Tag: meta

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The Situated Self: Immersive Theatre’s Gift

Dedicated to my sister who wanted me to explore the recurrence of the word gift in this blog, and my father, who told me over the phone to write this theory down!

With the close of the gift-giving season, I’ve been reflecting about the greatest gift I’ve ever received. Immersive theatre gave me something, something extraordinary, that goes beyond creative purpose and a career in the arts (both tremendous gifts). It gave me myself.

By which I do not mean I “discovered my true self.” We are always talking as if the truth is buried, and if we just have the right archeological tools mixed with the right tenacity (or the right therapist), we can uncover the True Self. The True Self has always been there, since birth, or at least since childhood, and it is our lifelong task to Know Thyself.

That is not what I mean. I mean that immersive theatre taught me that my identity is fluid, able to flex to given circumstances. It taught me that the “I” I call myself is much more expansive than I ever imagined.

The self: mesmerizing, horrifying, fluid.
Western notions of fixed identity

I cannot lay claim to intimate knowledge of Eastern traditions, but in the Western culture I consume, we think in terms of the True Self. Whether at birth or in the crucible of childhood, we supposedly solidify our identity early—and do not deviate from it. Children may learn and play, but adults are certainly set. Think about stories from your childhood that your mother likes to tell, and how they bespeak your present-day personality, crystal-clear even at a tender age. Adults are simply not expected to change much—that’s why marriages can supposedly work.

But marriages don’t always work, do they? Hmm…

We take quizzes online to uncover the True Self, want to know which Hogwarts house we’d be sorted into, exchange our Myers-Briggs personality types with friends, so we can better understand each other. I even buy into the Five Love Languages thing. Mine are, surprise-surprise, determined by the love languages my parents expressed to me as a child.

There are probably kernels of truth in this theory of the self, but like most theories, we’ve taken it way too far.

For one, it’s overwhelmingly fatalistic. There’s not much room for free will here. You chose your career because of who you are. You chose your partner because of who you are. You have kids because you couldn’t choose otherwise—it’s who you are. When really, aren’t we just making it all up as we go along?

Someone very dear to me once transitioned from introvert to extrovert. Verifiable Myers-Briggs reversal and everything. Everyone was shocked. We didn’t think a change like that was possible. Suddenly we were dealing with a whole new person, with different desires and needs.

But this shouldn’t be shocking. People change—yes, even as adults. Our identity is not ordained or gifted to us by a Creator. We craft our own identities on a daily basis, in our situations and our choices within them. I call this “the situated self.”

IDENTITY as what you do

At those awful, theoretical cocktail parties where strangers for some reason gather together, we ask and anticipate one simple question: “What do you do?”

That’s a very interesting question. It suggests that identity comes from doing, from the actions we take. But that’s not really what we’re asking. We really mean, “What’s your job?”—a more boring question. The answer to that question supposedly encapsulates identity, gives the querent a succinct portrait of the stranger. Additional follow-up questions include, “Are you married? What does your partner do? Do you have any kids?” And maybe, if you’re lucky, we get to, “What do you do for fun?” These questions cover how you spend your time. They get to “the point” fairly quickly. What role do you play?

Your life situation molds your identity. Being and doing are intertwined—that I agree with. We experience existential crisis whenever we lose a job, divorce, etc., in part because our identity is tied up in our situation. The situation is changed, and so identity must change. Now that most people don’t stay with one job for 30 years, we’re beginning to open up to the notion that people can indeed do many things and so can be many things.

IMMERSIVE Theatre’s NOTION OF FLUID IDENTITY

In traditional theatre, the audience does nothing. They are not active, they are not present to the performers. It is rare for audiences to leave traditional theatre with an expanded sense of self. That’s not what it’s designed to do.

Enter an immersive theatre piece or an escape room, and you—body and all—find yourself in a radically different situation, a place and circumstance you’ve never encountered before or dreamed possible. Whether you’re cast in a specific role as an Egyptian archeologist or just given a task to perform, you are role-playing. You’re doing new things and so try on a new identity.

Yes, it’s make-believe. But that doesn’t make it any less real.

Humans are ultimately conservative. We like life to be predictable, each day to follow a structure similar to the last. We don’t like shifting situations, we don’t want to change our identity. No one would ever elect to change careers every year. But for us to do out-of-the-ordinary things requires encountering an inciting event from which we must take action. The old way of doing things just won’t work anymore in the new circumstances. Something must be done, and we must step up to the plate.

