based on a year in the life of a Psychiatric patient.
The Ward Round project is made up of 4 parts:
1 - The Video Game - an immersive journey through Psychosis and Psychiatry.
2 - The Live Show - a live action reenactment with realtime motion capture.
3 - The Community Workshop - for young people, carers, their friends and family.
4 - The Training Package - combining role play, virtual simulations & XR extended reality.
A first person role play game in a not so open world. For PC and VR.
Based on direct lived experience of Psychosis and Psychiatry.
Framed by one person's dramatic central true story.
Drawing on personal accounts of multiple former patients.
Developed in direct reference to clinical notes, interviews, video archives
and personal diaries.
Discover what it is like to navigate the experience of psychosis,
in the turbulent world of the Psychiatric Ward.
Learn to play the game - or you’ll never get out.
Live motion capture animates virtual characters cloned from memory. Digital avatars of past selves are re-inhabited on stage in the moment. Past experiences are interchangeably narrated and physicalised. Live performance and digital puppetry are integrated into sequences of cut scenes in a unique interactive movie format. A virtual production stage doubles as site specific location and flexible set. Digital Twins of real life locations are mirrored in projection mapped virtual worlds on LED walls.
This parallel universe is built into a video game designed to be played by the central performer live on stage, navigated as if in a lucid dream. A Motion Capture suit transforms his body into a human remote control and game console. You are invited into a dramatically deconstructed flashback where virtual and real worlds collide, contrasting clinical medical notes to personal experience. Interviews with family and friends are compared to personal diaries written in the lead up to all four hospitalisations, as we piece together the puzzle of what happened.
The audience completes The Ward Round circle, switching between fellow patients, staff, friends, family, jury and witness. Together we hack our way back into long lost memories, traumas, dreams and delusions.
A richly dark comedy with a dramatic core, The Ward Round offers a unique, dynamic, immersive experience.
We are collaborating with an incredibly talented team of academics, tech companies, artists & technicians to develop innovative technical tools, creative problem solving platforms, & structured participation models. We are developing a workshop with young people and service users, for their families and friends, to enable better communication, community connection, and greater agency in how we navigate mental health services.
We are building a training package for frontline staff and services, bringing first person stories recreated virtually to those developing the skills to best help people in need.
Both the Community Workshop and the Training Package will be based on an innovative hybrid model that integrates Virtual Reality and Extended Reality [XR] Immersive Technologies with:
• Open Space Technology (a process that enables collaborative problem solving)
• Forum Theatre techniques (from Theatre of the Oppressed)
• Peer supported Open Dialogue principles (an alternative method for treating psychosis and other diagnosed mental illness)
