Beyond Spectacle

Abstract

Since the turn of the Millennium immersive theatres have converged across the cultural milieu, from the operatic to the escape room. Some immersive performances lend themselves to a sense of excess, of grand staging and extreme scenic detail, with the audience finding themselves in a state of total immersion. Nonetheless what about the moments that settle on something as mundane as a cup of tea and a slice of toast?

This paper addresses an often-overlooked aspect of immersive theatres – where mundaneness intercedes into the performative world of staged intimacy, whether on purpose or by accident. It looks at how ordinariness and the commonplace can offer insight, feeling and a familiar texture within the immersive encounter. In this way, a positive framing of the mundane emerges as a crucial part of the sought-after ‘experience’, sometimes through juxtaposition with the spectacle or spectacular, by their very mundanity.

Considering a cross-spectrum of performance work, from the small to large scale, one-to-one to collective audience experience, analysis of everyday objects and moments occurring in the immersive performance world are examined. Referring to the work of all things considered, Darkfield, Punchdrunk and Secret Cinema, the paper frames the relative opportunities for the presence of mundane activity and spaces within immersive performance focusing on specific performance examples from each company – Pram Talks (2016), Double (2020), The Burnt City (2022) and Dirty Dancing (2022) respectively. It is through analysis of the performances that the paper contextualizes the importance of the audience experience, value and labour when mundanity is placed within an immersive theatrical frame.

Notes

1 Please see Howson-Griffiths’ (2020) article where she traced the etymology of the term ‘immersive’ to Baz Kershaw’s (1999) monograph on The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard and the work of Enrique Vargas.

2 This performance formed part of my practice-led PhD thesis which included the creation of two immersive performances and from which I collated audience responses to explore each experience.

3 With thanks to Sarah Hogarth of all things considered theatre company for her generous sharing of this work at several talks and events, and through our previous co-teaching on immersive theatres from which I have had the benefit of her wisdom, experience and sharing of atc’s methodology.

4 Pram Talks was re-released as an audio download in 2021, as an outdoor socially distanced work easily accessible during the COVID-19 pandemic, by downloading the audio to a personal device. This version did not include stage managers delivering some of the sensory aspects of the original.

5 For other examples from atc see Rose & Geoff (2013), set and experienced in a working pub and, as the audience learned through the audio received via headset, was the actual pub where Rose and Geoff first met. The audience of two received different narrative instructions through headphones, experiencing the first date of Rose and Geoff through one of their perspectives. The narrative was supported by objects related to the story; one audience member received a handbag to wear that contained a specific perfume that Rose wore around the time she met Geoff. Two drinks were placed on the table to match Rose and Geoff’s orders, giving a sense of congruence to the encounter. These sensory details furnished the story and gave a visceral element to accompany the dialogue. The mundane environment was intentionally heightened through parallelism between sensory objects and narrative, enhancing the scenario and encounter.

6 Double was designed for two people sitting at a kitchen table, Visitors began with two people sitting on two chairs in their living room and Eternal was experienced alone lying on a bed. This made the performances readily accessible based on items commonly found in a typical home.

7 In the company’s early years audiences would not know which film they would be watching. Arriving at a meeting point, audiences were transported to a secret location and brought into the world of the film with live-action performances accompanying the onscreen film. Since then, their process has evolved; the film is no longer secret and teaser trailers build up to the reveal of their next production.

8 In the days before I attended, one social media fan forum group noted that there had been some instances of the cast being harassed during the event. It is therefore possible that in the days following that a heightened concern for cast safety may have rightly and understandably impacted their visibility and contact with the audience, resulting in less potential for main character interaction.