In the novel "Room" by Emma Donoghue the rising action of the novel and a constantly referenced and important aspect of the story takes place in the aptly named Room. Now Room itself is just that, it is an actual single cell room containing all the amenities of a typical house, restroom, kitchen, and bedroom, all within the same cramped space. The catch to Room is that the only door to the outside is remotely locked, nobody comes in, or goes out without the explicit permission of Room's owner. A middle aged kidnapper named Nick. Now while fans of the novel can read the book and attain a feeling of what it would be like to exist in Room like Jack, the five year old protagonist of the story who narrates the novel in his immature and innocent voice. The absolute weight of the novel is made almost less so by the decision to give the reigns to Jack to narrate. The childish take on everything in Room and the fact that he was both born and raised in it, and he cannot fully grasp the concept of a world outside of Room, the reader looses some of the severity from this colourful narrator choice. So as a fan-experience, something to really aid in striking the nail home, we propose the "Room Experience."
The "Room Experience" itself will sate the mind's misunderstanding about what Room itself is like. The experience would entail a scaled larger model of Room, so that an average 5' 5'' adult would be able to view the setting of Room from the perspective of Jack, who during the story is 5 years old. During the time in the scaled Room participants will be able to view various micro-settings from the novel. For instance, Jack is forced to spend some of his nightly hours in a large standing wardrobe (named Wardrobe by Jack) avoiding the gaze of Nick as he comes to check on Jack's mother who was the original prisoner and occupant of Room. Wardrobe plays a part in the story as it is Jack's world within his world but also as a character that Jack must interact with, during the fan-experience participants would be able to view Wardrobe as it was depicted in the story, but at their scale as to allow the severity and weight of the character's plight to truly set in.
In addition to Wardrobe, all pseudo-characters inside Room will be recreated to match the scale. Items like Lamp who is responsible for the sole light-source in Room and Skylight will be replicated to match the time of Room's events, being coated in snow and dampening the light in Room. Excepts from the novel will be scattered about in places where certain events took place and will be used to add emphasis on concepts like the fact that Jack and his Mother were given so little by Nick that to entertain Jack his Mother had to fashion a toy 'snake' out of scrapped eggshell halves and string, dubbed Eggshell-Snake the gravity of such a toy is to degrees lost in translation between the event in the book and Jack's narration.
The "Room Experience" is made not to broaden the audience of the book directly but to aid in the understanding and severity of the book's setting, to very clearly set in stone the desolation that the characters were forced into for the opening act of the story, and to gain a sort of new-found clarity to what Room actually is. A portion of the crafting done in "Room" is made purposefully vague, so that reader have to scramble to try and understand the often confusing and unintelligible words of a five year-old who is trying to get the story out the best he can but finds unintentional pitfalls in narration due to his age and lack of understanding. The vagueness of "Room" in describing Room itself can be seen as a strong suit by those that analyze the story, but can just as easily create frustration in readers who enjoy understanding the full width of their stories. The "Room Experience" is for those readers, those who want the nail struck home and to add another layer of depth to their interaction with the novel they've put their waking hours into reading.
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