News - Saint Jude
News
The Stage interviews Ollie Jones
"We're only at the start of what theatre and tech can do together" Gaming enthusiast Ollie Jones is entertaining theatre and experience-goers with Saint Jude, a location-based immersive experience created by Swamp motel, the company he co-founded with Clem Garritty. Jones speaks to Jamie Body about the show, the challenges of working with technology and moving from his theatre training to the world of digital entertainment and experiences...
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★★★★ TimeOut Review
"Saint Jude’ is a way more engrossing piece of storytelling than near enough every other immersive show in town. There are five credited writers, and Swamp Motel itself is a five-strong collective, plus there’s the AI itself. I strongly suspect the whole thing has been enormously complicated to put together. But at the end of the day it doesn’t feel overly complicated. It’s a good old-fashioned adventure that largely takes place in the most immersive place of all: your head."
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★★★★ The Stage Review
"As you might expect if you've been to a Swamp Motel show before, things are not quite as they seem, and tension is skilfully built. It's a shame that, at its conclusion, we're shoved out of the meticulously crafted ambience a little too brusquely. And there are some gloriously weird moments and design motifs playing on religious symbology that could be further developed. But this is a fresh and innovative piece of immersive work, packed with atmosphere and big ideas."
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★★★★ LondonTheatre1 Review
"The best praise I can give is that I leave the building genuinely unsettled by what I’ve been through. Arthur C Clarke famously said, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.‘ While we’re not quite there yet (despite the terrifyingly human-like output of the latest AI chatbots), Swamp Motel have sprinkled just enough human intervention to produce moments where I scrabble to keep up with a show one step ahead of my thinking at all times. I can’t game the system, and there’s no turning back twenty pages when a bad choice leads me to the sharp end of a death ray."
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★★★★ West End Best Friend Review
"Swamp Motel emphatically insists that this is not an escape room, but you are tasked with challenges and puzzle solving which inject the same kind of adrenaline into the experience. We can guarantee that you will have never experience anything like this, and we’re already planning our next trip. A completely unique, delightfully creepy and utterly immersive hour of mystery and intrigue."
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★★★★ Queerguru Review
"The experience is emotionally, physically and intellectually satisfying. A psychological thriller that at some moments will have you pounding at the keyboards, singing into the mic, playing shoot ’em-up video games, and hunting for clues whilst questioning the hegemony of surveillance capitalism. Yet barely moving from your seat in a grim, call center-type cubicle."
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Saint Jude - The Nudge London
The bad boys of artfully-created-interactive-immersive-games-cum-plays-cum-happenings, the ingenious Swamp Motel were the gang behind The Drop, a brilliant, artisanal escape room style experience in an Aldgate office block – and it sounds like they’re about to smash it again.
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The best new theatre shows opening in London January 2023 - Timeout
It’s 2023, baby! And it’s a bustling month for London theatre thanks to the return of a couple of massive festivals – Vault and LIMF – plus a brace of massive December openings that were forced to delay And that’s not all: as ever, there’s plenty to get excited about in London theatre in theatre, with new stuff ranging from Cirque du Soleil’s annual visit to a couple of big new West End comedies.
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The best new theatre shows: London, January 2023 - Culture Whisper
The London stage isn't offering anyone a slow and sleepy start to the new year. In fact, January is a bumper month for theatre, with farces through to gory tragedies offering thrilling entertainment for just about everybody. Here are 11 shows not to miss...
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The Immersive 5 with Swamp Motel’s Clem Garritty and Ollie Jones
Swamp Motel, the London based immersive entertainment company, has been impressing audiences with their storytelling prowess since first making a mark with the Isklander series of online adventures and made their live-action mark with the much buzzed about The Drop.
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