“Sit at a table”, we were instructed, “and wait for a performer to come to you. You are someone from the character’s life.”

On those scant instructions began a surreal, thought-provoking but ultimately wearying evening that pushed interactive theatre somewhat beyond its limits.

Being May 6, Fluxx – the improvisation collective who organised the evening – had decided to take the general election as a loose (and seemingly last-minute) linking theme.

I encountered a Mexican illegal immigrant, working as a cleaner in the household of an expenses-fiddling Tory MP. On the minimum wage and with a sick grandmother to visit back home, he wondered if I thought it would be OK for him to take some of his boss’s cash if he left a note promising to pay it back?

Elsewhere, I was a teacher, listening to the deputy head telling me he’d just slapped a PTA busybody who constantly opposed his plans for change at the school. He was exhausted and demoralised and felt he couldn’t continue in the profession. Should he give it all up and take off on a boat somewhere?

Then I was at a bar with a gorgeous university friend who, in a bid to support her prospective parliamentary candidate dad’s campaign, had been snapped topless but for some strategically-placed blue ribbons on the front page of a national newspaper. Had she done the right thing?

Against the performers’ impressively naturalistic characterisations and artful ad-libbing, the vehicular back stories they were tied into often felt cartoonish. A man who turned out to be my troubled ex-boyfriend broke down as he described how his Navy father, suffering from post-traumatic stress after The Falklands, had suddenly found a new lease of life, only to hang himself when Neil Kinnock lost the 1992 election.

It was an intimate and affecting situation to be thrown into but the story was frustrating. What were we supposed to be discussing – the politics or the personal? Should I give him a reassuring pat on the shoulder?

The self-consciousness the set-up inspired, added to feeling you were conducting an interview and trying to solve a mystery, was exhausting. And why did I have to listen to everyone’s problems – what about my problems?

Perhaps it was a comment on the political system – the overwhelming number of voices vying to be heard, the unreasonable expectations placed on those in charge, who are, after all, only human.

But after two and a half hours of playing agony aunt, the words of In The Loop’s beleaguered minister Simon Foster were ringing in my head: “Meeting constituents is a bit like being Simon Cowell, only without the ability to say ‘F*** off, you’re mental’.”