2019 Recap: The Village Festival Secret Society ARG
A recap of significant projects I undertook over 2019! Sign up to my Patreon to get early access to future recaps and other goodies.
This year I joined The Village Festival as one of their 4 new Programmers for their Edinburgh Gardens festival in late October. While the overall programming team (myself, Cat Scobie, Tim Sneddon, and Tim C. Ryan) worked together on programming the entire festival, I also worked on a special project: a Secret Society ARG.
Some of the performers and crew from The Village Festival 2019 in front of the Rotunda at Edinburgh Gardens. They are all in colourful costumes and some have instruments or props. I’m on the right side of the Rotunda stairs in the red jacket with a big Ace of Spades-like card in my pocket. Photo credit: The Age
I have been interested in ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) since the early 2000s, stemming off a childhood love of treasure hunts and the occasional hobby of puzzle-making. While I loved the concept of them, I did find a lot of them overwhelming to solve, especially since I would often only hear about them halfway through and thus miss a lot of information. Escape rooms, live mystery games, and live treasure hunts scratched similar itches: environmental immersive gameplay, the best ones having puzzles that integrated well into the game’s overall narrative.
I also really enjoy immersive performances, especially those that have an ARG-esque feel in that there was a mystery to solve or things to do that could move the story along. One of my favourites was the All Worlds Fair in San Francisco in 2013, which took the form of a World’s Fair with stalls from across the galaxy and across timelines. A black & white dress code followed by a “passport check” before entry into The Mint led to a wide variety of stalls and experiences - from a silicon mine to hunt for chipboards (and a display that lit up when touched, which I found really profound) to a race where players wore VR goggles that give you a third-person view of yourself on the track. After exploring, everyone was brought into a room to enjoy some performances, before being unleashed onto the world in a monochrome mass.
Making an ARG or immersive performance has been on my bucket list for ages. However, information on producing ARGs was low on the ground. It didn’t help that most ARGs were produced by big companies with large budgets, so their methods may not have worked for my severely limited resources anyway. Even so, I did experiment with the form when I can - for instance, as part of promo for the Midsumma 2019 run of Queer Lady Magician, I staged a week-long “takeover” by the show’s villain Chad, where he “hacked” my social media profiles as well as the website & Midsumma/Circus Oz ticketing sites to promote “The Incredible Chadbury” and share very janky magic tricks. This was then woven into the plot, as part of his campaign to usurp The Magician and run the show.
I’d long been fascinated by secret societies, but the idea that led to the one in The Village Festival came about a year ago after noticing the trend of artistic “brothels” or “bordellos” that play with the idea of “forbidden, taboo, salacious” art. Not only did this trend seem tired, it was also viewed unfavourably by sex workers who saw this as furthering the stigma against their profession, especially since a lot of these spaces did not hire or cast actual sex workers. The concept of a Secret Society seemed like another good way to draw in allusions of secrecy or mystery without playing into dangerous tropes, with enough flexibility to mold the concept over time. A lot of my friends were interested in helping, so it seemed the project had some legs.
I had initially pitched the Secret Society concept to White Night and was shortlisted but didn’t make it to the final festival. I also pitched the concept to a few other festivals to no avail. Finally, The Village Festival said yes (you can read my pitch for them here) though I did have to work with a shorter lead time and fewer resources.
Component 1: Pre-Festival
The original pitch for the Secret Society involved an extensive pre-festival campaign, both on social media and through offline guerrilla actions such as on-site stickers with code words or participating artists hinting at their “membership” in the Secret Society on their own platforms and shows. However, the late confirmation of artists and a long delay in the hire of a marketing professional for The Village Festival meant that this element didn’t get to be as far-reaching as originally planned, so I had to adapt my plans.
The core of the pre-festival component of the Secret Society was a Twine game (similar in style to the pitch document) which served as a cryptic program of the artists performing as part of the festival (their involvement will be further explained in Component 2). In the voice of The Mxtress, leader of the Secret Society, I wrote stories and crafted puzzles specifically tailored to each artist and their piece, sometimes working off their bios, media, or even their names.
