Interview: 'Our Intention Is To Scare You A Lot': Actor George Blagden on A GHOST IN YOUR EAR at Hampstead Theatre

Jamie Armitage’s new show, A Ghost In Your Ear, made in collaboration with Ben and Max Ringham, will soon open at the Hampstead Theatre. The show is a unique horror play in which audience members will put on headphones and experience the work through the world of binaural sound, where the performers will be directing their words to a speaker on stage. How scary might it be? Scary enough that it has a health warning, stating, “This play is intentionally looking to scare its audience. If you are of a nervous disposition, then caution is advised . . .”

Recently, we had the chance to speak with George Blagden, who plays George in A Ghost In Your Ear. We discussed what made him want to be a part of the production, what it has been like to work on a show with binaural sound and why a bit of horror can be good for audience members!

So how did you first get started in the world of theatre?

I first got started aged nine. I went to see a production of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. And I just remember going to watch it, being like, “That is what I want to do,” and it snowballed from there. Basically, I just became obsessed with drama at school, and then got a drama scholarship to my next school, then found out that you could go to drama school at eighteen, and thought, “That's it. That's what I want to do.” So there was no looking back from quite a young age. This is always what I wanted to do.

And what made you want to be a part of A Ghost In Your Ear?

Where do I start? I was so excited when I saw that A Ghost In Your Ear was happening/ I saw that it was Jamie Armitage, whom I had worked with before. Jamie and I worked together on a production at the Hampstead Theatre in 2016 [PLATINUM]! I saw Jamie had created this thing in collaboration with these incredible sound designers, Ben and Max Ringham. I had also done a job with Ben and Max around about the same time, nine years ago, where they used binaural audio.

So when I heard that all those people were involved, and they were doing this thing using binaural audio, I was like, “I'm in. I don't know how I do this, but make sure that these guys know that I want to be a part of this in any way possible.” And also, the last four or five years, I've spent a lot of time in the audiobook world and the audio world itself. So when I read that there was a play about an audiobook narrator with all of these people involved, I was like, “Manifest this!”

Can you tell us a bit about the show and the character you play, who is also named George? 

It is one of those shows that is quite hard to explain to people, which you hope is exciting! Like when you tell people to watch a film, but you don't give them any context. We want this because you are coming to see a brand new experience that people won't have seen in theatre before. But essentially, it's about a guy who comes to a recording studio to read and record a ghost story. And it's really high-concept stuff that we haven't tried before.

So a lot of rehearsals have been about creating a whole new theatrical language and devising new ways to literally tell stories, but also tell stories in the context of theatre with this whole new toolkit. It's very exciting! If we've done our job right, it will be very, very scary. I would probably struggle to not squeal throughout it! 

What is it like rehearsing for a show where the audience will be wearing headphones? How does that work?

Yeah, it's very different! A lot of my first week of rehearsals was about unlearning everything that I have learned about how to communicate to and with an audience in the context of theatre. I've spent fifteen years working professionally as an actor, learning and then becoming good at that thing, which is, “There's a body of people, I'm telling you a story from here,” and I know how to do that. I know how to tell you that story. All of the tools that you use and devise as an actor to do that, that's all out the window. And relearning how to tell a story in a very different way, in a very intimate way.

It's really exciting for an audience! Hopefully, they will have a multi-layered experience. They're coming into a theatre space that some of the Hampstead audience will know well, they'll be sat in an audience setting, but have this entire other experience that they won't have had before, being told a story in that way that they won't have been told in that way before.

Have you ever seen any shows that use headphones and/or binaural sound?

I saw a show called Killer, which Ben and Max Ringham did with a wonderful actor called John McMillan. It was a one-man show, and it was in rep with the show that I was doing at the time, The Pitchfork Disney, which was directed by Jamie Lloyd - we did Killer and The Pitchfork Disney in rep in the basement of the Shoreditch Town Hall. So on the days that we weren't doing Pitchfork Disney, I got to go and watch John MacMillan do Killer in the room next door, and that was incredible, my introduction to binaural audio.

The character of Sid in our show, played by the wonderful Jonathan Livingstone, explains to my character - and therefore also explains to the audience - that you hear everything in binaural audio in a 3D space. So sound is placed in your headphones in a 3D space around you. I remember that first sensation watching Killer and hearing someone move in the space around me, their voice move - so exciting! But that was not as much in a theatrical context as this is. We're in the theatre doing it. So I'm just so excited to hear people's feedback.

What do you hope audiences take away from A Ghost In Your Ear?

We say at the start of the show, “This show is intentionally trying to scare you.” Our intention is to scare you a lot. And also, because it's a new experience, I really think that this does have rewatch value. In the making of it as well, there's so much appreciation for what Jamie has created and what we're trying to create that I feel like, as an audience member, I could easily come and see this a couple of times and still enjoy it. There's so much! It's like a sensory overload, in a way that you'll get so much more enjoyment of some of the technical details and stuff from the show if you come and watch it a second time. I hope people come and see it again and again and again!

And finally, how would you describe A Ghost In Your Ear in one word?

Haunting!