Bring The Come Bargain Trilogy To Life In 2025

How safe can you be, bargaining with the Wyrd? How powerful? How kind? With your help, we can find out in 2025.

The Come Bargain Trilogy is a trio of interactive immersive operas where you come and bargain with uncanny things: those creatures in old stories and legends flickering in the corner of your eye; beings of gifts and sickness; beings that we can bind and be bound by, for better and worse.

The audience take the place of a community, deciding how to change their lives by mastering rituals, crafting offerings, and negotiating with the strange and powerful Uncanny Things.

What’s in the trilogy? The world’s only interactive immersive operas, with rich lore, total audience freedom, and a commitment to creating communities with our audiences. With each performance, their choices will develop the world of the show, forming a uniquely growing experience.

• Come Bargain With Uncanny Things, a ritualistic gathering where a local community try to solve their problems with supernatural bargains (sold-out launch at COLAB Tavern, 2022)
• Come Worship Our Uncanny King, an energetic comedy where the members of an Uncanny Thing’s court try to win favour (work-in-progress sharing sold out at Voidspace Live, 2024)
• Come Murder An Uncanny Thing, a philosophical tragedy where a vigilante asks you: what justice suits a strange, dangerous, and finally captive Uncanny Thing? (premiere 2025)

Whether you come to one, two, three, or return again and again, it’s a chance to plunge into a world where you’re asked: how will your community care for each other at the edge of the real?

If you like dark rituals of iron and salt, tense bargains to preserve an eternal court or a child’s dreams, obsessive mages and glamorous monsters, or local council representatives just trying to keep everyone safe, this is for you. A chance to contribute to a milestone in interactive theatre, and become a part of a supernatural world.

Goal

The Come Bargain trilogy exists to create a new kind of interactive theatre and opera. Opera that plays with its audience; interactive theatre that uses music to conjure worlds beyond our own.

Thanks to our fans’ enthusiasm for the shows (and pestering about when they’d return!), we’ve been able to keep going to create the show we want to make for you.

At this stage, the only obstacle is money. We want to make work for our audiences, supported by our audiences, independent of subsidy. But to do that, we need a jump-start at a time when making art in the UK is more expensive than ever.

Your donations will make this show possible:

• A one-month London run in 2025
  • Venue hire & other up-front costs
  • Performer & stage management fees
  • Marketing & promotion

Contributions

Our supporters old and new are vital to our work. You can pick how much to give us, and receive a package of support. To thank you, we will:

• Give all supporters monthly updates on the project, including newsletters, rehearsal footage, and exclusive footage.
• Give all supporters at the Friend level and above a shout-out on social media.
• From the Celebrant level and upwards, you’ll get physical merchandise (such as mugs, coasters, in-world ritual guides, safety information and more, depending on the package you choose) and special access to the creators of the show.
• At higher levels, you can secure priority booking, personalised songs, coachings, discount codes, the chance to join a TTRPG campaign with the team, or even get yourself included in the world of the show!
• From the Community Leader level upwards, you’ll get invited to a special patrons’ salon combining games and music.
• At the Grand Bargainer level, we’ll work with you to tailor a rewards package that suits your interests.

(Estimated delivery for physical rewards is February 2025).

Reviews, Awards, & Articles

★★★★★ “the best time I've had in YEARS at an interactive show... easy to follow but incredibly reactive” - Tom Black, co-creator, Crisis? What Crisis?

★★★★★ - DesignMyNight, based on 21 audience reviews (our favourite? "Uncannily enjoyable. Wyrdly entertaining. Unsettling wholesome. Good excuse to wear black lipstick. I would go back.”)

★★★★ “an original, atmospheric, immersive role-play opera” - The Stage

“boundless in opportunity for audience improvisation/ interactivity.” - NoProscenium

"Inventive and intriguing... really could reach new audiences. A strange, slow-burn, potential sleeper hit" - Opera Magazine

"Uniquely atmospheric, playful, and extremely weird: Come Bargain is a genuinely exciting addition to the interactive arts landscape" - Katy Naylor, Curator, Voidspace Live Festival

Presented at Voidspace Live 2024, Theatre Deli, COLAB Tavern, and Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival 2021.

Supported by a Britten Pears Foundation Creative Retreat

Leo Doulton (writer/director/performer) awarded the International Opera Awards Foundation Bursary for work on the show

You can read more reflections on the project here

About Virtually Opera

Virtually Opera is a fusion company, combining everything from sketch comedy to cinema to noh. For the last 5 years, we’ve built a unique system for interactive immersive opera, defining the form and inspiring others. With hundreds of enthralled audience members behind us, we’re looking to move to the next level.

We want to make work that unites its audience as a community in a particular time and place, creating beautiful entertainment. Led by Leo Doulton, and frequently working with such talents as CN Lester, Erika Gundesen and others, we’re trying to change the opera sector for the better.