Immersive Theatres — Attraction in Bristol

The annual visit from Immersive Theatres is always highly anticipated in our school by staff and children alike. We started many years ago, using the dome to supplement our topic on Space with our Year 5 pupils. These sessions are fantastic. Mario starts with a unique, relevant introduction to the night's sky. He is adaptive and knowledgeable; when a child asks a question he brings up visuals and explains the Science or History in appropriate detail before seamlessly linking back to the previous topic. In the past two years we have developed the programme brought to our school; including Reception aged children, GCSE pupils and even staff. Mario has proved himself capable of adapting his talk to be relevant to the age of the participants and answering questions on a level they will understand. Our Reception girls enjoyed an overview of the night's sky, visited the International Space Station and learned about shapes and distances in space. My daughter was one of the participants and came home thoroughly enthused and full of wonder. From a child who normally tells me school is 'fine' and tells me more about the food she ate than her lessons it was wonderful to hear about the favorite room of the astronauts and the description of how astronauts sleep in space. Our Year 5 girls were excited to enter the dome, exclaimed in wonder as the 'roof' of the planetarium opened, gasped as the size of the ISS and giggled when we discussed toileting in space. Mario even managed to explain star death and black holes in enough detail to satisfy our inquisitive girls without overburdening them with technical language. They loved going through the black hole at the end too! The added bonus of holding a real meteorite... amazing! GCSE Dance is probably not a group you would associate with enjoying a curriculum linked session in a planetarium but our girls are studying Fractals as part of their GCSE Dance coursework. They were able to enjoy 30 minutes of 360 degree fractals accompanied by a descriptive overview, explaining fractals. The girls found the session very inspiring and relevant to their course. As for the staff... we have to drag them out of the dome at the end of their sessions! Mario kindly suggested putting on a 'relaxation' session during the staff lunch hour. This allows us to take half an hour 'for us'. With the body and spirit rejuvenated after the session it certainly makes teaching that afternoon a little bit easier! Our Staff Wellbeing Committee was thrilled by the feedback from those who attended and have requested more sessions like this on Mario's future visits. As you can see, we made the most of our Immersive Theatre visits. I...

I booked the largest planetarium to host 3 fundraising planetarium astronomy shows for my volunteer nature conservation group. Show 1 was for age range 5-7, show 2 was for age range 8-14 and show 3 was for anyone aged 15-99. Each show was different and pitched perfectly for the age group concerned. Mario encouraged everyone to ask questions and showed his deep knowledge of astronomy while at the same time suiting the answers to the audience. Many new images were shown to support the answers to the questions. As the organiser of the event, taking bookings, I had to be very clear about the number of places, the timings of the shows and a number of other details. Mario's briefing was excellent and it was easy to check with him, as I set up booking pages on Eventbrite that the information was correct. I arranged a couple of volunteers to help greet people at the venue. Our tasks were very light and Mario did all the work of welcoming people into the dome and encouraging them to sit in the best viewing point. I would definitely book Mario and his dome again and will be looking at his website to see what shows other than astronomy are available with a view to perhaps arranging a special anniversary celebration show...

Mario traveled all the way from Bristol to our local village hall in Guildford with his 4m dome for our son's 5th Birthday party. We can’t say enough how fantastic he was throughout the process and how brilliant his performance was. Working closely with us for many weeks leading up to the party, he created an exciting programme of bespoke content, that resulted in a highly interactive show that combined the perfect balance of education and entertainment we wanted. I felt that he happily welcomed our ideas and embraced incorporating new elements to his programme, such as games and quizzes, to enable a 'reward' element to the party that were after.

Mario' patience and rapport with the children (and with my demands!), his enthusiasm for the subject and our particular event , alongside his professionalism and characterful delivery, made for a really successful , unique and importantly for us, non-stressful party.

The audience loved it and the messages and feedback I’ve had from both children and parents alike has been overwhelming. So thank you, Mario, for all your hard work and the extra time that you spent to include the personal touches that we so wanted to achieve -...