Neoliberalism and Aesthetic Practice in Immersive Theatre
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Masters i Constructing the Sensorium: Neoliberalism and Aesthetic Practice in Immersive Theatre A dissertation submitted by Paul Masters in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Drama Tufts University May 2016 Adviser: Natalya Baldyga Masters ii Abstract: Associated with a broad range of theatrical events and experiences, the term immersive has become synonymous with an experiential, spectacle-laden brand of contemporary theatre. From large-scale productions such as Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More (2008, 2011) to small-scale and customizable experiences (Third Rail Projects, Shunt, and dreamthinkspeak), marketing campaigns and critical reviews cite immersion as both a descriptive and prescriptive term. Examining technologies and conventions drawn from a range of so-called immersive events, this project asks how these productions refract and replicate the technological and ideological constructs of the digital age. Traversing disciplines such as posthumanism, contemporary art, and gaming studies, immersion represents an extension of a cultural landscape obsessed with simulated realities and self-surveillance. As an aesthetic, immersive events rely on sensual experiences, narrative agency, and media installations to convey the presence and atmosphere of otherworldly spaces. By turns haunting, visceral, and seductive spheres of interaction, these theatres also engage in a neoliberal project: one that pretends to greater freedoms than traditional theater while delimiting freedom and concealing the boundaries of particular events and experiences. Moving between various components of performance in each chapter (text, space, object), the dissertation illuminates the relationships between multimedia installations, intertextuality, and object/participant interactions that make up these environments. Masters iii Table of Contents Introduction: Immersive Theatre 1 Chapter 1: Punchdrunk, Sleep No More , and The Immersive Aesthetic: Experience, Site, and Neoliberal Ideology 16 Chapter 2: Textual Implosion: Topography, Ontology, and the Sensorium 70 Chapter 3: Site and Seduction: Space, Sensuality, and Use-Value 116 Chapter 4: Things, Agency, and Neoliberalism 165 Conclusion 215 Figures: 1-12: documents from Speakeasy Dollhouse (Chapter 2) 220 Bibliography 231 Masters 1 Introduction: Immersive Theatre Given the scope of immersive theatrical events in the past decade, it may seem counterintuitive to write a dissertation about immersive theatre. After all, almost every performance is immersive now. The extent to which the term is essentially meaningless is evidenced by its prevalence. One journalist even posed the open question “Is theatre becoming too immersive?” 1 Even dinner-theatre style arrangements have taken on the term, presuming that performances in any configuration other than auditorium-style seating warrant the branding currency that immersion provides. 2 Yet, even with all of the “immersives” that have arrived while I have worked on this project, the problem of defining and interpreting what is meant by immersion still requires an adequate critical response. Josephine Machon, Bill Worthen, Andrew Sofer, Gareth White, and Claire Bishop have all, to some extent, responded to the immersive theatre with their own interpretations of what is happening in these events and what it means to be immersive. However few scholars have made the immersive theatre an exclusive study, and fewer still have concentrated on the sociopolitical ramifications of immersion, its manipulation of participant agency, and its internal structure. These, therefore, are the aims of this project. I examine and call into question the notion of immersion, especially as conjured up by the performances and theatrical companies that have popularized the term and its use across New 1 Jones, Alice, “Is Theatre Becoming Too Immersive?” The Independent, 5 March 2013. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/is-theatre-becoming-too- immersive-8521511.html. 2 Gushue, Jen, “Can Natasha, Pierre, and The Great Comet of 1812 Bring the Immersive Theatre to Broadway?” American Theatre 14 December 2015. http://www.americantheatre.org/2015/12/14/can-natasha-pierre-and-the-great-comet-of-1812- bring-immersive-theatre-to-broadway/. Masters 2 York City. These events may best be characterized first and foremost by what they are not. These are not site-specific productions, or at least, not only, and they are not environmental a la Richard Schechner’s Performance Group. They are also not “happenings” of the sort popularized in the 1960s. Instead, these productions, while being indebted to all of these performance tropes, manifestly attempt to create complete and virtual environments that, at their core, are haptic sensory experiences invested with the structures and limitations of technological narrative tools such as videogames, virtual reality, hypertextual narratives, and even the Internet itself. 