Take us to the edge, but don't throw us in

       This quote struck something with me. Immersive theatre is outside the box of what you expect from theatre. Truly, if I had to compare it with another form of theatre, the closest comparison I would make would be pantomime. However the two couldn't be any more different.

       From the moment I found out that Anna would be my next project, I knew that I wanted to exploit intimacy in a way that I hadn't done before. I wanted the audience to feel like they should be running on stage and intervening, and I wanted them to feel guilt for watching the characters go through difficult circumstances and not helping. This was perfect, the play is partly told through the eyes of a girl who sees the horror of school bullying at its worst and still does not speak up about it. Safe to say I went through with this, but in the process I learnt a lot about what you can and can't do in the performance space.

       The quote "Take us to the edge, but don't throw us in" realizes what had to be accomplished perfectly. We may try to blur the lines, but the theatre has two types of people, the cast and the audience, the participants and the onlookers, us and them; those lines can never be fully crossed. What we can do, and indeed attempted to do, is bring the two right up to that line until it is too close for comfort, until the audience is no longer merely watching and/or listening but experiencing all of the senses that the cast feel. This is what immersion means, it delivers an alternative form of entertainment that captures as many senses as possible. This was the driving force that drew me further into this world, and that is exactly what I wanted to do with my test subjects, the unsuspecting audience.

       My earliest experience with immersive theatre was early in my teenage years, when my school was chosen as a venue for an amateur theatre group performing a Welsh language piece on PTSD in soldiers following war. At that age I didn't fully understand the weight of the material being presented to me, however what I did understand was that I did not feel like a mere onlooker. The show closed with a monologue where the soldier in question challenged his own strength, unable to avenge an attack on his sister despite being able to kill opposing soldiers years before. This is where I sat on the edge of the performance, it wasn't a presentation of these events, I was almost sitting in the room with him, almost as if he was expecting me to deliver the reassurance he needs. This production stayed with me moreso than any other production that I saw throughout my school days. It was something that fulfilled me to take on the challenge almost ten years later.

       And it certainly was a challenge. Anna would have to be in the round to make the most of this method, this prevented us from masking some of the magic that goes into presenting spectacle on a stage. This is where the audience completes the image. It is up to them what they see, so why not let them do the imagining for you? This isn't groundbreaking territory, in fact it has been considered life blood to theatre practitioners for many many years. This was a production that relied heavily on this. There were only three set pieces used for the duration of the show, one of which was an unfurnished table. It is up to the audience to picture it as a table, a bed or a bench in a locker room. It is also up to the audience to picture the entire setting, whether it may be the house party in which most of Act 2 took place or a school. Giving this audience the freedom of expression allowed them to be involved somewhat. However the events of the play were fixed. The audience did not have such freedom. This lack of control would've left the audience feeling helpless when some of the more bleak occasions of the show occurred. Within the first ten minutes of the show, the audience held witness to an example of the worst case of school bullying. They were at the edge of the performance, feeling the guilt that many of the onlookers in the script had; but they were not thrown in, were they thrown in their actions would've determined the outcome.


       I introduced myself here with somebody else's quote, now I leave you with my own. By no means groundbreaking, simply summarising what I have learnt through the experience. You do not watch immersive theatre, you feel it.