SALFORD, England — The 15 schoolchildren knew they weren’t in danger, but theater still worked its magic as they spied the six-foot-tall stone monster behind them in the corridor of a spaceship. When the dusky lighting went black, and a pulsing strobe light began to illuminate the monster closing in, they let out a collective shriek and fled through a portal that, mysteriously, opened onto a tented fairground where a sign announced the date: “6 July 1888.”

By this point the adults on the adventure looked baffled. But the 8- and 9-year-olds had it all figured out.

The monster, duh, was one of the Weeping Angel statues that caused trouble last season on “Doctor Who,” the long-running science-fiction television series on the BBC that has become embedded in British popular culture. The Angels’ powers include hurtling their prey into the past — hence the 113-year jump in time. But what would come next, some of the students wondered aloud with delight. Where would the story go from here?

Turning children into hands-on heroes of a “Doctor Who” episode, and giving some of them their first taste of theater, are among the goals of “The Crash of the Elysium,” which runs through Sunday in the Manchester International Festival here. The critically praised hourlong show is also the latest full-immersion work by the London troupe Punchdrunk, best known in New York for another, continuing piece of full-participation theater, “Sleep No More,” in which people — grown-ups, specifically — wander through a Chelsea warehouse watching scenes from “Macbeth.”