Here's the short version:Vox Lumiere is where a classic silent film, a live rock concert and theatrical performance collide.For METROPOLIS, Fritz Lang's legendary 1927 film fills the screen while eight live performers unleash an original score of rock, pop, electronic and cinematic music, with powerhouse vocals, lighting and staging all synchronized to the film.It's not a movie with a band playing underneath it.It's not a traditional film screening.It's not quite a concert.It's not quite theatre.It's all of those things becoming one live experience.And yes, we know that sounds a little difficult to picture.In fact, one of the things we hear most often after a performance is:"I was curious, but I really didn't know what to expect."Usually followed by:"I LOVED it."So, let's answer some questions.

The lights go down. The movie begins.The film fills the screen while an eight-piece ensemble performs an entirely original score live.Drums. Bass. Guitar. Violin. Four vocalists. Electronics. Cinematic sound. Lighting. Staging.Everything has been composed and designed around the film, so what you're watching and what you're hearing become part of the same experience.Sometimes the performers seem to disappear into the film.Sometimes the stage erupts around it.Sometimes it's intimate.Sometimes it's huge.But the movie is never simply background for the band, and the music is never simply background for the movie.They tell the story together.

No.And this is probably the single most important thing we can tell you.There are wonderful events where musicians accompany silent films. Vox Lumiere grew out of that tradition, but that's not what we're trying to create.We approach the entire film as a piece of live theatre and music.The score, vocals, lighting, staging, sound and film are designed as one performance.Think cinematic concert rather than movie screening.

Yep.The musicians and singers you see are actually performing the score that night.There is technology involved because the performance has to remain synchronized with the film, but this isn't a soundtrack being played while performers pretend very convincingly to push buttons.Humans are involved.Dangerously so.

No.Vox Lumiere performs an entirely original score composed specifically for our production of METROPOLIS.It draws from rock, pop, electronic music and cinematic orchestration rather than attempting to recreate a 1920s silent-film accompaniment.Fritz Lang made a film about machines, class, desire, rebellion, technology and what happens when humans lose sight of their humanity.We think those ideas sound pretty good plugged into amplifiers.

Not in the traditional musical-theatre sense.The voices are part of the score and the emotional world of the film.They can become intimate, enormous, beautiful, strange, visceral or almost another instrument entirely.We aren't replacing the film's dialogue or turning METROPOLIS into a stage musical.We're creating another emotional layer around it.

Absolutely not.In some ways, discovering it through Vox Lumiere is a pretty fantastic introduction.The story unfolds on screen just as it always has, including the film's original intertitles, while the live performance pulls you through the emotional journey.No homework.There will not be a quiz.

This may be our favourite question.No.You don't even have to think you're interested in silent movies.A lot of people who come to Vox Lumiere don't identify as silent-film fans at all. They come because they love live music, theatre, film, immersive experiences, unusual nights out or simply because somebody dragged them along.Then something interesting happens.They stop thinking about the fact that they're watching a film made almost 100 years ago.That's rather the point.

Yes.Silent films were never actually "silent" experiences. They were created to be experienced with music, and they tell stories visually in ways that can feel surprisingly immediate today.METROPOLIS also uses intertitles for the dialogue and narrative information you need.And because the Vox Lumiere score is built around the action and emotional arc of the film, the music helps pull you through the story rather than sitting politely beside it.

No.Nobody is going to drag you onto the stage.You do not need to learn responses.You do not need to throw anything.You may sit quietly and absorb the whole thing in stunned silence if that's your preferred operating system.Of course, cheering at the end is strongly encouraged.

Emotionally and theatrically, yes.Interactive, no.We use the screen, performers, lighting, sound and staging to blur the boundary between a film you're watching and a performance happening around you.You're still sitting in a theatre.We're not going to chase you through the building dressed as Rotwang.

Big. And "Yes".METROPOLIS remains the visual heart of the performance.The film is projected large above and around the performance environment, and the staging has been designed specifically so the musicians, singers and lighting enhance the film rather than compete with it.We love this movie.We're not hiding it behind a drummer.

This deserves a slightly longer answer because there isn't really one simple "original version" of METROPOLIS.Fritz Lang's Berlin premiere version ran roughly two and a half hours, but the film was subsequently cut and re-edited for different countries and markets. For decades, substantial portions of the original film were believed lost.The remarkable discovery of additional footage in Buenos Aires in 2008 eventually made possible the extraordinary near-complete restoration released in 2010.We have enormous respect for that restoration and strongly recommend seeing it.Vox Lumiere uses a beautiful 97-minute edition of METROPOLIS as the visual foundation for our live production.We're not presenting ourselves as an archival screening or claiming that ours is the definitive version of Fritz Lang's film.We're doing something different.It isn't a restoration. It's a live reinvention.There are many wonderful ways to experience METROPOLIS.This is ours.

Because Vox Lumiere isn't trying to reproduce a museum or cinema presentation of the film.We're creating a continuous live theatrical and musical experience.Our version has been shaped around the dramatic arc, pacing and original score of the Vox Lumiere production, giving us a performance of approximately 97 minutes.If you'd like to experience the near-complete restoration as film history, please do. It's extraordinary.Then come see what happens when we plug METROPOLIS into Vox Lumiere.

We haven't remade Fritz Lang's film, added dialogue, replaced the actors or attempted to "improve" METROPOLIS.Our creative contribution happens around the film through the original score and live production.This is a conversation with the movie, not an attempt to overwrite it.

Approximately 97 minutes, performed continuously with no interval.Once the machine starts, we don't stop it.

