Created & Co-Artistic Production by Wren Brian

Dramaturg & Co-Artistic Production by Patti Flather

Available Here

You’re just doing your job, right? How far would you go to maintain peace in a world of chaos. And just how true is pleading ignorance in defence of horrific acts, spoken without prior knowledge and just following orders.

Constructing a world so familiar to ours, with slight revisions, Wren Brian portrays the harrowing truth of it all is just how authentic this dystopian world could be with their interactive storytelling experience. A world which conjures an eternal greyness of limbo, trapped in a between realm of realistic and just out of reach. There is the option to study a bit of the history of this ‘world’ which offers a deeper understanding of the political elements, terminologies, and offers some tremendous world-building. It is not entirely necessary for the individual experience, but certainly offers a shorthand for some of the terms and groups mentioned within The Investigator.

Depending on choices made, the shifting narrative avenues open additional (or constrict) the world around the participants. It makes for an investable reason for multiple ‘play-throughs’ to see the more unique avenues and options. Though in The Investigator, Brian’s ultimate narrative threads come together quite neatly and refrain from having too many branching paths, risking awkward tie-ups and stagnation. And it all kicks off with a strand of fibre. A piece of carpet which feels a touch too familiar to be passed without a second glance.

Under Christine Genier’s narration, the context and basic set-up for The Investigator unfurls – but it’s up to the audience to carry it forward. Genier’s narration is matter of fact, a touch too much so, and reserves emotion and suggestion for the lead performances. Nameless, the audience make decisions and follow the path of a WIC agent, working with authority and a steady(ish) understanding of what they are heading into: a weaver’s workshop. With so much death, destruction, and chaos ruling, the world continues to turn, and textiles and fabrics still have a necessity. But only if we retain the resources.

Portraying the Weaver, busily trundling away at their loom, with an endless supply of carpet tiles to be made, Carman Lam Brar’s debut voice-performance is a stand-out for the production, the other principal character outside of the protagonist and much of the emotional crux of the production. Lam Brar’s performance threads itself into the sympathy of Brian’s storytelling, particularly as revelations within the script emerge and plunge The Investigator further into a traumatic piece and enable the performance a stronger presence and push for weight in the audience choices.

There’s room for The Investigator to branch out, with the incorporation of animations or images to provide a break-up from the heavily textual production, but it is not enough to detract from the overall presentation. While Jordy Walker’s sound design and accompanying score is unobtrusive, retaining enough of a presence to provide impact and atmosphere – one of mild discomfort and to set the audience on edge.

Brian’s culmination is heart wrenchingly astute and recognisable – both historically with the Holocaust, and the contemporary with Gaza or Ukraine. As the cruelty of humanity stretches beyond the slaughter of innocents, and touches on the unsavoury topics of the removal of evidence. It is a bold script, one which would easily shift into the dynamics of a short film or single act production. Sparking with creativity, and a harrowingly brutal sense of both the past and present, The Investigator is a solid way to express atrocities and tie audiences closer than ever difficult choices and opening their eyes.

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