As a group we applied to be part of the Side Step Festival at Colab and were thrilled to be accepted. The venue offered us an unusual and challenging space: an old underground bunker. The performance tunnel was long, narrow, and stripped-back, with no technical equipment other than what we could bring ourselves, a speaker, and a few LED lights. Because PLEASE relied heavily on technical and scenographic elements, we quickly realised this performance would test the adaptability of our work.

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The shape of the space meant we had to re-stage choreography for a thinner, more elongated playing area. We also faced the challenge of performing without our wheeled mirrors, which had been central to earlier rehearsals. Fortunately, Colab provided us with some old mirrors, which we placed strategically around the tunnel. These couldn’t be moved mid-performance, but they opened up new opportunities for stillness and refracted intimacy.

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Despite (or perhaps because of) these limitations, this version of PLEASE became something special. The bunker’s underground, club-like atmosphere immediately transported the audience into an environment resonant with our aesthetic. The intimacy of the tunnel also transformed the relational dynamic: proximity made connection feel more immediate, and the audience seemed more willing to surrender to the collective experience. One spectator described the space as “already halfway to a club,” which reinforced our discovery that context itself can function as scenography.

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Most importantly, Colab gifted us the ending we had been searching for. We had long resisted the idea of a traditional bow, which felt out of place in an immersive piece where audience and performers were co-constituting the experience. The tunnel’s double doors provided the perfect solution. In our Colab performance, after the final song played live by Morgan, we all lay together on the floor, hot and sweaty, joined by the audience who had also sat or lay with us. Once the song ended, Flora slowly rose, gathered the group, and together we shared a final breath before opening the double doors, a literal portal back to reality. The audience quietly followed us out, the transition subtle yet profound.

This moment felt like what José Esteban Muñoz (2009) calls an “ephemeral utopia” a fleeting glimpse of alternative ways of being together, experienced not through ideology but through the body. In that hot, exhausted stillness, surrounded by balloons, sweat, and laughter, performers and spectators briefly formed a community of equals. The utopia dissolved as the doors opened, but the memory of it lingered, reminding us why we wanted to do this kind of work.

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Although the Colab performance came just one week after Edinburgh Fringe and one week before our final sharing, it proved crucial to our development. It reminded us that while spectacle and technical polish are valuable, at its heart PLEASE is about people: performers and audiences finding connection in a space. This was the reason we came together as artists in the first place, and the Colab performance crystallised that ethos.

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performance crystallised that ethos.