A unique immersive cocktail experience, now running for over two years, serves as a popular escape that simultaneously benefits the environment.
Hoxton-based Avora is the latest concept by Inventive Productions, sitting alongside their earlier projects Alcotraz Cell Block Two-One-Two and Moonshine Saloon.
It is a popular innovative showcase of unique cocktail concoctions and exuberant theatrics, within a mass of film-set worthy props, colourful LEDs, dry ice, and smoke machines that promotes and sustains ecological conservation.
Avora has a strong connection and engagement with the climate crisis and the exploitation of the natural world.
For every ticket sold, a tree is planted via UK environmental organisation Ecologi, and their cocktail menu is co-created with the Sustainable Restaurant Association, a certification board that strives for environmental restoration, and carries out annual carbon footprint assessments.
Director of Inventive Productions Sam Shearman said: “Inventive Productions is committed to making sure our real world stays alive so that our fictional worlds can live.
“Whilst Avora brings to life a fun and exciting experience, the themes that are explored reflect some of the problems we are currently facing here on Earth.”
In Avora’s loose fictional story arc, an American tech corporation called Roscorp Enterprises discovers a gateway into a magical world, the sacred planet Avora, where they search for a substance that powers all life-forms: Luminol.
Customers, placed right at the story’s heart, play Roscorp’s civilian team exploring Avora: revolutionaries (strictly not colonisers) on a mission to find and sample the sources of Luminol they need for survival.
They are aided by Roscorp’s employees Dr C Shelley and Sergeant Mason Kryll, who have befriended the Avorian inhabitants.
The experience includes three unique cocktails within three different rooms, or stages of the fictional journey.
The first room is a laboratory where customers don a uniform jumpsuit, and receive a briefing and colour-changing sample of synthesised Luminol made fit for human consumption by an intoxicologist (pure Luminol, whilst having regenerative properties such as curing disease and healing, is too strong to consume in human form).
This will allow them to breathe within Avora’s atmosphere.
According to Shearman, this is the production’s most popular cocktail made up of Gin, Maraschino, Lemon and Pea Flower.
The second room is an Eden-like woodland in which guests meet the Avorians for the first time and are introduced to the planet’s flora via a trust ritual.
Customers gather in groups around a seed they give a pet name to, and click their fingers to make the seed bloom in a liquid containing Luminol.
The seed will only bloom in front of those with good vibes – in other words, those it deems worthy.
The third room is a nightscape where the source of Luminol is apparently located; it showcases Avora’s bioluminescent wonders, which are a product of Luminol’s chemosynthesis.
Avora’s parallels with James Cameron’s Avatar world is undeniable, and Shearman explained how Avora’s continuous success since 2022 has been driven by that of Cameron’s franchise which has inspired a fascination for exploring a fantastical world.
He also noted the aftermath of the pandemic being a time in which society is yearning for in-person experiences.
Shearman said: “I believe that people are interested in escaping the everyday, but also from the harshness of real life and the economy.
“For me it is an escape to new places, worlds or time-periods that would otherwise be unseen.
“The desire from audiences to see and experience something unique will hopefully never dwindle.”
Tickets start from £38 and can be booked six days a week (not Mondays).
Flash photography is prohibited, and non-alcoholic options are provided.
Credit for all images: Ina Pace
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