EDINBURGH 2025:Review: THE FARENHEIT ALLIANCE V, Bow At C ARTS | C Venues | C Alto

A restful and contemplative multimedia play for one audience member at a time, The Fahrenheit Alliance V is a unique immersive performance, originally from Japan. Concocted during lockdown times, it began as a way to stay connected when the world was in solitude. Now Hirai-Kikaku has adapted the piece to travel around the world, from city to city and from country to country, passing on messages in relay from one audience member to another.

You are welcomed most hospitably into the peaceful space. A bed is prepared just for you and the performer takes you thoughtfully through a description of how the experience will unfold. They take their position on the other side of the screen from you, and the piece begins. 

Utilising live cinema and projection mapping technology, the landscapes taken from previous audience members’ capturings are imposed upon the performer on the other side of the screen. Their voices, sometimes in overlap, play out softly. They ponder what our world will be in 200 years time. If we were to leave a book for a child in the far future, what messages do we wish to pass on? 

In partaking of this experience, performer Mitsuko Hirai, filmmaker Rob Moreno of Media Kobo and writer Kyle Yamada invite you into the alliance, a “living chain of voices…weaving an ongoing dialogue across time and space” as Hirai describes. Though the experience is beautiful and relaxing, it still confronts the viewer with thoughts of existentialism, legacy and ecology. 

This Edinburgh Fringe run is the fifth iteration of the play and anyone who experiences it will have their opportunity to become part of its future with their own recordings for contribution after leaving the space. This is a poignant, imaginative and connective piece of performance art, billed as a “quiet revolution in storytelling”, which is apt.

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