What do I love in Come Bargain? What I hope you’ll love too.

This is a weird blog to write. The crowdfunder finishes in five days, and a blur of frantic activity will end (yes! Get playful games! Join community gatherings! Delve into the rich world with exclusive stories! Last chance!). It’s meant to be for you, potential contributor, potential community member, but in many ways it’s actually for me.

What do I love in the Come Bargain Trilogy? What makes it worth this much work? This much risk?

There’s the simple, child-like answer, which is “it pleases my inner child. It delights me watching people enter the fantastical worlds of the Uncanny King’s court, the community meeting of Come Bargain With Uncanny Things, the strange, hushed trial of Come Murder An Uncanny Thing. I love it when they feel like they’re doing magic. I love it when they care about fictional people they’ll never meet. I love the simple humanity of strangers chatting as they craft offerings for the Uncanny Things.”

And it is very true.

It is also true that I love this show as a piece of craft. I love how it forms a community each night, deliberately bringing people together to collaborate. How it answers opera’s question of “why are they singing?” with “to build a world where the supernatural is possible”, and that feels meaningful. How it exemplifies my belief in interactive theatre as a form for the lonely 21st century, bringing people together to play at other ways of being human.

It may be pretentious, but it is also true.

As it is true to say that it achieves my highest goal in a piece of art: it is beautiful entertainment. People laugh, people weep, and above all, people let themselves be vulnerable in our gentle hands. They allow themselves to care about strangers, be kind to monsters, and try to be what they think they want to and ought to be.

Even when we fail, this show invites us to be better, or at least try being something else. Come into another world for an hour, and see what you can be.

This is what I love. This is what has guided me as a maker this far; what has guided our audiences to our world.

And this is what, I hope, at this last few days, will bring you to join us.

A show deserving of love.