In and Out of the Dark

Abstract

How might theatricality be conceived of in resistance to the siren lures of the ‘immersive’, with their associated claims for ‘active’ audience engagement while they treat ‘traditional’ modes of individuation – through reflective reception – as a hindrance to a ‘total’ experience? How might voguish notions of the ‘immersive’ be simply a contemporary surrogate for avoiding to think through the original creative division – that between light and dark? In its desire to take the ‘theatre’ out of theatricality, might the ‘immersive’ be just another instance of that conditionality from which Michael Fried famously wished to save art? In their attempt to deny the essentially fetishistic character of theatre, might advocates of the ‘immersive’ be less reflective than a four year old child, let alone a Platonising philosopher?