Immersive Theatre Research Articles

Correction: The route to immersion: a conceptual framework for cross-disciplinary immersive theatre and experiences

Correction: The route to immersion: a conceptual framework for cross-disciplinary immersive theatre and experiences

Participant Satisfaction in Dark Immersive Theatre Experiences

Participant Satisfaction in Dark Immersive Theatre Experiences

Participation as Intimate Act: Audience Reflections on Strategies of Consent in Roll Models

Immersive, interactive, and participatory performances often promise co-creative or otherwise unique roles for spectators, who may be called upon to directly interact with performers, explore performance sites, or help shape plot. The nature of much of this heightened participation is important to note: audience members might be expected to be visible onstage, make choices that affect the show, offer personal information, or engage directly with actors, in an ask for labor that is resultantly accompanied by increased risk, vulnerability, and relationality. This article uses the case study of Roll Models, a longform improv show that enacts a short adventure campaign in the style of Dungeons & Dragons on stage, in order to characterize audience participation as an intimate act. Building on previous scholarship aimed at assessing consent, intimacy, and participation in immersive theatre and live action role-play (Villarreal 2021, Biggin 2017, Machon 2013), we query not only into what participation, consent, and on-boarding processes were present in the performance, but also how audience members themselves viewed such mechanisms, understood and learned their role in the performance, and related to actors and each other.

Managing motivations and satisfaction in Dark Immersive Theatre Experiences

Dark Immersive Theatre Experiences (DITE) have been growing in popularity in recent years as an innovative product that combines darkness with immersive theatre, attracting individuals all over the world who seek new and enticing experiences. This study aims to develop predictive models of participant satisfaction in DITE based on their underlying motivations. Based on Principal Component Analysis, we were able to identify five motivational components: "dark intensity", "survival", "immersion”, "theatre", and "unwinding", which explained 66.7% of the motivation’s variation. Furthermore, we performed multiple linear regression models to predict participants’ overall satisfaction in DITE. The final predictive models allowed to explain 66.0% of satisfaction’s variance, composed by six independent variables: "novel experience", "captivating plot", "push limits", "to have fun", "coparticipation", and "hyper-realistic experience". Our work contributes for optimizing DITE by presenting specific factors that allow to enhance satisfaction. Our data provide DITE managers useful information to improve and optimize experiences in such a way that enhances participant’s satisfaction and further increase their interest to such experiences.

The Apolline, the Dionysiac, and Spectatorship in Punchdrunk’s Masked Performances

Two key trends stand out within recent scholarship on spectatorship in immersive performance. The first is methodologically driven and falls into the theatre and performance studies sub-field of audience studies and considers individual audience experiences of performance. The second is theoretically driven and uses Jacques Rancière’s The Emancipated Spectator as an interpretative lens through which to consider audience experience in general, specifically in terms of agency. Here, I argue that the time has come to introduce additional rubrics for the analysis of spectatorship in immersive theatre, to further discussion and to add a new dimension to our understanding of the phenomenon. To do so, I attempt to unify the methodologically driven with the theoretically driven and propose a new rubric for the analysis of spectatorial experience of immersive performance based upon Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of the Apolline and the Dionysiac as articulated in The Birth of Tragedy. I take Punchdrunk’s 2013–14 production The Drowned Man as a paradigmatic example and analyse the co-presence of the Apolline and Dionysiac drives at the point of reception. I utilise a mixed-method approach to surveying the audience experience of three key components of performance, namely scenographic engagement, large-scale, crowd-drawing choreographic sequences, and one-on-one experiences, and suggest that audience records of satisfying moments of performance reflect a balancing of the Apolline and the Dionysiac, whereas frustrating experiences reflect an imbalance. Overall, I argue that by continuing the tradition of developing Nietzsche’s binary to understand contemporary practice we gain an additional tool that holds productive possibilities for unpicking how and why moments of immersive performance might be particularly alluring or, conversely, frustrating for difference audiences.

The route to immersion: a conceptual framework for cross-disciplinary immersive theatre and experiences

The trend of immersive theatre, which began in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and has quickly established itself in contemporary mainstream theatre, is a subset of the larger phenomenon of emerging immersive experiences, which has expanded into a variety of fields, including healthcare, marketing, and education. This paper aims to provide a revised conceptual framework from the context of design through technologies with an addition of bodily immersion, or a sensation of bodily transference, creating illusory ownership over a virtual body, and activating praesence, a lived experience of the physical body responding within an imaginative, sensual environment, produced with the help of immersive technology. This concept, taken from the field of theatre and performance, is combined with four other components (systems, spatial, social/empathic, and narrative/sequential) to produce an immersive experience that realises the fullest potential of immersion. The proposed framework serves as a valuable guideline for creating immersive experiences across multiple disciplines, benefiting both creators and participants by enhancing comprehension and setting expectations. Additionally, it can be utilised by academics and students as a criteria for evaluation and analysis.

