Welcome to Wilhelm Street. Make yourself at home!
As you settle in with your new family, you won’t only pick out furniture – you’ll forge new traditions and memories that you hope will last a lifetime.
Somewhere nearby, though, there’s a meeting going on. A very important meeting. Run by very important people. Making very important decisions about your lives. But you and your family are not allowed inside…
Created by theatre-maker Rhianna Ilube and BAFTA-winning game-makers Coney, 1884 is a thrilling immersive game-theatre show inspired by the legacy of the 1884 Berlin Conference, an often-overlooked historical turning point for the African continent and the world.
1884 invites you on a fun, fast-paced, thought-provoking journey through the corridors of history you might not know. How is history recorded, and who is left outside of the room where history is written?
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Production history & tour:
Talawa Theatre Company, Croydon, July 2023.
Shoreditch Town Hall, London, April 2024.
Caravan Assembly, Brighton Festival, May 2024.
HOME, Manchester, Oct 2025.
Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, Oct 2025.
Carrow House, Norwich Theatre, Norwich, Oct 2025.
Wellcome Collection, London, Oct 2025.
MIR Festival, Athens, Nov 2025.
See the debut production website here, and the Coney 1884 project page here.
2023 cast: Khai Shaw, Rachel Leah-Hosker and Chloe Mashiter
2024 cast: Jyuddah Jaymes, Ewa Dina and Chusi Amoros
2025 cast: Mohamed Bangura, Shakeel Haakim, Michelle Kelly and Eliza Cass
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Watch the production trailer here.
Watch an 'In conversation with' Rhianna Ilube & Tsitsi Mareika Chirikure here.
Watch the rehearsal 'behind the scenes' with People of Theatre here.
Read this interview about the making of 1884.
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‘Fun, clever and beautifully crafted, this interactive show is a biting satire on the Scramble for Africa.’ - Time Out
‘The most unique piece of theatre I have ever seen.’ - Arts Dispatch
‘A marvel of production, both on a technical and an intellectual level.’ - North West End
‘Theatre-making with a strong and effective political purpose.’ - Reviews Hub
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Audience quotes:
"1884 is a revolutionary journey through history, where players unwittingly traverse a path shrouded in trauma, ingeniously merging entertainment with sobering reality. As participants, we embark on a collective experience, only to be jolted by the stark truth of Africa's plight in 1884. Months later, the profound impact of this work still resonates deeply. It's a testament to the creators' remarkable ability to fuse playful gameplay with the gravity of historical atrocities, leaving us in awe of their artistry and storytelling prowess."
"I've been a campaigner on various issues my whole life, and what this unlocked for me is the incredible possibility and power of shows/experiences like this to make people really viscerally feel something about a subject in a way that makes them want to explore more - and gives them a good time while doing so. It can be really hard to talk about difficult subjects - people can get defensive, or depressed, or want to spend their very limited downtimes doing fun stuff rather than learning about the state of the world. This was so clever in making you feel visceral outrage about what was happening, while also making you laugh and talk to strangers, which is a hell of a skill. It's got a lot to teach the rest of us about how to engage audiences with difficult subjects."
"I’ve never experienced something like this before. I’ve worked on interactive performances before but this was the first time I experienced a strong sense of agency to share my thoughts and ideas with strangers. I felt like when things kept changing, things I had started to care about was being taken away from me. Therefore I liked how it directly impacted me, and then in act 2 you feel the full circle of the history. Honestly it was beautiful and I would love everyone to experience this. I felt like I created a connection with people and that meant a lot."
"I’m curious about the embodied experience of resistance the show generated and how it felt like a derailing of the piece. When it was revealed that this was part of [the show], it gave me a whole new lens on this part of the history. I work in museums and the second act really made consider our ‘best practice’ and how much there still is to unpack. I had to sit in an uncomfortable space afterwards when reflecting on this part of my professional life (most people in museums, especially my field of museum leaning can be a bit ethically smug about how we are doing/championing the ‘good’ work). I also just wanted to engage more with the history now - which I really knew very little about."
"It definitely made me realise that protest and activism is a natural response to the destruction of community and belonging- not just to ideas or politics that we don’t believe in."
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Development history:
R&D, Coney + Shoreditch Town Hall, Jan 2023
R&D, Talawa Theatre Company, July 2023
R&D, Coney + Shoreditch Town Hall, Oct 2023
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Photo credits: Alex Brenner