Undercover Actors!

This is not some blog about how we do team building characters on fun spy missions. Nope. More interesting than that – and more real.

Every now and again we’ve been asked to do a job that is a little out of the ordinary. As opposed to a big showy performance, like people often want, we are asked to underplay a scene or character, in such a way so as to be totally believable to everyone around them, immersing everyone in the fiction of who they are and what they are doing. 

This sounds very much like our aim for role-play/immersive training – except there’s no debrief afterwards, no feedback to trainer or trainees and certainly no introduction of the actor out of role!

It’s also not a prank either, which is basically what our Comedy Waiters are, because there’s no gradual realisation that something is up, no playing for laughs, no big reveal to laughter and a round of applause.

Jobs like this are TOTALLY immersive, right to the end-  and only finish when the actor is home. A bit like an MI6 job but with no international information gathering or crisis! It’s basically our job to create a believable character that is so realistic and textured, they can be chatting with you and you wouldn’t know. To build and populate a scenario in such depth that no one questions the reality of it. 

This sounds bizarre, right? You may think this is us just writing some attention grabbing copy in order to sell our services. But in all seriousness, we have done quite a few jobs that have needed us to do just that – and then walk away at the end without claiming any applause or credits. (Just payment of course, from a satisfied client).

To that end we have, on several occasions spun an elaborate lie, created characters that have interacted with everyday folk undetected, with plausible backgrounds and believable motives and never breathed a word about it to anyone since. It has felt like a scene from Mission: Impossible but it’s not pretend, and like Ethan Hunt and his team we take our clients brief very seriously. This is not a prank, or jape. We spend time in creating the detail needed for actors to work within and successfully deliver. To be very clear we will not undertake anything unethical or put our actors in compromising positions – we’ve never run a honey trap operation.

So you may find this all very interesting and can’t wait to hear some of the scenarios we’ve created? Sorry, that information is classified, between us and our clients and the only person we’re willing to divulge anything to is HMSS – but this is probably way below their scope of interest. Maybe.

But truthfully, if you need something a bit out of the ordinary, like what has been described above, you can trust us to deliver the mission. Completely. 

This blog will self destruct in 10 seconds.

(No, just kidding – it won’t)!