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Upper School Choice - chess

UAL Devised Drama Is A Cult Hit

10th February 22

UAL Devised Performance Exeone

In January mysterious posters started appearing around the school—we asked Y13 UAL student Talitha to explain what went down when delegates signed up to attend the Exe-one Conference.


“Myself, along with the other Year 13 UAL students, wrote and produced Exe-one international, a promenade piece inspired by Scientology and modern day cults.
For the performance, each of us chose a different accent to represent just how International this ‘team’ really was and how many countries it had reached already. The aim of this interactive performance was to create a divide within the audience and show how easy it is to be submerged into a cult. We left a lot of the decision making in the hands of the audience which later decided the fate of the ‘suppressant’.


Although the conference is very friendly at the beginning, it quickly takes a turn when we discover that a suppressant has infiltrated the group. Its revealed that this is one of their own, in fact the highest ranking member of Exe-one at the conference, Lizzy (played by me!) Lizzy had been trying to escape the cult for years and had an entire double life. She is publicly executed at the end via gassing and each audience member had their own opinion on if they agreed with it or not. But either way, they were told they should not talk about what they’ve witnessed as Exe-one already has all their information. A slide showing photos audience members had never seen of themselves was then displayed on a large screen.
I loved the entire process of creating Exe-one and having the uncertainty of how an audience was going to react was so exiting. You had to be prepared for any direction it could go when left in the hands of the audience.”

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