The Town Festival

Brief

The Town is a three-day festival two hours outside Melbourne, built as a mock village full of characters, games and debauchery. It tries to model a sustainable version of ordinary life and ask what actually makes a community healthy.

Approach

As narrative director I ran an interactive theatrical story through the whole site, through a fifties rollerskating rink, a diner, a massage parlor, a travel agency, a chapel and the downtown shops. A quartz mine is discovered under the town. Mine-Full, a mining corporation, starts gentrifying the culture until the place is close to collapse, and a resistance forms to take the land back. An alternate reality game gave the audience agency in it, and staged theatrics and a game show carried the climaxes.

Outcome

2,000+ people across three days, following one continuous story that resolved on the last night and that they could change the course of.

Credits

Producer

Culture Jam

Event

The Town Festival

Video and photos

Bob de Riemer