Once booked, you get instructions on what time to show up and a basic location.
“Pier 16 at 1:00pm on Saturday, June 6, 2009”
Period. Not an exact location. Not who you’re meeting. Not what to look out for. Nothing else.
They find you.
The Setup
What do you do for someone’s 50th birthday?
Interactive improvisational theatre.
Where you get to participate. On the streets of Lower Manhattan.
Improv theatre can be a lot of fun, especially when it’s in the form of Accomplice The Show. We first heard about it when Patrick Neal Harris was discussing it on Good Morning America as something he discovered and enjoyed. He also discussed another interactive show, Sleep No More, which is in Lower Manhattan in New York City.
The Actual Event
The particular show we booked (Accomplice New York) takes place on the streets of Lower Manhattan. When booking, it’s typically up to 10 people per group, so be prepared to enjoy the time with others if you have a smaller group. We had enough people in our group that it was just us, so that had its own fun dynamic.
The show is offers between 12:30pm-4:30pm start times, Friday-Saturday-Sunday. Parking can be potentially rough in any city, but since most people go on Saturday or Sunday, parking isn’t much of an issue. Plus, the weekend we went, NYC was running a special on parking. If you parked in certain lots and stayed less than 12 hours, it was only $20.
Say WHAT? Exactly. Anyone who’s ever been to a big city knows parking can easily be upwards of $50.
The person who finds you takes you off to the side and gives the whole group a “brief” as to the background of the case you will be solving. They have a hat that one person in your group needs to wear as you play the “game”.
Someone needs to wear the hat. The hat will make sense later.
Then they give you the first clue and the group is off and running!
Each clue leads you to the next clue. The group goes through a series of clues throughout Lower Manhattan. In our case it included the financial district, Little Italy, Chinatown, a construction site and in the area of the Brooklyn Bridge. But not in that order, that would take the fun out it, right?
We’re not sure what all the bras hanging from the ceiling and wall was all about in that one pub, but we’re sure there’s a good explanation somewhere…hopefully.
Without giving too much away, it’s a sleuthing type experience where you engage with actors placed in various locations, for various purposes. Each one you interact with offers clues to aid you in determining answers to you are seeking. Then on to the next place to solve the next clue.
As you move about, you meet up with actors and actresses along the way. There are times when it’s difficult to tell that they’re actually actors versus someone on the street, they’re that good. As it’s interactive, you as a participant are part of the “show”.
The final destination was a bar where the end of the story took place. They seemed relieved when we got there. Apparently our group took the second longest time ever to go through the full experience. We were eclipsed in our time only by a group of women who decided to go shopping in the middle of their adventure…
Final Notes
Apparently we had taken so long to fully enjoy and participate in the interactive theatre experience that the group behind us came in only 10 minutes later. They told us normally there’s a good 45 minutes in between groups. If you do the math, the normal experience is an hour and a quarter, but we took an hour and fifty minutes.
When we asked about how they knew where we were, they said “Oh yeah, the hat. That’s just so we can know where you’re at and can track you”. They have a “spotter” on each group. As might be expected, some people have gotten lost not knowing how to negotiate the streets of Lower Manhattan. With that hat, the staff doesn’t have to go looking for them, they already know where they are.
All in all, it was a really fun time, definitely something you could do more than once and enjoy the experience every time.