Metaphorographic - Performative Experiences In Performances: (and :

The article aims to analyze the choreographic structures in the performances made by companies in the independent sector. The realization of performative atmospheres specific to immersive theater within artistic products represents an area of research still unexplored. Traveling from concept to artistic materialization requires a reordering of the professional relationship between the director and the choreographer or the stage movement coordinator. These professional relationships and the principles under which they are established are often discussed, but their mapping often remains in an ambiguous area. The objective of this work is to re-discuss the role of the choreographer and/or the stage movement coordinator in the creation of artistic products.

Talking about immersive theatre: Conversations on immersions and interactivities in performance Talking about immersive theatre: Conversations on immersions and interactivities in performance , edited by Joanna Jayne Bucknall. London: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023, 272 pp., £85.00 (hardback), ISBN: 9781350269330; £76.50 (ebook), ISBN: 9781350269347

Talking about immersive theatre: Conversations on immersions and interactivities in performance <b>Talking about immersive theatre: Conversations on immersions and interactivities in performance</b> , edited by Joanna Jayne Bucknall. London: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023, 272 pp., £85.00 (hardback), ISBN: 9781350269330; £76.50 (ebook), ISBN: 9781350269347

Immersive theater in the study of literature as a form of implementing the strategy of vocational education

Immersive theater in the study of literature as a form of implementing the strategy of vocational education

Mechanical meaning: The relationship between game mechanics and story in ergodic theatre

Theatre is increasingly exploring the potential of interactivity, especially as the growing experience economy reveals that people actively seek activities that offer new ways to engage with stories. The inclusion of interactive elements akin to game mechanics, which I call ergodic mechanics, shifts these performances into an intermedial sphere between digital games and conventional theatre. I use the term ergodic theatre to classify this specific subgenre of immersive theatre where the traveller works to form their path through the storyworld. Ergodic mechanics are the systems through which the traveller works or interacts. But what impact does the inclusion of ergodic mechanics have on storytelling? This question is critical to producing meaningful ergodic theatre performances and preventing interactive elements from becoming gimmicks, as some theatre reviewers have labelled them (Gardner, 2014). I interrogate the relationship between and impact of ergodic mechanics on the creation of story and meaning by examining narrative moments from The Under Presents, a VR ergodic theatre experience, and What Remains of Edith Finch and Dream, both digital ergodic theatre experiences. Analysing these case studies helps demonstrate the value of weaving ergodic mechanics with the story. When there is harmony between the interactive and story elements, the included ergodic mechanics heighten the traveller’s narrative engagement and emotional connection to the play’s characters or themes. I argue that ludonarrative harmony loops are a powerful tool that can enrich the traveller’s theatrical experience. I present an interdisciplinary approach by applying digital game theory parsed through dramaturgy to address the nuances of telling meaningful and engaging stories in ergodic theatre. Analysing the incorporation and dramaturgical function of interactivity highlights the potential of ergodic mechanics in intermedial ergodic performances. Furthermore, creating ludonarrative harmony is central to ergodic theatre’s continued success and growth as a storytelling medium.

Creative Process and Co-Research with the Early Years through Flight

Practice-based research that meaningfully engages with very young children (ages eighteen months to five years) as co-researchers presents wonderful opportunities to co-imagine possibilities together, but it also presents challenges related to communication, a democratic process, and children’s agency. In this article, we discuss how The Urban Wildlife Project uses Flight: Alberta’s Early Learning and Care Framework to help our creative team have a relationship-centred process. We discuss how Flight’s core values of play and playfulness inform our process, how Flight’s “Cycle of Co-Inquiry” and emphasis on understanding children’s meaning-making honours children as citizens, and how several key concepts--including “co-,” a specific conception of children and childhood, play and play-informed meaning-making, and making magic--enable us to include very young children as co-researchers in our co-creation and co-imagination practices. To illuminate how the process works, we offer two examples of how we are using Flight to inform our practice-based research processes with the early years demographic, and to create meaningful immersive theatre experiences for all participants.

