Who doesn’t love a good zombie? Once the unloved cousin of the monster realm, they are now firmly at the top of the chain, having managed to topple the resident King, the vampire. Shows like The Walking Dead have taken the world by storm and have us all contemplating how we ourselves would survive a zombie apocalypse. Over recent years companies have capitalised on our new found obsession and a string of zombie experiences have popped up everywhere. You can roam an abandoned shopping mall and live out your DAWN OF THE DEAD fantasies, or you can run amok in various UK cities as part of 2.8 Hours. Both of these experiences focus on a chase and tag element.
Of course not everyone is active enough to try running away from the re-animated dead. With this in mind a team from New Zealand have come up with the perfect alternative – Generation of Z: Apocalypse. Starting out life on the other side of the world, the team first brought their extra special immersive zombie experience to Edinburgh where it was an unsurprising smash hit. Following on from that success they are now bringing their unique brand of experience to London.
Generation of Z: Apocalypse is a theatre show like no other. Breaking through the fourth wall, the audience find themselves cast in a fully unique and immersive promenade performance. Boasting incredible film-level special effects and make-up, this is a must for any zombie enthusiast. The event starts on 4th April and runs nightly until the 5th July.
In preparation for the show we sat down with producer and self proclaimed zombie fanboy, Charlie McDermott, who told us exactly why this is a must-see attraction.
Where did the idea for Generation come from?
About 5 years ago a group of us, we all went to drama school together in New Zealand, and I guess necessity breeds adventure in that New Zealand is a very tiny industry. In fact in performance there’s only one full time job you can get which is called Shortland Street, that goes all year round everything is very sporadic. So its a very small industry and there are a lot of very talented actors in this small place with not a lot of work to go round. So we decided to make our own stuff. A group of us actors, and David Van Horn whose from London, were one night in The Basement, which is a theatre that I set up called The Basement Theatre. Basically after a few drinks, with The Basement there’s kind of like this alleyway behind the car park, quite dungy and underground with a roller door. The roller door was down and we were like ‘what if an audience were waiting outside and these two characters came running through the car park screaming, being chased by a horde zombies? So they get everyone inside the basement, pull down the roller door, lock it again and zombies are outside banging on the door. What happens?’ It was kinda invented that one night. Then me and Beth involved early on and went for funding, which we didn’t get any funding from the arts council straight away. We kept going and kept refining it and eventually got the funding and set up in a huge container park and we tested the idea. It was very cool actually. Then we developed it; we took it to Christ Church where there was a large earthquake so that in the red zone it was very destroyed already and it linked up with our idea. It was the first time we tried multiple story lines at once and was great. Some more people got involved and then we said ‘Let’s go to Edinburgh’, it was a massive success and crazy hit, and now we’re working on this London one.
What can audiences expect – how is it different from other zombie experiences?
We’re all fan boys so have seen a lot, and been to a lot, of the other experiences. We are trying to do something different, we’re trying to take it to the next level. How over five years we have developed that is by having film quality special effects and designs. Our zombies are designed by Kristyan Mallett who most recently got nominated for a Golden Globe for Eddie Redmayne’s make-up in THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING. He did WORLD WAR Z, he did HARRY POTTER, he’s a very, very well respected person in the film industry. We are also using squibs, real life effects, chainsaw effects, as well as theatrical trickery. Because we’ve broken the fourth wall, what you get that’s not familiar when watching a movie is that we put the audience inside the movie. That’s our first point of difference to the tag experiences out there. The second is that our actors are all professionals, our zombies are professionals, there’s this huge long list of volunteers from drama school, but the level of acting for this is unlike everything else. It’s so intense and so real because there’s a person right there. It’s very confronting and people can be man handled, there’s a lot of emotion. It’s very dramatic and you’re seeing that performance right in front of you. The other one is that we have live video taping in the sense that we provide choices. So in each room the audience have to make a moral decision. Something that is to do with life or death, or survive or not, or loss of morality and there’s options. So much like a pick your own path video game we’re bringing in some choice that affects the narrative. The other part of it of course that sets it apart from any scare attraction is the story-telling, theatre making, side to it. That side of it, we’re all here as actors to make this, we see a lot. I guess our point of reference is Punch Drunk who you might not have heard of. With Punch Drunk you kinda go around free lopping and find your own story and I think there’s always good production design but I’m left thinking ‘What was all that about?’. What we’re trying to do is unashamedly a beginning, middle and end narrative. Full real structure, Hollywood effects, all the favourite tropes from your favourite zombie movies, but it’s all happening around you.
