The jury duty games: Where escape rooms meet Cluedo

For an immersive production called Jury Games, a dozen people gathered in a conference room in London, scrutinising evidence and deliberating to reach a verdict in an arson-murder case. Photo / Sam Bush, The New York Times

Immersive theatre productions are taking jury service, which most consider a burden to be avoided at all costs, and packaging it as entertainment.

In a small, brightly lit conference room tucked in the corner of a London office building, a dozen people are hunched over computers, printouts and large Ziploc bags of evidence. The whiteboard on the wall behind them is a colourful maze of notes, names and theories.

This group – this jury – is trying to determine whether a man is guilty of arson and murder. In about 70 minutes, they will decide if he will walk free or face decades in prison.

But this is not a real jury with the power to convict a real person. Rather, these jurors – groups of friends, couples on dates – have each paid £46.50, or about US$81, to spend an evening in this room, scrutinising evidence, reviewing video testimony and deliberating to reach consensus on a verdict.

This is Jury Games, one of several immersive theatre productions that are taking jury service – still widely “regarded as a disagreeable burden to be avoided so far as possible,” as The New York Times put it in 1887 – and repackaging it as entertainment.

Similar experiences will be popping up in cities around the world this year, including The Jury Experience in Brooklyn, Toronto, Dublin, Madrid and other cities in North America and Europe, and Murder Trial Tonight, a touring production in Britain.

The concept may seem odd to anyone who has dreaded receiving a jury summons in the mail or offered an excuse ranging from the familiar (child care, work obligations) to the elaborately far-fetched (an extreme fear of heights) to be excused from service.

Even some of those who attended Jury Games suggested that they were aware that they had made what some would consider an unconventional choice for how to spend their disposable income and free time.

“I assume a game like this is more engaging than real jury duty,” said Alex Franco, a London resident who is originally from Australia. She said she was eager to serve on a real jury, but allowed that, if she is summoned, “I’ll be like, ‘This sucks.‘”

Eric J. Parker, a Boston-based lawyer who served as a consultant for the Fox legal drama series Accused, said his first thought when he learned about these immersive jury experiences was, “What the hell happened to American date night?”

“What’s next?” he said in an interview. “You and your date get tax audited just to see what it’s like?”

But Jeanette Ashmole, a London-based lawyer and television legal consultant, said that such experiences can be appealing because they let people sort through the twists and turns of complex crimes without the gravity and commitment that come with being on a real jury.

“If you’re the kind of person that likes true-crime documentaries, it’s like you’re seeing one in real life,” Ashmole said in an interview. “Who wouldn’t want to see that?”

Participants look at evidence. Photo / Sam Bush. The New York Times

Joe Ball, one of the show’s founders, said the outsized role that jury duty has played in pop culture is among the reasons Jury Games, which started on Zoom during the pandemic, has become popular. Last year, Clint Eastwood directed the courtroom drama Juror #2, which focuses on a jury’s deliberations. In 2023, Jury Duty, a hybrid reality series and sitcom in which a man unwittingly serves on a fake jury made up of actors, became a surprise hit.

Ball cites 12 Angry Men, the classic 1957 film about a jury deliberating in the case of a young man accused of murder, as a particular inspiration. People who attend Jury Games, he said, “get to be one of the 12 angry men”.

The cultural touchstones have also made it easy for people to jump into the action, he said.

“Everyone knows what juries do,” said Tom Black, another Jury Games founder.

But these jury nights are not exactly like the real thing.

The atmosphere is lighter than at a real trial, when someone’s liberty is on the line. There are nervous laughs as the group sits around the table and learns about the case, which involves a man who has been accused of setting fire to an office building after hours while a person the authorities identified as a cleaner (but was he, really?) was still inside.

Over the course of the evening, a larger plot – including a Government cover-up and a love story – unfurls. Unlike in actual trials, there is a video link that the jurors can use to ask questions of the defendant, who is played by an actor, Jack Flammiger. (Bringing in drinks from the bar downstairs is also allowed, as is phone use.)

Clocking in at just over an hour, the experience is significantly shorter than most real jury trials, which can last for weeks or months, and leans into entertainment over authenticity.

“These experiences aren’t real,” Ashmole said. But, she added, “at the end of the day, you couldn’t have one of these experiences that was that true to life because nobody would buy tickets”.

The people who take part in Jury Games do not always know one another, and it can take a moment for everyone to get comfortable. But enthusiasm swiftly sets in, bringing a sense of fun to the enterprise.

“I’m slightly fearful when a group is quiet,” said Brendan O’Rourke, an actor who plays the role of court coordinator for Jury Games and must keep the fake jury in order. But, he added, “by the end everyone is hooked to some degree”.

At the end of every Jury Games night, after voting to find the defendant guilty or not guilty, the participants learn what really happened in the case. On that recent Thursday night in London, 12 participants walked out into the crisp winter air, knowing they made the right call.

It’s the kind of tidy conclusion that most real jurors can only dream of.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Claire Moses and Kate Christobek

Photographs by: Sam Bush

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