The Ward Round
An immersive Video Game and Live Show, Community Workshop and Training Package
based on the extraordinary true story of a former psychiatric patient.
The Ward Round VIDEO GAME (DEMO currently in post-production)
“They say you always dream of the same house, throughout your life…
In mine, it’s a psychiatric ward.”
Trapped in a recurring dream, a kaleidoscope of psychosis plunges you into the underworld of the psychiatric system. Piece together the puzzle of the past, by making your way through the immersive maze of memories. Learn to play the game or you’ll never get out.
A 1st person sleep-walking simulator in a not so open world.
The Ward Round LIVE SHOW (R&D Complete)
An immersive live performance event recreating the lived experience of a psychiatric patient. A live action reenactment combining physical and digital theatre in a three act play – it traces four hospitalisations, half a dozen diagnoses, and three Sections under the mental health act. We hear and see stories of shrinks, patients, staff, family and friends, meds and side effects.
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 find our way back into and through long lost memories, traumas, dreams and delusions.
A richly dark comedy with a dramatic core, The Ward Round offers a unique, dynamic, immersive experience, taking the audience through the kaleidoscope of psychosis and into the underworld of the psychiatric system.
The Community Workshop
We are collaborating with an incredibly talented team of academics, tech companies, artists and technicians to develop innovative technical tools, creative problem solving platforms, and structured participation models.
Alongside the video game and live show we are developing a workshop with young people and service users, for their families and friends, to enable community connection, better communication, and enabling a voice for those struggling to navigate mental health services by addressing the structural problems they face.
The 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 we are developing that integrates Virtual Reality and Extended Reality [XR] Immersive Technologies, using the game’s virtual assets to create digital interactive training modules and in person training workshops, combing aspects of:
• Open Space Technology (a process that enables collaborative problem solving)
• Forum Theatre and Legislative Theatre techniques (from Theatre of the Oppressed)
• Peer supported Open Dialogue principles (an alternative method for treating psychosis and other diagnosed mental illness)
• The Power, Threat, Meaning Framework (an alternative approach to diagnoses and trauma informed therapy)
My name is Garth Williams and this is my story. The Ward Round project is based on my lived experience as a former psychiatric patient. After an LSD induced psychosis aged 17, I spent a total of a year in psychiatric wards during 4 hospitalisations over a decade. The project is based on this epic autobiographical story. The lessons I learned taught me to take agency and find my voice in a depersonalising system. Eventually I sought private therapy (15 years and counting). I have been psychiatrist and medication free for 19 years. This has not been without struggle, including navigating the associated stigma we aim to challenge with the piece, as well as navigating complex post traumatic stress and more recently discovering my neurodivergence. I prioritise self care, diet, exercise, meditation and Tai Chi, and have extensively studied psychology, psychiatry, and psychosis. Advocating for friends and family in their ward rounds has revealed the system is often in a worse state now than it was then. My expertise by experience anchors the project. I believe it can and will help increase empathy and understanding for others in mental health crisis.
Contact Garth Williams:
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