That, my friends, is participating in a story. Stories require conflict, but we eschew conflict in life. Immersive entertainment creates a safe space for us to encounter an inciting event and so take extraordinary action and become extraordinary people. Nothing is at risk here, but the reward is very real.

In escape rooms and immersive theatre, I have: lied to an Alzheimer’s patient, embarrassed a naked man when his lover asked me to, drunk glitter Champagne, stepped on a friend’s foot without even noticing, pushed strangers out of my way, french-kissed a stranger, stacked a deck in a casino, reunited lovers, summoned a ghost, sung to whales, translated binary, kept secrets, squeezed through cell bars, jumped through a window, flown up and down four stories of stairs as fast as the man I was following.

This is me. These are actions I am capable of—in the right situation. I carry all of this knowledge with me now. And sometimes I like to fly up stairs in parking garages, just to check my current capabilities.

And I’m no runner. But I guess, in the right situation, I am.

Some of these actions I’m proud of, some I’m ashamed of, all of it I find surprising. Radical departures from my usual narrative of “who I am.” It’s empowering. And it’s in my body as a true memory—I was there. This is what I did.

This is the gift of immersive theatre: to call an audience to action inside of imaginary circumstances. It awakes us from our slumbering adult selves and invites us to play, to explore new identities, like children or actors do, and potentially, to take a new identity home. Talk about a souvenir.

Quality immersive theatre transports the audience into an easy-to-believe world, but falls short of requiring them to lead the story, as children or larpers do so easily, so un-self-consciously. That’s a good thing. It makes this kind of play accessible. The circumstance is all there for you. All you have to do is act. Go on, try on somebody else tonight. This could be you!

A blank slate.

And it is you. When an immersive experience is well-designed, I leave with a strong sense that I can be anyone, do anything. I can choose my identity.

And that’s one hell of a gift.

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Meditations on Relevance

As everyone knows too well, the city of Houston (and its many neighbors—Fort Bend and Baytown and Port Arthur and Beaumont and…) suffered catastrophic damage from the floods of Hurricane Harvey. The extent of the tragedy is impossible to fathom. People died. Many others lost everything they own, with no quick-fix in sight.

Meanwhile, I’m supposed to go back to business.

The Strange Bird studio faced not one leak, and our creative team suffered no damages either. We cancelled performances, but managed to reschedule all groups but one. Unlike other theatre companies who have a tragically short window of performances to recoup costs, Strange Bird can lose a weekend or two, and be okay. We’ll be okay.

But in the meantime, I’m supposed to go back to business…? Let’s put aside the “survivor’s guilt” we were all feeling, just for being lucky enough to be able to go back to business. There was something even greater unsettling me. It felt silly to turn my energy to entertainment, when that’s so very low on the list of needs right now. Worse: it’s a show about death and STUFF. Like, you know, all that stuff you accumulate in life that countless people just lost? And then there’s my tarot readings, “The Tower” card that reminds us, “We are always subject to higher forces.” Could I handle that fortune showing up for someone? Is The Man From Beyond really what my city needs right now?

A Harvey tarot spread: an act of God/Nature; seeking refuge; heartbreak.

I had a crisis of faith.

I talked about scaling things back. Removing certain tarot cards from my deck. Cutting a few key lines in a few key places. Emphasizing the hard themes less, and trying to play up the fun more. In other words, fundamentally changing our story.

Then Cameron, my husband, co-artistic director, sometimes co-star, and general favorite human being, said, “Well, do you want to be new Disney or old Disney?”

I knew what he meant. Did I want to sanitize my world, present an escapist reality scrubbed of its evils and painted brighter, more beautiful than the real one? Or did I want to “hold the mirror up to nature,” not turn away from darkness, and see if that darkness has something to say?

“Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come. Make her laugh at that.” (Hamlet)

Needless to say, the latter is the Strange Bird way. Theatre companies long to be relevant, selecting scripts and making production decisions that speak to the current moment, and now was our chance to matter more. And here I was, wanting to abdicate my power for fear of coming off as insensitive.

We seem to have forgotten about this lovely little thing called catharsis. It used to be tragedy’s primary goal, and it succinctly expresses the real impact we can have on our audience. Cathartic-shy entertainment leads us to endless cycles of The Foreigner, Arsenic and Old Lace, Noises Off!—feel good, escapist entertainment that never surprises you.