That's another slightly difficult one because Vox has never behaved particularly well around genre labels.You'll hear elements of rock, pop, electronic music and cinematic scoring, along with four live vocalists.At various points it can be intimate, muscular, melodic, atmospheric, beautiful, aggressive, strange and very, very big.If your mental picture of "silent-film music" involves somebody playing jaunty piano while a man with a moustache ties someone to a railway track, you may wish to adjust the picture.

It's a live rock-and-cinematic performance, so expect considerably more impact than a normal film screening.But volume isn't the point.The goal is to surround you with the score while still preserving detail, dynamics and the emotional shape of the film.

Sort of.And not at all.There are singers. There is a story. There is theatrical staging.But there are no performers dressed as Freder singing an eleven-o'clock number about industrial relations.If you love musical theatre, there's plenty here for you.If you don't, don't panic.

Also sort of.There's a live band, singers, amplifiers and plenty of musical firepower.But nobody is standing between songs asking how everybody's doing in Birmingham.The concert exists entirely inside the world and timing of the film.

That's probably the closest familiar cousin, but Vox Lumiere is considerably less polite.A traditional live-to-film event usually places the musicians in an accompanying role.With Vox, the musicians, vocalists, lighting and staging become visible dramatic elements of the experience.The screen and stage are constantly talking to one another.

METROPOLIS is a silent film, so there is no conventional spoken dialogue track.The film's intertitles remain part of the storytelling, and the live vocal performances are musical rather than actors dubbing the characters.That also means the experience isn't dependent on spoken language, which is one reason Vox Lumiere travels remarkably well.

That depends somewhat on the child and on individual venue age policies.METROPOLIS contains dark imagery, peril, intense dramatic sequences and mature themes, and the Vox Lumiere production adds concert-level sound, theatrical lighting and atmosphere.If you're bringing a younger audience member, please check the age guidance for your particular venue.

The production uses theatrical lighting and atmospheric effects, including haze where permitted by the venue.If you have photosensitivity, sensory concerns or specific accessibility requirements, please contact us or the venue before attending and we'll be happy to give you the most useful information we can about that particular performance.

We want as many people as possible to be able to experience Vox Lumiere, but physical access, accessible seating, hearing-assistance systems and related facilities vary from venue to venue.Please check the information for your specific theatre or contact its box office for venue accessibility details.If there's something about the production itself you'd like to ask us about, please get in touch.

Clothes would be an excellent start.Beyond that, absolutely anything.Jeans. Date-night finery. Band shirts. Goth magnificence. Steampunk engineering equipment. Something vaguely Weimar. Your favourite black T-shirt.You do you.Occasionally we run special costume or audience events around particular performances, and we'll let ticket holders know when we do.

Some do.Most don't.Both tribes appear to coexist peacefully.

We are admittedly biased, but yes.It's roughly 97 minutes, it's visually spectacular, you don't have to whisper through a three-hour play, and afterwards you'll actually have something to talk about.Possibly several things.

Please do.Seriously.Some of our favourite audience responses come from people who arrived because someone else bought the tickets.Vox Lumiere isn't asking them to develop a scholarly interest in 1920s German Expressionism before dinner.We're asking them to come experience a great film transformed by live music and performance.They can decide what category it belongs in afterwards.

Not remotely.Everybody has a first Vox show.Welcome.

Possibly because there isn't much quite like it.Vox Lumiere has been evolving this idea for years: taking extraordinary silent films and creating new original music and live theatrical experiences around them.We've performed METROPOLIS, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, NOSFERATU, PETER PAN and other classic works because silent cinema gives us an enormous creative playground.The film already exists.The question is:What else can it become?

It's much closer to a love letter.We're not parodying the film or treating it as camp.METROPOLIS is one of the great achievements of cinema, and the ambition, imagination and sheer audacity of what Fritz Lang put on screen in 1927 still astonish us.Our job isn't to make the film relevant.It already is.Our job is to create a door through which a modern audience can walk into it.

The film and score are tightly synchronized, so the architecture of the production remains consistent.But it's also genuinely live.Different room. Different audience. Different night. Human beings playing instruments and singing together in real time.That little bit of danger is part of the electricity.

Because Vox Lumiere is touring.We arrive. We load in. METROPOLIS takes over the theatre. We play the show.Then the machine moves on.Which is a slightly dramatic way of saying:If we're playing your city and you'd like to see us, that night is probably the night.

Everyone sees the same full performance.VIP tickets add extras and special benefits that vary slightly depending on the performance, so check the ticket information for your particular show for exactly what's included.There is no secret additional ending where Maria turns out to be three robots in a trench coat.

Yes.Vox Lumiere music is available outside the theatre, and we also have soundtrack recordings and other bits and pieces for people who would like to take some of the machine home with them.Check our music and shop sections for what's currently available.

We have absolutely no responsible way of promising that.Art would be terribly boring if we did.But here's what we can tell you:Again and again, people come to Vox Lumiere because they're curious but aren't completely sure what they're walking into.Then they find us afterwards.They tell us they loved it.They tell us they didn't expect it to be so emotional.Or so big.Or so contemporary.Or so musical.Or so alive.And very often they say:"I'm going to tell my friends they have to see this."That's why we made this page.You don't have to completely understand Vox Lumiere before you come.You just have to be curious.

Excellent.We like curious people.Send us your question and a real human will answer it.Probably Kevin.Possibly from a tour bus.Almost certainly with coffee nearby.

Good.There's really only one way left to explain it.Come see it.[ FIND YOUR PERFORMANCE / GET TICKETS ]