The Innocents & Dead of Night header

Dare you enter the worlds of classic British horror movies The Innocents and Dead of Night?

In two special one-off events The Lost Boys in association with the BFI, Quad, National Trust and Derby LIVE invited audiences to screenings of these classic films. Through a fusion of cinema and live performance audiences were immersed, terrified, entertained and forced to look their worst fears in the face before they even took their seats. The Guildhall Theatre was transformed into a series of spooky environments reflecting those that appear in this collection of short horror stories and stunning National Trust property Sudbury Hall became the country estate at Bly, haunted by violent memories of tragic events. The ghosts of the house appeared to share their stories forcing audiences to face their fears and their own sanity.

  • The Lost Boys devised

  • Interactive performance

  • Indoor performance

Looking Back

We had worked with Quad on several bespoke live performance events that were inspired by their visual art exhibitions, where we blended cinematic language and techniques with our performances. These proved a success and led to Quad approaching us to create something as part of the British Film Institute Developing Audience scheme. We jumped at the chance and started to work on how we could create a cinematic and live performance event.
We created two unique screening events in venues that shared similarities with the settings of our chosen films - The Innocents at Sudbury Hall with live performance prologue and epilogue creating an immersive cinema experience and Dead of Night at Derby Guildhall, whereby each room became part of the portmanteau contained within the film.
These events were great fun to create, we were even able to take the audience into parts of the buildings which the general public were not normally allowed. Even better, we were scurrying around those buildings through secret passageways, changing into different characters to surprise the audience on their journey. We love make people laugh, and maintain that there is a thin line between fear and laughter. Quite often you get both at the same time and this was our aim. The events proved a success. The Lost Boys were accepted as producing members of the British Film Institute and the event made the One to Watch listing in The Guardian.

Cast

  • Paul Broesmith as Charlie Gordon

  • Ben Adwick as George Herbert

Dead of Night trailer

Dead of Night trailer thumbnail