WHAT IS IMMERSIVE THEATER?

Immersive theatre is a style of theatre that seeks to engage the audience as more than just a spectator. Stemming from performance art, immersive theatre attempts to create a more active audience. This can be achieved in a variety of ways and tends to be performance specific. Some immersive work plays with the audience’s sensory experience, adding in elements of temperature, smell, or taste. Sometimes a performance will take place in a non-traditional theatrical setting, such as a nightclub, outdoor space, warehouse, etc. Productions in these nontraditional settings are also referred to as “site-specific” performances. Sometimes immersive theatre experiences break the fourth wall or have interactive elements between performers and audiences, intentionally blurring the lines in the relationship between the two groups.

The most notable immersive play is Punchdrunk theatre’s Sleep No More. Sleep No More first premiered in 2011 and is a re-telling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Audience members don neutral white masks and wander at their own pace, over the course of three hours, through a converted warehouse-turned-fictional hotel. They happen upon and witness the characters interacting and playing out scenes in and among different elaborately designed rooms. Each room and floor of the “hotel” has a different sensory output, including strobe lights, fog/haze, recorded music, thunderclaps, and lasers.

Another notable example of immersive theatre is Diane Paulus’s The Donkey Show.

The Donkey Show premiered off-Broadway in 1999 and ran from 2009 to 2019 at

A.R. T’s now-closed Oberon club. The Donkey Show was an interactive re-telling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream set in a disco-cabaret where audience members could dance with and talk to actors in-character.

Reflect:

What story do you think would be told well in an immersive theatrical setting?

How would you design it?