within the experience, without giving too much away, you learn about the motives of both sides,” he explains. “Then, ultimately, you have to choose whether, as a group, you support the plotters or the King.”
The Gunpowder Plot experience fuses the thrill of an attraction with the drama of theatre. He adds:
“One of the things that we explore as a dramatic theme within the experiences is the fine line between a villain and a freedom fighter. If people are trying to change society, who’s a terrorist and who’s a hero?
“We explore and allow people to reflect on whether Guy Fawkes was the villain we burn in effigy every November the fifth – and whether that is appropriate – or whether he was a hero, a freedom fighter who took an incredibly brave step to try and fight a wrong, in what was, pretty unarguably, a very unjust society. In many ways, the people that came a generation behind him took this mantle on.
“Through exploring those themes, you come away with a different perspective on the history you thought you knew, on a thin level.”
The Gunpowder Plot starring Tom Felton
The experience stars Tom Felton, best known for his portrayal of Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter franchise. Felton plays Guy Fawkes in the digital assets.
“Tom’s Guy Fawkes is a charismatic, compelling, articulate, principled man. This is not a rogue just seeking fame. It’s someone trying to take a brave step to right what he considers to be a wrong.”
The story we all remember is very one-sided, he points out:
“We don’t really even know much about King James. It’s strange that we still celebrate it every year. When you meet the people involved and travel back to the London of 1605, it’s not like reading the story; it is participating in it, and therefore you connect with it in a different way.”
This is a new form of storytelling.
“What people are seeking, rather than the hierarchy of stuff, in extraordinary memories,” he says. “That’s one really macro element. The other is the evolution of the way we experience stories. For a long time, for most of humanity’s existence, we have been told stories. Then we were able to see them, first as theatre, then as film, then TV, from the beginning of the 20th century.
“Now, we can participate in those stories. I think that is a big trend; a big change to storytelling.”
Using new technology
This trend is enabled and supported by emerging technology. He adds:
“The technology, while still evolving, allows you to do stuff that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to do. We were given a grant by Epic, the studio behind the Unreal Engine [and the megahit Fortnite], because they recognized it as one of the most innovative projects in the world, and wanted to be involved in it.
“The tech allows you to see things you wouldn’t otherwise be able to see. We have replicas of London within the experience; we allow you to come face to face with – and to have an intimate exchange with -Tom Felton. It’s not like seeing him on stage. You are six feet away from him.”
In short:
“Technology allows us to do stuff we otherwise couldn’t do, but it’s also about the application of old technologies.
“For instance, in those priest holes, we have literally hundreds of speakers that allow you to have an extraordinarily immersive sound experience. The way we are utilising them is technologically innovative, but the core technology is the reapplication of existing technology. That allows you to believe that the raid is happening and that you are in peril, delivering a genuinely visceral reaction.”
The visitor journey during The Gunpowder Plot
The experience takes place in a space that includes three bars and a restaurant. Outlining the visitor journey, he explains:
“In a small group of up to 16 people, you will experience a seamless journey through the story. To the credit of the creative team, you will very quickly find you aren’t really noticing the technology. It’s just the delivery mechanism.
“Your experience is that of participating in that story. From the moment you go from the briefing, you are then confronted with live acting performances, featuring multiple actors. In the first scene, you start to see the tyranny of the king, and its consequences for individuals, for instance, you see people being tortured.”
You have been drawn into the world of 1605:
“You participate, becoming a spy, and during your mission as a spy, you meet people both from the side of the king and from the side of the plotters, and so are exposed to both sides of the story.”
The experience requires participants to navigate a space of 25,000 square feet:
“You travel over a kilometre during the experience. There is both a physical sense of travelling and also a sense of travelling through the story.”
The creative process
The fact that the story is rooted in an actual historical event shaped the creative process. He explains:
“The project is a partnership with Historic Royal Palaces. We worked closely with the curatorial team to make sure that the core narrative of the history is absolutely robust.”
The team have made some dramatic changes, however, in terms of characters:
“We have, for example, introduced more female characters, because there wouldn’t have been any. At the end of the experience, we have what we call the Corridor of Truth’. This is where we explain that a certain character was a fusion of these two people, and this is what we’ve done here; this is what we’ve done there.”
“Within that Corridor of Truth, you also learn about some things that you might believe we made up, but which are actually true. Within the experience, for instance, you go on this extraordinary kind of bungee ride from the Tower of London over the river Thames. You physically experience the ride. You get the wind and the spray in your face, travelling over the Thames in 1605.
“You’d be likely to assume this is one of the things we made up. It isn’t. In fact, one of the few successful escapes from the Tower of London was a priest who managed to get a bungee over the moat of the Tower of London.”
Learning more about The Gunpowder Plot
People finish the experience more reflective about the story than when they began it, McGuinness says. He qualifies this:
“They come away excited, first and foremost. But then there’s a moment when they’re having a drink in the bar where they tend to discuss this story.”
One of the historical facts that people learn during the experience is that Westminster was a thriving community:
“It wasn’t just a palace; it was a village. There were traders and people living within the bounds of the Palace of Westminster as well. You are exposed, within the experience, to what the impact would have been if the plot had been successful. The explosion would have had an impact over approximately a two-mile radius. So, it would have caused a lot of devastation in the wider community, not just in terms of those leaders, and certainly not just of the monarch.
“As with any study one does of history, you might go in with a really loaded agenda – ‘This is really straightforward, and that was bad and that was good’. You then come away with a more nuanced understanding of what actually happened.”
Creating during COVID
The COVID pandemic, inevitably, affected the attraction’s development:
“It was a nightmare. We began the creative development before the pandemic and froze it for the most severe period of the pandemic. But it posed all sorts of challenges even beyond that, throughout the build process.
“We had to have very high restrictions on social distancing. Since what we had was lots of people working very intimately together in a collaborative way on a project, it took a lot of working out to establish how we could make that work. But we got through it. And, all credit to the teams in the way that they made it work, it’s been absolutely fantastic.”
The Gunpowder Plot proves popular
The response has been, he says, extraordinary:
“84% of people on Tripadvisor rate it as very good or excellent. People are craving these sorts of experiences. They want to hear a story and have a story to tell, and that’s what we deliver.”
The experience is repeatable:
“It’s quite dense,” he comments. “A hell of a lot happens; you’re in there for an hour and 40 minutes. It’s a thrilling but high-adrenaline journey, and there are lots and lots of details that you don’t pick out the first time that you are there. Also, obviously, it’s a live performance, so that’s different each time. A number of people already have repeated.”
Speaking of future plans, he says:
“Next year, we are hoping to open our first experience based on a major evergreen Hollywood franchise, where you are able to step into and participate in a Hollywood movie. We will be announcing that in the next few months.
“It’s a really thrilling Hollywood movie: something that people have longed to be a part of for generations, and now they will have the chance to be a participant. It’s going to be absolutely fantastic.”
Header image credit Mark Dawson Photography
