Riptide: Project Intimacy

Like a lot of us in lockdown, I've been missing the theatre. I've enjoyed some streamed shows and recorded performances, but it's just not quite the same. So, I started looking for something to fill the gap – could I recreate that ‘live buzz’ at home?

Riptide is a theatre company in Leeds innovating the way we experience theatre. They create immersive, site-specific work, often embracing digital technology. On their website, I came across ‘Project Intimacy’.

Riptide says Project Intimacy is a ‘two-week long pervasive experience which aims to combat isolation and form new connections with people from across the world’.

Participants are paired up with a complete stranger based on their responses to a character questionnaire and then, with daily prompts from Riptide, use text messages to connect, and see what happens…

Alex Palmer, artistic director, explained the idea: ‘I am very interested in giving audiences power and agency. We have used our skillset as digital theatre-makers to make something for social good’.

But is this a piece of theatre? ‘I think the way I think about this is that it is a performance between two audience members. They receive the stimulus from Riptide to shape their performances – in that way, we're the director”. I’m sold, and I sign up.

Will my partner and I make a good performance together? Will I get stage fright? Will I be able to have meaningful interactions with a stranger? The sense of trepidation is exciting, a little like the feeling before the curtain rises, but this time you've got to keep your phone on. The house lights dim…

My phone pings: ‘Hello. It's me, from Project Intimacy … how has your day been?’ I don't know anything about ‘me’; how old they are, where they are from, not even their name, but over the next two weeks I'll be texting and talking and getting to know them. Today the instruction from Riptide is to send one text message only. My opening line? ‘Hello! It's good to hear from you, I've been for a walk…’

Day two we are allowed two text messages, and Riptide ask me to ‘revel’ in my anonymity. Which I do, and it feels great, I don't know who this is and strangely I feel less judged by it. Me and ‘Me’ talk about walking and wildlife, hopes and dreams, culture, community, family. It's an accelerated acquaintance, sharing personal things freely and chatting happily – I still don't the name of my co-performer.

Each day we have different tasks, prompts – it's exciting, but has become strangely natural. ‘Me’ is my friend. One day we walk together (not together together, but at the same time, sharing photos), I’m learning about my partner, but also myself, reminding myself who I am a little bit, and re-focusing how I want to be.

On day eight the message comes through from Riptide to say we should have a 20-minute phone conversation and I am slightly wobbled. Talk to this person? Not just text? And we should share names. Slightly nervous, we call – ‘Hello, Brian.’

As things progress, like all good drama, I am drawn to asking myself some big questions. What is friendship? Am I a good person? Do I like myself? What is theatre?

The prompts are more personal, more intimate, I suppose. It's really flowing, it feels good. Then the last act, final scene; send your partner five positive things about them. It's a lovely dénouement. And then it's over. But to my delight, Brian still texts me the next day, and the day after.

A week after the project all the participants are invited to a zoom meeting to share our experiences. We'll also get to see our partner! We are asked – did anything change? A lot of people talk of perceptions, and I feel the same. Like a good play, it helped me see the world, myself, and others in a new light.

I asked Alex, has Project Intimacy been a success? ‘I don't think we have solved lockdown. I do think we have made it better for some people. We have connected them in a time of isolation. The best bit for me is how positive the feedback has been. It genuinely seems to have helped people through really difficult times. That social and human effect it has had is something I am really proud of.’

And so he should be – it's not easy to make meaningful connections in this quick-scrolling world, but Project Intimacy helps us step back in order to look deeper in; and definitely gives us a little live theatre buzz too.