Staging Spectators in Immersive Performances: Commit Yourself! (original) (raw)
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With Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance, Josephine Machon has written a useful and very necessary book. It is the first monograph that is solely devoted to immersive theatre, a phenomenon of huge popularity, which has nonetheless given both critics and scholars a hard time to pin down and to conceptualise (Remshardt; White; White). Machon's book sets out to fill this lacuna. The study is divided into two parts, of which the first one provides definitional approaches to immersive theatre, traces its theatrical heritage and offers theoretical models for its understanding. The second part is a sourcebook of interviews with eleven leading practitioners in the field of immersive theatre. Right from the beginning, Machon acknowledges the diversity of performative practices that have been called immersive, ranging from small-scale one-onone performances to the epic worlds of Punchdrunk. Consequently, finding a binding and striking definition is impossible, but certain common characteristics can be identified (xvi). For Machon, the pivotal point of these is a multi-sensorial, physical experience that provides room for interaction: "[I]mmersive experiences in theatre combine the act of immersionbeing submerged in an alternative medium where all the senses are engaged and manipulated-with a deep involvement in the activity within that medium" (21-22). Immersive practices, for Machon, are a counter-movement against a virtual society that is characterised by social networks and second hand encounters. Immersive theatre offers real sensate experience through sensual stimulation (26). This approach is obviously highly problematic as it is laden with essentialist notions. However, she argues that all forms of immersive theatre are specifically designed to give thick, bodily experiences that speak to all the senses. The physical presence of the audience within the performance (she calls it praesence, seeking to engulf all the sensorial impressions) leads to a privileged experience that is stronger than conventional theatre and will last longer in one's body's memory (44). Immersion is then defined by three categories: absorption (fully engaged in terms of imagination and concentration), transportation (a world that is both a mindspace like in a video game but also a real physical space), and total immersion (praesence) (62-63). Immersive theatre, according to Machon, can be used as
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The article discusses the cognitive approach to spectatorship. There are different aspects that interest theatre scholars in the field of spectating research, for example, how audiences perceive the process of acting, how emotions and empathy work, and how spectators create meanings. The main premise for the cognitive approach to spectating is that the engagement of the audience in the performance is foremost corporeal. The article analyses the roots of this standpoint and poses a question concerning the possibility of measuring the impact of theatre. Further, the statement that for spectators the most significant engagement with a performance is emotional is considered. The concept of empathy and kinaesthetic empathy in particular is discussed. The article suggests that the crucial specification for successful audiences’ embodiment is embodied acting and trained body-mind that in fact means coherence within and between the mental and emotional systems. Proposing that most reliable ...
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Repossessing Spectatorship in Immersive Theatre and Virtual Reality proposes that material constructions borne by the ambitions of “immersion” do not fulfill their intended purpose: total passage to the reality of the performance. These materially constructed doorframes are not fully functional portals, as they ultimately have no bearing on the impassable barrier between our actuality and the virtual reality of a performance. Due to that barrier, encounters with the reality of a performance are still necessarily virtual; the spectator’s perception must traverse the performance through a sort of astral projection, as a dis/embodied ghost still tethered to corporeality and ultimately returning to it. Although these doorframes reveal and conceal no more than the actuality that already haunts spectators, these constructions produce exciting new theatre practices. Through a combination of the author’s embodied research, interviews with immersive theatre practitioners, and performance theory related to immersion, embodiment, and liveness, Repossessing Spectatorship in Immersive Theatre and Virtual Reality explores two contemporary case studies of immersive theatre that model the virtual reality headset as a visible, tangible example of one such “doorframe.” These case studies both integrate the virtual reality headset for the sake of immersion: 1. Tequila Works’s The Invisible Hours, one title in an expressly immersive and theatrical genre of virtual reality (VR) gaming, and 2. The University of Iowa’s Elevator #7, a mixed-reality production that adds an additional layer of tangible stimuli through live theatre, in order to supplement the immersive experience of wearing the headset. This thesis articulates its larger, abstract argument about spectatorship by tracing these case studies’ applications of the VR headset. Overall, Repossessing Spectatorship in Immersive Theatre and Virtual Reality encourages a reframing of the idea of immersion, away from total passage and toward a conscious repossession of the corporeal body in virtual visitation with a performance.