“The weirdest thing is that when I’m in the shops I’ll go down the plates and cutlery aisles and think, ‘These would be good to smash,’” says Ben who, with his partner, Amy, runs Rage X-treme, a rage room in Polegate, East Sussex. Amy agrees: “We can’t see a nice vase now without wondering how easy it would be to break.”
At Rage X-treme, punters pay for 30 minutes of rampant destruction. Armed with bats, crowbars and sledgehammers, ragers crash crockery, computer gear, printers and anything else the hosts can lay their hands on; they can chuck a plate at a wall without having to pay for the damage or enrol on an anger management course. For the more competitive, there’s axe-throwing.
“Kids absolutely love it,” says Ben, who sharpens the blades himself and keeps them beneath the counter. “We have four ladies who come in every other week. They’ve had a really bad day at work and they head here for the axe-throwing.”
Rage rooms are believed to have originated in Japan around 2008, coinciding with the global financial crisis, which gave us all something to rage about. They plug in to the culture of collective novelty “thrill” experiences, from escape rooms and zip wires to VR immersive adventures.
Intrigued, I decide to give it a go, but will I be a good fit as someone who isn’t especially furious or frustrated? “You don’t have to be angry to rage,” Amy assures me. “It doesn’t have to be about aggression. You can even be happy.”
“It’s not violent here,” Ben adds. “We provide a service for people so they don’t ruin their lives.”
The experience is unexpected. In my mind’s eye, I had imagined some kind of dungeon or gothic tower, but in fact Polegate’s rage rooms are deep inside a large industrial business park that they share with a chocolate factory and a construction company (and, importantly, where the parking is free and the rent reasonable).
I sign a waiver to say I won’t sue in the event of injury, watch a health and safety video cautioning me against standing on broken glass or chucking stuff at my mates, then kit up in a boiler suit, gloves and visor and make my way upstairs for the session. Heavy metal music blares out from a long room painted funereal black with yellow skulls and graffiti daubed here and there – I have my dungeon after all.
I begin by throwing a Bulmers cider bottle at the wall; it bounces back twice. I hurl a dish, which shatters instantly and then apply myself to a kitsch teapot with a hen on it. This is the first object I crush with a sledgehammer.
Oh yes, I have to admit to enjoying the demolition of two piles of cups, saucers and plates, and when I think back, it occurs to me how incongruous it is that utensils that were once used to serve someone’s dinner should wind up as rage room fodder.
I swap my tools around, selecting bats and bars from the wall before moving on to flatten a portable CD player (which I like less) and then a computer monitor, which I feel some antagonism towards because no matter how many times I bash it, the horrible grey screen remains unscarred. I persevere, discovering that I am, by nature, task-oriented; I want the job done.
“You can see a change afterwards,” Amy maintains, as I leave the room. “We’ve had quite a few come in, quiet and very reserved, and when they’ve walked out, they’ve said, ‘That’s exactly what I needed, I feel so much lighter.’”
According to an article in the Times, the customer base for rage rooms is largely female. Psychotherapist Jennifer Cox argued on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour that women’s anger is different to men’s as women are conditioned not to show it in public. “We need to get it out of our bodies… it’s an energy and we need to discharge it,” she says.
Is using a rage room also an opportunity to transgress, to upset expected societal norms by smashing familiar objects from our lives? Or is it symptomatic of an aggressive world culture? As reports of domestic abuse are on the rise in the UK, can the rage room divert violence away from the home? And why not go to a gym or use a punching bag instead?
Perhaps where the rage room gains is that it requires little skill or expensive equipment and offers an enclosed private space: “We’ve seen it all, no judgement,” proclaims Rage X-treme’s website. Here, you can hold your divorce party and vent to your heart’s content.
The transgressive – to do the things we must not do – can be freeing. It is an opportunity, just this once, to behave wildly, chaotically and badly, and all that gets hurt is a teapot.
