Locating sensory labyrinth theatre within immersive theatres' history

ABSTRACT

Immersive theatres have emerged since the turn of the millennium as a popular form of performance. Intricate and elaborate, they interweave playfulness into the relationship between performer, audience, and performance space. Discussion of immersive theatres has largely focussed on a selection of urban theatre companies who have acquired reputations as the forerunners in the field. On the periphery, other practitioners and companies have been developing immersive methodologies within theatre that are, as yet, largely undocumented within this scholarship. This paper contributes to the widening of this discussion by considering the work of Iwan Brioc and his sensory labyrinth theatre (s.l.t). It explores s.l.t within the context of North Wales, referencing its influences from Columbian theatre director Enrique Vargas’s work on the ‘poetics of the senses’. In doing so, it expands the current conceptualisation of immersive theatres, and in broadening the work being examined within this field, focuses on the transformative potential of the work discussed

KEYWORDS:

• Immersive theatre(s)
• sensory labyrinth theatre (s.l.t)
• Iwan Brioc
• Enrique Vargas
• senses

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Professor Kate Taylor-Jones for her most valued support, comments and feedback in the production of her thesis, from which this paper is developed. Special thanks are extended to Iwan Brioc for his generous sharing of s.l.t, which has been a key inspiration for the author’s research and practice into immersive theatres.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Enrique Vargas, who I will refer to later in this paper, described experience as ‘something that enables you to make an external journey into an internal journey […] this is really transcendental experience’ (Christie and Gough 2003, 96).

2. My article on science fiction in immersive theatres (Howson 2015) offered the first discussion of s.l.t. alongside Punchdrunk and other popular forms of immersive experience.

3. The Centre for Performance research archive does not list the 1996 performance, although the records are acknowledged as incomplete.

4. Teatro de los Sentidos’s website lists this event under their company’s work (see Teatro de los Sentidos, n.d), however, the Centre for Performance Research’s (CPR) performance archive records it as Taller de Investigación del Imagen Teatral (see Christie, Gough, and Watt 2006, 305). The programme from the performance supports the CPR's record.

5. With thanks to Dyfan Roberts for sharing with me his personal account of the performance and for his permission to use it within my research.

6. Accordingly, Caerdroia were popular in Medieval Wales as turf labyrinths made by farmers, a tradition which faded out leaving no remnants imprinted on the landscape.

7. This performance is described in further detail in Howson 2015.

8. With thanks to Iwan Brioc for sharing his experience of Art Included and for permission to share it here.

9. With thanks to Catherine O’Donnell for sharing her experience with s.l.t in Manchester and the audience evaluations from Play your Party (2014) and for permission to share this in my research. The project can be viewed here: https://erasmusplus.org.uk/grundtvig-projects.

10. The training was held in a number of EU cities – more information can be found via the following links: https://www.facebook.com/Labyrintheme; http://issuu.com/lucianbranea/docs/labyrintheme_handbook_for_trainers_56f1b56ccb557d; http://issuu.com/lucianbranea/docs/labyrintheme_handbook_for_trainees_58aa0908800d17. ^vii With thanks to Catherine O’Donnell for sharing the evaluation from Play Your Party (2014) and for permission to include it in my research.

11. Audience feedback from The Millennium Labyrinth, Fishguard, in 2000, included in the feasibility report for the construction of Caerdroia (19).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Teri Howson-Griffiths

Teri Howson-Griffiths is a Lecturer in Drama at Liverpool John Moores University. Her research, teaching, performance and practice centres on contemporary performance, particularly socially engaged and community practice, participatory methods, and arts, health and well-being. Her current projects include work on challenging the stigma of dementia through visual and performing arts approaches utilising humour and positive stories to create change, and the effects of loneliness in contemporary culture.