An award-winning YORK visitor attraction which uses local historical events has given The Press a small glimpse ‘behind the curtain’.
The York Dungeon general manager Mark Mattinson spoke about how he and the team in Clifford Street plan their local seasonal shows which draw on some of the terrifying ‘goings on’ in York’s past.
The York Dungeon is part of Merlin Entertainment and first opened its darkened doors and corridors in 1986.
London was the first but across the globe other dungeons have opened which all pull in customers with shows based on the history of their cities – including Amsterdam, Berlin, Edinburgh, and Shanghai.
Mark and his team recently won the Yorkshire Post Tourism Awards 2023 for 'Outstanding Customer Service'.
Mark said: “We have ten standard shows that we do in the daytime and then we’ll also supplement that with seasonal shows.
“All of the shows that we do will be rooted in the local history of that location.
“Across the sites we’ve got shows that you will get in every dungeon which are the plague or black death, the torture show and then the courtroom show.
“Every dungeon has their own version of that and in The York Dungeon it will be crimes that have been researched by us.
“Here, the torture show is set in the civil war, where officials may have needed to torture people for information.”
York’s history is also linked with two characters known across the country in Guy Fawkes and Dick Turpin – with the Georgian highwayman and horse thief being at the centre of the local dungeon’s campaign.
These well-known stories mix with perhaps lesser-known local shows, which brings to life the ‘legend’ of Isabella Billington – a woman sent to the gallows in the seventeenth century for murdering her mother in Pocklington, outside York – a deed which may have involved witchcraft.
Mark said: “We use our artistic license to flit between the fragility and vulnerability of the character – not that we believe in witchcraft – with flashes of what they could be.”
A working group for the brand including performance managers like their own Olivia Cole and a global brand manager get together to plan for the shows.
Mark said: “The global brand manager recommends themes for seasonal shows, normally a spring show, normally we do an Easter one but in 2024 we’re going to try to run one from February half-term to Easter.
“We don’t usually have to use their suggestions either.
“As an example, Halloween 2022, a grim reaper theme was suggested to us for and we looked and thought, ‘there’s not really anything in York that could be linked to a famous story, so Olivia went away, came back and said ‘I’d really like to do a Victorian séance’ as a show.
“I didn’t take much convincing.
“Olivia went away and researched Madame Card, a fortune teller, who did one for Queen Victorian and visited York, so we did our version of what that would have looked like.”
Olivia Cole works on plans with Technical Services Manager Stuart Perry and they have gained inspiration from visiting some of the sites of York’s grim past.
The pair paid a visit to the Theatre Royal where one of the seasonal show’s stars - The Grey Lady - was supposedly bricked in.
Mark said Olivia only refers to books for her research but does occasionally turn to Mark Graham – owner of The Original Ghost Walk of York – for consultation.
Sometimes paying punters will try to correct the accuracy of performances but Mark stressed the stories are The York Dungeon’s ‘version’ of events and that events might be tweaked slightly just to make it that bit more entertaining.
They’ve had some fun issues with their TikTok channel which Olivia runs as well.
Mark said: “We did one in the early part of the year and it was about Vikings, and who knew that Viking fanatics were so touchy!
“We did a post we’d researched and thought was factually correct."
There were commenters who didn’t take the same point of view in their expletive-laden views of the clips on the social media channel.
Mark said: “Maybe we had got it wrong but it just shows that people on that sort of platform can leave you wide open to anything.
“But we do research is as much as we can.
“The character comes first and then the traits of the character build out.
“If there’s any content from real characters she’ll see how they can get them out in the script and the tech is always at the back of her mind as well, as well as the pay off, the final scare.”
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