Reframing Immersive Theatre James Frieze Editor Reframing Immersive Theatre The Politics and Pragmatics of Participatory Performance Editor James Frieze Liverpool Screen School Liverpool John Moores University Liverpool, UK ISBN 978-1-137-36603-0 ISBN 978-1-137-36604-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-36604-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957738 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. 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References to his practice have been left in the present tense. v COnTEnTS 1 Reframing Immersive Theatre: The Politics and Pragmatics of Participatory Performance 1 James Frieze Part I Participant as Co-designer: Critical Reflections 27 2 On Being Immersed: The Pleasure of Being: Washing, Feeding, Holding 29 Josephine Machon 3 In the Body of the Beholder: Insider Dynamics and Extended Audiencing Transform Dance Spectatorship in Sleep No More 43 Julia M. Ritter 4 Troubling Bodies in Follow the North Star 63 Ruth Laurion Bowman vii viii Contents 5 Experiencing Michael Mayhew’s Away in a Manger: Spectatorial Immersion in Durational Performance 77 Roberta Mock 6 Integrating Realities Through Immersive Gaming 93 Lindsay Brandon Hunter 7 Negotiating the Possible Worlds of Uninvited Guests’ Make Better Please: A Hypertextual Experience 103 Elizabeth Swift 8 Outdoors: A Rimini Protokoll Theatre-Maze 119 Esther Belvis Pons 9 Immersed in Sound: Kursk and the Phenomenology of Aural Experience 129 George Home-Cook and Kristian Derek Ball Part II Facilitating Immersive Performance: Ethics and Practicalities 135 10 Reflections on Immersion and Interaction 137 non zero one 11 Caravania!: Intimacy and Immersion for Family Audiences 145 Adam J. Ledger 12 A Dramaturgy of Participation: Participatory Rituals, Immersive Environments, and Interactive Gameplay in Hotel Medea 151 Jorge Lopes Ramos and Persis Jade Maravala Contents ix 13 She Wants You to Kiss Her: Negotiating Risk in the Immersive Theatre Contract 171 Richard Talbot 14 The Fourth Wall and Other Ruins: Immersive Theatre as a Brand 193 Rachael Blyth 15 Immersive Performance and the Marketplace: The Hit 199 Sherrill Gow and Merryn Owen Part III Where Material Meets Magic: Theories, Histories, and Myths of Immersive Participation 203 16 Spectral Illusions: Ghostly Presence in Phantasmagoria Shows 207 Nele Wynants 17 Playing a Punchdrunk Game: Immersive Theatre and Videogaming 221 Rosemary Klich 18 Proximity to Violence: War, Games, Glitch 229 James R Ball III 19 The Promise of Experience: Immersive Theatre in the Experience Economy 243 Adam Alston 20 Differences in Degree or Kind? Ockham’s Razor’s Not Until We Are Lost and Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable 265 Geraldine Harris x Contents 21 Coriolan/us and the Limits of ‘Immersive’ 289 Andrew Filmer 22 Participation, Ecology, Cosmos 303 Carl Lavery Bibliography 317 Index 335 NOTES On COnTRIBUTORS Adam Alston is Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Surrey. His research explores the aesthetics and politics of audience participation, immersion and productivity in theatre and non-theatre­ settings, and the histories, aesthetics, and phenomenology of complete darkness in theatre. He is the author of Beyond Immersive Theatre: Aesthetics, Politics and Productive Participation (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), and is currently working on a collection co-edited with Martin Welton titled Theatre in the Dark: Shadow, Gloom and Blackout in Contemporary Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2017). James R. Ball III is an assistant professor in the Department of Performance Studies at Texas A&M University. Previously, he taught theatre history and perfor- mance studies at the University of Maryland, College Park and New York University (where he earned his PhD in 2012), reported on the work of the UN Security Council for securitycouncilreport.org, and directed interactive and immersive per- formances with his company, 2 Distinct Motions. Rachael Blyth has performed in and produced theatre, live art, transmedia, music videos, and films. A graduate of Central Saint Martins and the University of York, she resigned from British theatre and film company FoolishPeople in late 2012. Kristian Derek Ball is a sound artist, designs sound and composes for theatre, film and multimedia. He is a professional member of the Theatrical Sound Designers and Composers Association (TSDCA.org) and Artist Lecturer of Sound Art at Muhlenberg College, School of Art. www.kristianderekball.com. Ruth Laurion Bowman is a recently retired Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA. xi xii Notes on Contributors Andrew Filmer is Senior Lecturer in Drama, Theatre, and Performance at Aberystwyth University. His research addresses space, place, and location in con- temporary theatre and performance, sites of encounter between architecture and performance, and the performance of running. Andrew is co-convenor of the IFTR Theatre Architecture Working Group. James Frieze is Senior Lecturer in Drama at Liverpool John Moores University, where his teaching focusses on devising, improvisation, performance theory, and contemporary performance. He has collaboratively devised and directed numerous site-responsive performances, including theatrical adaptations of non-fiction prose, poems, online virtual worlds, and other kinds of source-text. He is the author of Naming Theatre: Demonstrative Diagnosis in Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), the follow-up to which—on the obsession with evidence in contemporary performance—is in progress (under contract with Routledge). Sherrill Gow is a senior acting tutor and MA supervisor at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts and is a PhD candidate at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Previously she worked as a freelance theatre director. Geraldine (Gerry) Harris is Professor of Theatre Studies at Lancaster University, UK. She has published widely on the politics and aesthetics of theatre, drama, and performance. Her latest books include Practice and Process: Contemporary [Women] Practitioners (2007) and A Good Night Out for the Girls: Popular Feminisms in Theatre and Performance (2013), both co-authored with Elaine Aston. George Home-Cook is a Lecturer in Drama at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. His research, which is grounded in phenomenology, focusses on sound, the aesthetics of atmosphere and the interconnections between performance and phi- losophy. George is the author of the monograph Theatre and Aural Attention: Stretching Ourselves (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), which was nominated for the Joe A. Callaway Prize for Best Book on Drama or Theatre 2014–2015. Lindsay Brandon Hunter is Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University at Buffalo. She has published in Text & Presentation, Theatre Survey, and Contemporary Theatre Review and is a past editor of Extensions: The Online Journal of Embodiment and Technology. Rosemary Klich is Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head of the School of Arts at the University of Kent where her teaching mainly focusses on contemporary performance practice with an emphasis on multimedia theatre, performance art, and immersive practice. She has published on the topics of new media performance, spectator- ship, audio theatre and post-dramatic theatre, and is co-author with Edward Scheer of Multimedia Performance (Palgrave, 2012). Notes on Contributors xiii Carl Lavery is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Glasgow. His most recent publications are ‘On Ruins and Ruinations’: A special issue of Performance Research (2015), Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd: Ecology, Environment and the Greening of the Modern Stage (2015), and ‘Performance and Ecology: What Can Theatre Do’: A special issue of Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism (2016). Carl also works with the artist Lee Hassall