Multi-award-winning Australian/Irish theatre director, producer and translator, and Artistic Director of The King's Head Theatre in Islington, Adam Spreadbury-Maher has co-directed a new immersive adaptation of Trainspotting. Here he writes for Run Riot about how theatre can engage with the vulnerable club scene in Britain.

Last month, Fabric, one of London’s most famous and iconic nightclubs, became the latest in a string of casualties in what some would go so far as to call the war against nightlife. Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh, ever engaged and impassioned, thinks it’s passing marks the death knell for clubbing culture in the UK. Taking to the internet, he described the decision as ‘the beginning of the end of our cities as culture centres, and indeed as entertainment centres’ with nighttime pursuits increasing relegated to gated communities. He’s far from alone…

The capital has been crying out for the night tube for decades now. How ironic that as it's ushered into existence in a climate of club culls. There are 50 per cent fewer venues for Londoner’s to train it home from after a night out than there were just 8 years ago, including bit hitters like Madame Jojo’s, Dance Tunnel and Plastic People. Where do London’s bright young things go to let loose these days?

As an artistic director and theatre maker, I feel an urgent and palpable sense of obligation to respond to this sea change. Live performance can not, will not, and should not replace clubbing; they occupy very different spaces within the fabric of our culture. But more than ever, we have a duty to get audiences out of their chairs and onto their feet. Londoners are crying out for something more visceral and immersive, something which sets the pulse racing. This is something theatre makers should embrace wholeheartedly. 

Over the past 2 years, I’ve been on an incredible journey with the King’s Head and In Yer Face Theatre’s production of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting. In London, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Bristol, it’s been astonishing and humbling to see the show strike such a nerve. I think a huge part of the reason why our audiences respond as they do is that watching Trainspotting isn’t a passive experience. We go to great pains to create another world, one in which the audience are active participants. The site-specific venues, pumping soundtrack, interactive actors and carefully chosen seating plan are designed to transport you to another place, in which you forget your everyday worries and lose yourself in the story. In many ways, it’s akin to a great club night.

We’re far from alone; from cinemas to restaurants, there is a noticeable trend towards the experiential. It’s telling that Sean Holmes’ revival of Shopping and F**king at the Lyric Hammersmith is replete with interactive elements, culminating in an audience member being invited onstage to read the play’s final monologue aloud from the script. Fuelled by the success of RIFT and Punchdrunk, more and more theatre companies are waking up to the idea of audience participation and involvement.

Among other things, Trainspotting is reminiscent of rave culture and 90's mad-for-it realism. Those days, and the clubbing scene they spawned, may be long gone, but for three months in The Vaults this winter, we're staging our own revival.

The live production of Trainspotting is at The Vaults 3rd November - 15th January

trainspottinglive.com