Swamp Motel announce SAINT JUDE coming to London in January 2023

Photo credit: Guy Sanders

From 17 January-18 March 2023, groundbreaking immersive entertainment company Swamp Motel return with a brand-new location-based immersive experience, Saint Jude, which blurs the boundaries between theatre and technology once more.

Created in partnership with cutting-edge, creative AI company Charisma.ai and following the success of their smash-hit immersive theatre experience The Drop, which last year saw just under 3000 audiences thrown into London’s criminal underworld, Swamp Motel are creating an inventive new site-specific show that begins the second you walk through the door of a mysterious government building in Westminster.

Nestled between The Ministry of Justice and The Department of Health & Social Care is an organisation called St. Jude’s. This company provides comfort, communication and conversation to people in lifelong, irreversible comas. As set out in the company’s mission statement: “Our innovative software reads the brain patterns of sleeping coma patients, before transforming them into speech in a split second, allowing you to converse with minds we once thought were lost. Now, St. Jude’s are looking for willing participants to join the programme and explore the minds of their sleepers”.

Once in St. Jude’s headquarters, audiences engage with innovative AI technology created by Charisma, for a theatrical experience that will be uniquely individual to each player and unlike anything they’ve encountered before. From communicating directly with the brainwaves of coma patients, to uncovering the mystery behind their story, audiences will interact with AI-powered characters as well as live performers.

Swamp Motel Founders and Creative Directors Clem Garritty and Ollie Jones said: “At Swamp Motel, we aim to create genre-bending, technologically advanced theatre, and love creating exhilarating, interactive experiences that blur the lines between fantasy and reality. To enhance the show we’ve collaborated with Charisma, who create stories with advanced Artificial Intelligence and we absolutely cannot wait to invite audiences into the mysterious world of Saint Jude”.

Guy Gadney from Charisma added: “Immersive theatre and Charisma’s artificial intelligence both share the same goal: to pioneer new forms of entertainment by casting audiences inside the stories themselves. This means that participants can speak to the characters, influence their emotions, and then even change the story itself. We’ve long admired Swamp Motel’s productions, and Saint Jude will be a powerful experience combining the best immersive storytelling with the best in advanced AI to create a stunning new production”.

What will you uncover on your first day working at SAINT JUDE?

Saint Jude is strictly limited to 20 tickets per session. A limited number of tickets are on sale from 4 November here.