Onboarding and offboarding in virtual reality: A user-centred framework for audience experience across genres and spaces

Virtual reality (VR) technology is an emerging medium of experience in many different public-facing entertainment and cultural contexts, such as immersive theatre, live performance, VR film festivals, gaming arcades, escape rooms, and museum exhibitions. The processes of ushering audience members or users into the virtual experience and out again, to which I refer here as ‘onboarding’ and ‘offboarding’, have been considered within some specific contexts, or on a case-by-case basis, but to date no systematised consideration of VR onboarding and offboarding has been produced. One reason for this is that ambiguities in disciplinary and practical definitions of immersion have obscured the relationship between VR technology and users. Clarification of this relationship results in clear evidence of a need for attention to onboarding and offboarding processes in public-facing contexts. In this paper, I define onboarding and offboarding, and present a framework for considering the onboarding and offboarding experiences of virtual reality audiences that helps stakeholders identify both their responsibilities to audiences and the best way to facilitate the immersive experience. This framework is based upon identifying experience goals, centred on the affordances of virtual reality and principles of immersion and presence, and utilises the Immersive Audience Framework developed by StoryFutures in its interdisciplinary research with immersive audiences since 2019.

Sensory Theatre: How to Make Interactive, Inclusive, Immersive Theatre for Diverse Audiences by a Founder of Oily Cart, Tim Webb (2022)

Review of: Sensory Theatre: How to Make Interactive, Inclusive, Immersive Theatre for Diverse Audiences by a Founder of Oily Cart, Tim Webb (2022) New York: Routledge, 278 pp., ISBN 978-1-00309-128-8, e-book, $35.95

The immersive archive

ABSTRACT During the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions of 2020–2021, Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre created an immersive theatre performance called ‘Because the Night’, comprising six unique storylines within intricately designed spaces. Unfortunately, the production was interrupted and eventually curtailed prematurely due to further lockdown restrictions closing theatres to the public in 2021. The Malthouse Theatre collaborated with Deakin Motion Lab to document and create an archive of the production. This paper considers the team's approach to creating an immersive archive using cutting-edge 360-degree filming technologies that provide a resource for understanding the particularities of immersive performance praxis. As the audience's embodied and emergent experience of Because the Night was essential to the work’s dramatic form as an immersive theatre production, simulating these qualities within the resulting platform was critical. The resulting archive contributes to the ongoing efforts to create new embodied research methods that allow for a wider audience to understand and experience the unique characteristics of immersive theatre using emerging immersive digital technologies.

Agency and Intra-textual co-creation in Punchdrunk Enrichment’s Immersive Story Worlds for Children

AbstractRecent immersive theatre practices being developed by UK theatre companies invite children to believe that a book story has come to life and is really happening to them within their school environment. The thrill of being able act within a story motivates children’s embodied agency to physically explore an immersive set installation and acts of creative writing performed during the story experience, which allow children to co-create the narrative alongside the adult practitioners. These acts are fictionalised into the narrative frame of the children as heroic story writers, offering new perspectives on how child co-creation of adult narratives can be enabled intra-textually, within the bounds of the adult-initiated story, rather than extra-textually after it has finished, as is the case with fan fiction. However, it raises questions about the nature and limits of this co-creative agency the experiences purport to elicit from their child participants, especially in terms of their critical agency to manipulate fictional devices presented to them through such a hyper-real aesthetic. Drawing on theories of children’s literature and participatory performance, this article argues that it is the way these immersive productions uncannily overlay real and fictional temporalities that enables the child participants’ critical agency within them. Approaches for further participatory, practice-based research in this understudied corner of children’s reading universes are suggested for harnessing the potential of immersive story worlds to generate research data from within children’s first aesthetic engagement with stories.

Human / nature: Interviews with Audrey Rachelle, Kelly Todd and Isabel Umali

In this piece, I interview three dancers and choreographers – Audrey Rachelle, Kelly Todd and Isabel Umali – about their recent works on sustainability and climate change. All three dancers share a background in immersive theatre, having performed in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More for many years. Their accounts illustrate a productive application of immersive theatre sensibilities and choreographic practices onto issues of sustainability and environmental justice. Rachelle, Todd and Umali’s pieces are borne out of a heedful relationship with their particular surroundings, as well as a thoughtful engagement with their audiences. This piece seeks to bring critical attention to new works while considering the productive intersection of immersive techniques and ecologically minded choreographic endeavours.

