Secret Cinema
The second rule is: immerse yourself. This is what hundreds of thousands of people have done during Secret Cinema’s 12-year run. It’s a commitment delivered on a promise – you pay more than the regular cinema price to see an old film. You’re told what to wear and where to meet at a certain time on a certain day. You’re forbidden to bring your smartphone inside, or take pictures. And by the time you leave, you’ve had one of the most incredible experiences of your life. If that sounds like a religion, it’s not far off. There are two types of people in this world: those who know the secret and those who don’t. In 2012, Andrea Moccia attended Secret Cinema presents The Shawshank Redemption. The ticket directed him to an east London library, where he was ushered into a makeshift courtroom. “The judge sentenced you for a crime you hadn’t committed,” he recalls. “Policemen loaded you into a blacked-out van that took you to a school transformed into a prison, where other audience members were shouting at you. You were stripped, put in a prison uniform and locked in a cell. I left that night thinking, ‘These people are insane and I have to work with them.’” Today, he’s one of lead producers for Secret Cinema. “The first production I worked on was Brazil,” says Moccia. “Day one, I walked into the 12-floor building they’d transformed into this dystopian world and got stuck in a lift with [the film’s director] Terry Gilliam. That was a baptism of fire.” This is an apt phrase for anyone experiencing their first Secret Cinema – a six-hour adventure where you enter a sandbox recreation of a movie’s universe with a narrative that unfolds until it reaches a crescendo at the exact moment the film begins. Last year, when Secret Cinema adapted Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 movie Romeo + Juliet – recreating the landscape of 44
Verona Beach for an audience of 5,000 a night, with choirs, police cars, and a masked ball at the Capulet mansion – the film director described it as “a whole new art form”. That art involves what Secret Cinema calls ‘mirror moments’, where performers reenact scenes in perfect synchronisation with the on-screen action. Before that, audiences might encounter these characters on their adventure. “One of my friends at Romeo + Juliet texted to say girls were chasing the actor playing Leonardo DiCaprio and crying because he looked so real,” says Susan Kulkarni, head of costume at Secret Cinema. “I was like, ‘We nailed it,’ because that’s the feeling I had as a teenager watching the film.” For an event the size of Romeo + Juliet, Kulkarni had a team of more than 30 working on as many as 700 outfits on rotation. “The actors have two or three changes throughout the evening, then we costume the bar staff, security, even the cleaners, because one person wearing the wrong thing pulls you out of the world.” Her team has to consider every eventuality. “We create a capsule wardrobe for each character, because if it’s raining you have to imagine what else Juliet would wear.” Kulkarni also has to consider the look of the general public: “We use the audience to
Brazil, Croydon
SECRET CINEMA/HANSON LEATHERBY
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t an undisclosed location in London, the bustle of activity is afoot. Inside a cavernous warehouse spanning 6,000m2, contractors feverishly put the finishing touches to a ginormous set that resembles… well, we’d best not say. Performers rehearse routines in a startling recreation of the backstreets of… actually, never mind. A man who looks suspiciously like Daniel Craig walks among them, broodingly scanning his surroundings. Studying him is Barbara Broccoli, producer of the James Bond movies. This scene may or may not have happened; we can’t really tell you, because the first rule of Secret Cinema is: tell no one.
“The main character had to jump off a tower block and abseil wearing huge wings, but seem to be flying,” says Kulkarni. “We only had a couple of days to create the wings. You figure it out as you go.” THE RED BULLETIN