I wanted the puzzles to be accessible to a wider range of people, especially since the audience of The VIllage Festival aren’t likely to be very tech-savvy. I made sure to have a variety of puzzles - visual, audio, text, general knowledge, even Googling skills - and kept the difficulty on the easy side. I also made sure that the puzzles could be solved without needing to download anything or fiddle with code, which meant eschewing standard ARG puzzles such as spectograms or reading source code. This actually allowed me to be very creative with puzzles, making material that wouldn’t really be seen in any ARG. Some of my favourites include:
A Morse Code message hidden in a member artist’s track, but as a chopping axe to befit the forest theme (the story text also had the Morse Code typed out):
A video where the audio and visuals all relate to the same code word:
A jigsaw puzzle related to the artist’s name (the fact that it’s a jigsaw puzzle is in itself a clue):
One of the puzzles actually influenced the final work of one of the artists. As his stage name was The Mighty Caesar and one of his props had some runes engraved on it, I decided to write a time-travel historical story where both the story itself and the untranslated runes led to HERCULES. Turns out, Caesar had thought about doing a Hercules-themed show for a long time, and this puzzle gave him the impetus to actually present such a story during the Village Festival.
Once the puzzles were solved, people were invited to join the Secret Society newsletter, where The Mxtress sent updates and dispatches around the Secret Society and future puzzles. They also gained a membership card, an Ace of Spaces with a keyhole, designed by fellow programmer Cat:
The website was promoted through The Village Festival’s social media profiles as well as through cards hidden on the official website. Between the long delay on the marketing manager hire and the fact that the Pozible campaign took precedence, there was not as much engagement via social media as I would have hoped - just a couple of Facebook posts closer to the festival. Ideally I would have been able to craft these puzzles and promote them months in advance, building a sense of mystery over time. Even so, we did have people checking out the puzzles and signing up, in large part thanks to the participating artists sharing the puzzles with their networks.
Component 2: On-Site
Originally I didn’t even conceive of a specific venue for the Secret Society. I figured the artists would come up with their own little secrets, such as a secret side performance at at any venue, special exclusive merch, or a personal meet-and-greet. However, the other programmers suggested having a specific venue for participants to do their secret performances in, so we appropriated one of their tents specifically for Secret Society Shenanigans.
The Secret Society tent - a red round tent with a crochet decoration (by Stephanie Lai) by the entry clipped with the membership cards. In front is a small chalkboard with the logo and the times of upcoming shows.
Once the full program was confirmed, the artists were invited to the Secret Society in two waves. The first wave was based on lists of recommendations from the other programmers, which netted a few Yeses, as well as a couple of artists I had in mind for myself. I then reached out to all the other artists offering them a spot at the Secret Society to put on something experimental or oddball. The enthusiasm was immense! There were more artists than I could accommodate with my budget and schedule, which was unfortunate, but I did appreciate the wide variety of people who were keen to be involved one way or another.
After getting material from confirmed artists, I collaborated with my co-writer Melody Shotade on devising clues and the structure for the on-site portion of the Secret Society. While I wrote the online puzzles, Melody wrote corresponding paper clues to be printed and distributed across the festival - for instance, I’d pin them on all the tents and leave them on benches and bars.. She also made up badges using the Secret Society logo to be given to people that showed up for the show. As people wore those badges out and about, they would spark some buzz amongst the rest of the festival-goers, curious about this mystery symbol that kept popping up everywhere.
The card on the left, and a clue card on the right. The clue card reads: “SECRET SOCIETY CLUE - Craig he may burn but here to represent is an act sure to keif you b’dazzd. Come to our ‘Tent’ for a ‘Yarn’ mate - SATURDAY 9:30PM - PASSWORD: THIS ONES FOR THE LADIES
Melody modelling one of the cards! They were upside down by accident but that still kinda worked with our aesthetic.
We also enlisted the help of festival volunteers to dress in slightly offbeat costumes (I gave them the note of “a wizard trying but just failing to blend into Muggle society”), distribute the clues and encourage people to check out the tent. A special shout-out goes to my friend Casper Williams who went above and beyond with the spruiking (and with the Village in general) - they were so in character and so enthusiastic that we ended up having people come by because “the lady magician” told them to. (Casper was also the stage manager for Queer Lady Magician so this was extra hilarious.) We ended up building this backstory of Casper and I being spouses, with them telling people to come see “my wiiiiiiife” at the tent.