3 As Chiel Kattenbelt and Sarah Bay-Cheng suggest in Mapping Intermediality in Performance : Kattenbelt proposes that intermediality in performance is very much about staging media and, in consequence, changes the interrelations between their materiality (or ontology), mediality (or functionality) and modes of perception (with respect to medium-specific conventions). These changes are characterized in terms of a refunctioning of the media involved and a resensibilisation of perception. The “staging” process is contextualized within the performative turn in our culture and society, which might in part be constructed as a response of the arts to an all-embracing theatricalisiation, particularly insofar as the performative turn is understood also as a process of increasing mediatisation. 4 The “performative turn” is one that I characterize as embodying a neo-baroque cultural landscape, following scholars such as Angela Ndalianis and William Egginton, who both describe a contemporary culture obsessed with notions of truth and spectacle, illusion and intimacy. Entering into the immersive space, I 3 In using the term “haptic” I refer especially to Chris Salter’s conceptualization of it as the sensation of touch. See: Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance (2010) and his experimental work with Haptic Fields : http://www.centreforsensorystudies.org/related- interest/haptic-fields/. 4 Bay-Cheng, Sarah and Chiel Kattenbelt, Andy Lavender, and Robin Nelson eds. Mapping Intermediality in Performance (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), 27. Masters 3 suggest, involves just the sort of “all-embracing theatricalisiation” described above—turning open-world environments into structures specifically preceded by Baroque characteristics. Like Baroque drama, art, and literature, the illusory aspects of space described by the immersive theatre are all a metatheatrical ploy, which calls to attention to its own theatricality while simultaneously suggesting an internal truth, a core of substance. However as the ensuing chapters argue, participants who believe the hype of being able to go anywhere or do anything in an immersive event will find themselves disappointed or even kicked out of productions. The lack of transitional space between theatre/non-theatre in the fully mediatized and hypertextual world means that the limitations that are more obvious in the traditional theatre remain but are rendered invisible. Which brings me to the posthuman and neoliberal aspects of the immersive theatre. While the ensuing chapters delve into the characteristics of neoliberalism in more detail, suffice it to say that the neobaroque paradigm of immersive events, while inspiring audiences to search for greater intimacy, more narrative clues, and heightened sensory experiences, delimits and manipulates the ability of audiences to actually perform such actions. As in open-world videogames, there are boundaries it is impossible to traverse because the game will not allow you to do so. In creating those boundaries, theatre artists can manipulate the potential narratives available to participants: where they can walk, what they can pick up, what is seen and unseen. Whereas on the one hand the immersive experience suggests a landscape of boundless participation, the event structures itself around the responsibility of the participants to create their own Masters 4 narratives. What you get from a performance is ultimately up to the individual. In Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More , it is possible to walk for long periods of time encountering no one but the space, while in Third Rail Project’s Then She Fell , one has no choice but to follow a singular performance track. Not knowing the boundaries or mores for a particular event, the participant is ultimately on his or her own—a model that hinges on aspects of neoliberalism. Whereas a more complete discussion of neoliberalism occurs in Chapter 1, I use it here to mean a reliance on the individual to construct their own performance narrative, the limitation of participation and interactions based on unspoken rules, and an emphasis on the limitlessness and intimacy of the performance event itself. Where surveillance, voyeurism, and anonymization come into play, either through masking, separation, or intimate interaction, the posthuman becomes an inseparable part of the neoliberal paradigm. As previously mentioned, the immersive theatre covers a bewildering array of aesthetic choices, but throughout the case studies described here, there is always a lingering question of subjectivity and