How fit and active do you as an audience member have to be – 2.8 hours for example requires a lot of running?
No, so as an audience member you are cast as a survivor. The actors take you at all times through this experience in a linear fashion. So you’re not left on your own, well, there are a couple of moments. You will have to do things, you will have to make choices, you will be involved in missions to get the power up. You don’t know whose real and who isn’t in that there are people who can be attacked in your room. I don’t want to give too much away but its very active for those that want to. We’ve found in all of our tests that some people just want to observe and be part of it, and other people really want to get involved in it. What happens is the audience gets split into two groups and then into four and then they come back into two and then into one at the end. We split people up into smaller groups and in those groups there’s a large amount of interactivity between the rooms because they’re all hooked up, but also within the rooms themselves there’s all sorts of (laughs), all sorts of amazing things that they have to do. Some of them are physical based, others are down right shocking, others are very psychological in terms of the interaction. Each room is very different and people can interact, but we give a little direction.
How messy are things going to get?
Well pretty messy, 40 people in a small room. We’ve got blood, we’ve got explosions, we’ve got real live gunfire. We have to do a big health and safety talk at the beginning. We say ‘you may be man handled, you will get blood on you, there is offensive language, there are scenes of horror, violence. There are also very loud noises and explosions. If you do not co-operate we reserve the right to reject you’. What we’ve found these days is that people don’t want to sit and watch. They want to participate, they want it around you, they want to see everything in movies and games now. It’s all come full circle with things that look real, they’re live in front of you, the experience economy they call it. People are wanting to pay for experiences. It’s very important that we have health and safety, but at the same time people want the structure of something like this, they like to be grabbed. The audience is another role in a sense and the main cast member each night is different, and that’s the audience.
Zombies were once the unwanted monster, now people can’t get enough of them – why do you think that is?
Look at what’s going on paralleling the world. People always look to an escape from what is really happening , be that getting drunk, reading books or watching movies. The reality is, think about it, chaos on the streets, terrorism, war, disease, all of these things are going on right now. Humans do need an outlet, they do need a fictional place where they can explore some of these things in a way that is real. That’s what we’re able to offer with a project like this. People also have a survivalist nature to them. One in twenty have a survival plan in case of a zombie apocalypse.
In our mythology it’s a viral infection. In our world what happened was they invented an anti-ageing drug, but that company didn’t do the tests. It became the biggest company in the world because everyone would want an anti-ageing drug. The virus came out of that. Now we got checked by a haematologist scientist and all off them said technically this is possible. The whole probability of it happening is very, very low obviously, but the technical, medical element is real. So other than other mythical beings like vampires or werewolves we’d never have a chance of survival; vampires are too quick, werewolves are too strong. Whereas with the zombie you do have a possibility that A it could happen and B that you could survive it. You could exist. The other thing I think is that we can kill without remorse, it’s a human right, but technically not – it’s undead. So I could kill another human, we have a fascination with death, none of us want to die, why are we here, existential crisis either consciously or subconsciously and we look at a zombie and go ‘oh that’s death’ let’s kill that now, conscience-free killing if you like.
There’s another study I read that’s interesting, in times of opulence i.e the economy is doing well, vampires are very prevalent in pop culture. When there’s recessions or times of great trouble and chaos then it’s been proven that zombies are in the popular culture.
I think personally in terms of The Walking Dead, which has really driven the mainstream zombie zeitgeist in the last while, I think that in zombie video games they’ll be one type of society whereas in The Walking Dead which has really brought it into the pop culture is that it’s a soap. It connects because of the soap themes and they are always popular in pop culture.
How scary is it going to be?
Well everyone has a different scare level and we are trying to cater to all levels, but that’s impossible to do. But as an audience you’ll have some really tough life-changing decisions to do.
Have you been watching any of How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse?
Yeah, I kinda groaned my way through it. There’s so many camp kind of ‘oww Zombies’ that are out there and that isn’t what we’re doing. This is real man. Until you come and see it, people come up to us at the end and go ‘I was so cynical when I showed up for this and you guys turned me around.’ What we’re trying to do is strive for a much more serious as if this thing was really happening, and I just can’t wait to share this with audiences. Half of our audiences are theatre goers or experience hunters and the other half are people into scare attractions, people who like zombies, sci fi, The Walking Dead, and they’ve never seen anything like it. The comments that we’ve gotten are just awesome.
Generation of Z: Apocalypse hits London from 4th April and runs until 5th July; to get your tickets now, click here.
