Counterpilot‘s immersive, interactive adventure TRUTHMACHINE might be the one of the best-kept ‘secrets’ of the 2024 FRINGE WORLD season. This tucked-away gem in The State of Play program comes to us from Queensland for the very first time after multiple seasons across Australia since its development in 2019. It’s a 30 minute small-group experience that takes place in a dark, sound-treated room at the underground level of State Theatre Centre, with a session running every 40 minutes.

If you haven’t heard the buzz about Truthmachine, it could be because it’s not your typical Fringe show; it sits alongside popular immersive Fringe events from past years like Monroe & Associates by Tim Watts and The Last Great Hunt, or Darkfield’s container shows Seance, Flight, Coma and Eulogy. Also, Truthmachine doesn’t have the benefit of the major outdoor foot traffic that those other shows had, but if you’ve caught a show at the STC, you would have heard the Front of House folks announcing the next session with a pseudo-echo of “TRUTHMACHINE, Truthmachine, truthmachine…”

In fact, the FOH staff have a role to play in setting up the experience for attendees; they make sure we complete the pre-experiment questionnaire – I say ‘experiment’ because we’re ‘test subjects’ in this scenario. I’m certain that these forms provide VERY important data that MUST be collected in order for the experiment to have scientific validity. As you can see, just in the act of completing the form, I had already bought into the show’s premise and was ready to play my part.

As we are led into the room, we are asked to take a seat anywhere at two long tables. An experiment facilitator is seated behind a desk with a laptop and other equipment at the far end of the tables; his countenance is neutral and his gaze is fixed mostly on his laptop, but he does seem also to be monitoring us as we settle in. Another facilitator joins the table and begins to give us instructions and guides us through how to participate.

In front of us on the tables are headphones, an LED-lit triangular interface with a switch, and a small dossier, which warns us not to open until instructed. We participants look around at each other smilingly, tittering with nervous expectation. The facilitator starts us off with control questions to teach us how to use the light switches to answer and primes us for the types of questions we’ll be asked. There is also a brief history of the development and use of the lie detector interspersed between the questioning, with visual aids provided in the aforementioned dossier.

This first phase of the experiment ostensibly provides the facilitators plenty of information to help them select the one single participant who will eventually sit in the ‘hot seat’ to take the polygraph test. It’s important to note that any participant may decline to undergo testing, so if you have reservations about being ‘scrutinised’ in front of strangers (or your date), you can just opt out.

Once our group’s participant has been chosen, he’s strapped in with wires to measure things like heart rate, breathing, and galvanic skin resistance (sweaty palms). Then the questioning begins, and though the rest of us aren’t being tested, we’re still active participants in the experience, by trying to use our own internal bullshit detectors to figure out if he’s lying, and then comparing it to the data collected by the machine.

In technical terms, Truthmachine is second to none for its orchestration of sound, lights, mics, not to mention the machine itself, in enhancing the atmosphere of techno-mystery created by writer/director Nathan Sibthorpe. The show’s credits include at least a dozen designers, including a software designer (Clinton Freeman), plus the live performers, voice performers, and other collaborators.

The ideal participant to undergo the polygraph in this theatrical pseudo-experiment is likely to be someone with a poker face who doesn’t naturally give too much away. This helps drive home the subjective nature of distinguishing ‘truth’ from ‘lies’ and the dubious ‘objectivity’ of mechanical measures of an individual’s mental and emotional states. There is a twist at the end that makes you question everything you’ve seen and heard altogether, which is a fantastic Black Mirror-y kind of unsettling conclusion that invites contemplation and discussion with your fellow participants.

But beware – if you’ve come with friends, family, or a partner, you also might end up questioning if you really knew whether they were telling the truth or lying…or if it was all in good fun while playing along with….TRUTHMACHINE, Truthmachine, truthmachine…

CICELY BINFORD

TRUTHMACHINE runs at the State Theatre Centre of WA from 19 January – 4 February as part of State of Play at FRINGE WORLD. For tickets and more information click here.