The Role of Spatial Design in Implementing the Immersive Experience of Gaming Quest Rooms

The purpose of the article is to clarify the role of spatial design in the embodiment of the immersive experience of escape rooms and to identify the figurative, stylistic and technical factors characteristic of such design. The research methodology is based on an interdisciplinary method used to compare and contrast certain cultural, social, and artistic aspects of the topic, due to the synthetic nature of the problem under study; a comprehensive method is also used to reveal the essence of the spatial design of immersive theater. The scientific novelty of the article is to distinguish the spatial design of the quest space as an independent part of the immersive theater, to identify the features of the spatial design of quests based on the principle of immersion, in particular, taking into account the use of VR technologies that compete with the usual design of space, replacing it with virtual. Conclusions. As a result of the study, we conclude that spatial design plays a crucial role in creating immersive quests. It can range from simple scenery to complex multisensory environments, and should also take into account the ability to create various puzzles and tasks based on interaction with the room and its objects. Often, innovative technologies that involve the use of virtual or augmented reality, 3D modeling, sound design, multimedia, and other interactive elements play a crucial role in the design of escape rooms. Stylistic analysis shows that realistic style is most often preferred in the design of quests. Design in a stylistics that combines real and fantasy worlds is less common. The reason for the preference of realistic approaches is the desire to bring the environment closer to the real world. To provide a realistic atmosphere, the quest uses visual effects that can be successfully synchronized with identical sound effects. Consequently, the aforementioned figurative, stylistic, and technical criteria of the quest design process are especially conducive to achieving immersiveness, which, in fact, means creating a feeling of complete immersion of the user in the experiment. In this way, the design of physical and virtual space affects the way the audience interacts with the quest plot and can enhance or diminish the artistic intent of the production.

Punchdrunk’s Kabeiroi: Taking Immersive Theatre to the Streets

Abstract Punchdrunk is often considered the pioneer within the field of immersive theatre, which “[places] the audience at the heart of the work” (Machon 22) and abolishes the distinction between stage and auditorium to merge them into one single space. Founded by Felix Barrett in 2000, the British company is known for creating detailed theatrical worlds that inhabit the space of disused buildings in which the audience is invited to roam free. Whilst most of Punchdrunk’s productions maintain a separation between the real world and the imagined world by staying within the confines of a building, Kabeiroi (2017) opens up to the busy streets of London and immerses the participants in real life. This ambulatory theatrical exploration superimposes the world of fiction onto the geography of the city, weaving a web of complex interactions between the two. How does Kabeiroi interact with the city it pervades? To what extent does the urban space inform the performance, and, conversely, does the immediate reality impact the participants’ experience and immersive feeling? Using concepts such as performance walks (Tomlin), “host” and “ghost” (McLucas), frames (Goffman), and errant immersion (Alston), this article explores the way Kabeiroi blurs the boundaries between street and stage, participants, performers, and passersby, reality and fiction.

(Un)real City: Spatial and Temporal Ghosting in ANU Productions’ The Party to End All Parties

Abstract As COVID-19-related closures affected theatre and performance venues worldwide, the question of how theatrical practices might be adapted to these new circumstances became particularly pertinent in the context of immersive theatre and site-specific performance, forms which heavily draw on the audience’s experiential encounter with site and performers for its process of meaning-making. Focussing on ANU Productions’ The Party to End All Parties (2020) as a hybrid form of site-specific pandemic theatre set in the cityscape of Dublin, this article investigates how the production translated the “host/ghost” relationship as a central aspect of site-specific theatre to the virtual realm. It demonstrates how this notion is transformed into a thematic thread woven into the performance, arguing that it engages with the host/ghost relationship through spatial as well as temporal “ghosting,” which blurs the lines between the contemporary setting of lockdown Dublin and the historical landmark of O’Connell Bridge as a site inextricably connected to the emergence of Ireland as a republic. At the same time, this notion is explored through the connections between presence and absence, visibility and invisibility (or, indeed, spectrality) in the three characters’ personal journeys.

Audience behavior in immersive theatre: an environment-behavior studies analysis of Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More

ABSTRACT Place can shape and influence audience behavior during a performance. This is especially noticeable in the site-specific immersive theatre model, where the performance occurs in a non-theatre setting and audiences have an active role. In this article, we argue that ‘place schema’ – a term from the interdisciplinary field of environment-behavior studies – provides a conceptual framework for better understanding audience behavior within immersive theatre environments. We know how to behave in a theatre building because we have codified experiences regarding the environment in our minds called place schemata. They help us process spatial information, predict what is likely to happen, and decide how to take action accordingly. However, if this spatial information does not match the ‘theatre schema’ we have in our minds, as is often the case in an immersive theatre setting, we would need to update our existing schema. In this article, we examine Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More (2011 New York production, which is still running) to evaluate how audiences carry the behavioral rules of traditional theatre schema into immersive theatres and consider how expectations, roles, and rules of place influence the relationship between the audience and setting.