(Unfortunately I don’t have photos of Casper or the other volunteers in action! However, here’s a photo of Natalie, Melody’s collaborator, who also helped with clue distribution.)
Natalie (Melody’s collaborator) with her dog, wearing a Secret Society membership badge. The rest of the volunteers were dressed similarly.
The on-site part of the Secret Society worked out a lot better than I had anticipated. For most of the acts, we had a steady stream of people coming in and out, curious about the symbols and what lay within the red tent. I was especially surprised by the number of kids that showed up, despite there not being much kid-centric content in the tent - they were very polite and paid attention to the performers, whether it was a live looping performer making weird synth music or a story about 3 queens (of a sort).
A closeup of a synth board belonging to Polito
Keyboards and violin owned by Happy Axe
Lucy Best’s journal - the cover reads “Quality over Quantity Always”
Dazza and Keif showing off their jackets
Sometimes this devolved into chaos - for instance, Plastic Rupert performed possibly the world’s longest and slowest rendition of YMCA, with the droning singing and saxophone drawing in more and more people curious about the cacophony within.
4 Likes, 0 Comments - The Village Festival (@villageartsfestival) on Instagram: "#Sounding #articulation #saxophonyCacophony #thevillage"
The start of the second day terrified me - the very stormy weather cracked our tent, making it nearly collapse on us (myself and the two performers of Egg, who were holding it up). While the tent did get reinforced, I was so scared that the tent would fall or catch fire (especially having known people who lost friends in the 2016 Ghost Ship warehouse fire) that I avoided staying in the tent as much as I could outside of shows. Thankfully, the artists that day were all very sympathetic and easy to work with and the tent stayed up (though a couple of audience members did try to mess with the tent when I told them about the near collapse, which is a dick move).
We ended up running out of badges and had to print new ones on the fly! The audience numbers shifted based on the weather, but it was generally a good crowd. We even had a lovely conversation one day when Casper and I invited a family to come huddle in the tent while not in use as it was raining outside: an interracial lesbian couple with their kids and the parents of one of the partners. So wholesome!
Post-Mortem
Given the short time-frame and the relative shortage of resources (especially on day 3 when we didn’t really have volunteers available for most of it), the Secret Society was far more successful than I could have anticipated. We had pretty strong engagement before and during the festival, the artists were very happy to participate, and we did build that sense of mystique I was aiming for with this project. The Chair of the Village Festival board even said during our debrief that she had highlighted the Secret Society in her report back to the City of Yarra as it managed to do what a lot of festivals wished they could do: capture attention before the festival dates.
There are some things I would change, of course. We printed more clue cards than we needed and not nearly enough membership cards - we should have flipped their numbers around. If we had secured a marketing person way earlier and had our program sorted faster, we could have coordinated the pre-festival part more extensively. The Village Festival was short on volunteers overall - I did do my own recruitment for volunteers (which is how Casper came on board) but if I had realised this earlier I would have made a bigger push for volunteers across the festival. I did get feedback about the clue cards’ wordiness being inaccessible - we could have made that simpler. I could have also brought in someone like Melody or Casper way earlier in the process to coordinate the Secret Society, since they did such a great job of making it run on site. And of course, a bigger budget would have allowed for more artists, more people to make puzzles, even a dedicated tech person.
But this was the first run of a very ambitious project and it went pretty well! I finally got to check off one of my longest-lasting bucket list items. Imagine what I could have done with more resources and time! It’s a great start and I’ve learned a lot for future work. It’s also a rare example of ARGs made in a non-commercial, artistic space: while it was a marketing project, it wasn’t a super high-budget capitalistic endeavour, serving as a good example of the possibilities for ARGs and performance art to intertwine.
I don’t plan on continuing with The Village Festival (for complicated reasons) but I would like to take the Secret Society and make it its own thing, like my original pitch anyway. I’ve wanted to make the sequel to Queer Lady Magician be its own kind of ARG, though I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do so as I haven’t been successful at securing funding (and an ARG is kind of a weird thing to find funding for). I’m also keen on further opportunities to be involved with the development of ARGs or similar work - if you have any leads, get in touch!