Strange Bird Immersive revels in surprise. We want you to take a few strides outside your comfort zone. There, we will meet and perhaps experience something important together. After Harvey, well, we’re just a few steps closer to that important place—and need its promised catharsis even more.

Let’s look again at “The Tower.” Here’s my full story for that card: we are always subject to higher forces. Things that we don’t will and don’t want fundamentally impact our lives all the time—often for the worse—and we fall. But the real question is: how do we respond? Do we rebuild the Tower? Do we make it lightning-proof?

The darkness definitely has something to say.

I’m a secular-humanist philosopher. I take my readings very seriously.

We doubled-down. Not only did we resume performances as soon as the main roads were safe, we added more showtimes to our usual schedule, offering free benefit tickets this past week with a donation to the Houston Food Bank. People needed to get out, to talk about something else, and we wanted to help in our small way.

And to be fair, The Man From Beyond is far from a downer. It’s fun, funny, full of magic, an escapist delight in two senses of that word—with the potential for catharsis. I am glad I stood by our work. The result of the benefit was our busiest week yet. My “silly little escape room” provided meals for Houstonians most in need and something meaningful for those who could make it out to play.

So perhaps we shouldn’t consider entertainment secondary, irrelevant, a “distraction” from the real meat of life that should dutifully retreat to the shadows when a tragedy takes center stage. Perhaps it is rightfully at the heart of our lives. Perhaps we need it. It gives us a chance to do something different, to be someone different, to expand our experience of ourselves. It is not the how, but the why of life. The laughter, tears, and cheers are real, even if the world that inspired them was imaginary.

And that’s work I’m very proud to resume.

Please consider a monetary donation to those in need after Hurricane Harvey.
Houston Food Bank
JJ Watt’s Houston Flood Relief Fund
…or another charity (or for that matter, hurricane) of your choice.

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Immersive Theatre’s Superpower: Responding, or You Don’t Have To Pretend Like That Didn’t Just Happen, Part 1

We’ve all been there before: our hero on stage is tearing up a letter, but then an errant piece drops to the floor. This was not rehearsed. This was not a part of the plan. He exits, the scene ends, but the scrap of paper remains. Scene after scene: it remains. You can’t help it. You’re looking at one thing. We no longer have a play about revenge, we have a play about a scrap of paper, journeying through time and space.

A cause we can all get behind.

Sure, it’s acting 101 to take care of things that go wrong on stage, from dropped props to flubbed lines. But when the moment’s not rehearsed, actors can get anxious and think ignoring it may be better than addressing it. They’re not authorized to change blocking or add text, so ignoring it is their default option. In fact, ignoring things is part of the fundamental contract of traditional theatre. Actors need to ignore a lot of things, the audience most of all, to believe in their imaginary circumstances. We ask the audience to join us: ignore your seat, ignore the artificiality of the fourth wall, ignore the lights, ignore all ambient noises, ignore the velcro on the costumes—we need you to imagine with us (see Henry V: Prologue.) And above all else, please ignore the strange fact that these people in front of you can’t seem to see you or hear you when you laugh, cry, or cough.

What happens when we remove that contract and burst that weird bubble in front of us where some things are happening and some are not?

Immersive theatre doesn’t make ignoring things a cornerstone of the art. Even in a dreamscape immersive that isn’t aiming to deliver realism—and where people seem to be of a dancing species—the audience does not have to make as many imaginative leaps. We’re there. So are the performers. Whatever you see, hear, touch, taste, or smell IS happening in the world of the show, too.

Okay, granted, you should still ignore the lights. And some immersives will still ignore the audience (a cowardly choice, in my opinion, as actor-audience eye contact is the most powerful tool of this trade). But just your physical presence alone in the space gives immersive theatre a super-power. It feels realer, truer, more in your bones when you experience it. And when the performer is free to live the scene with you? It’s a game-changer. Not only will immersive performers pick up every fallen prop, they have an open invitation from the genre to acknowledge anything that’s happening, whether that’s an audience member’s response or an unplanned noise.

Go ahead. Get that audience member a tissue.

Thing is, human beings respond to things. One of my acting coaches, Philip Lehl, has a favorite phrase when correcting actors: “That is not a thing a human would do.” To which I say, let’s pursue that more thoroughly. How can we make this art form more recognizably human? To not respond to everything that’s happening, as players on stages do, diminishes the character’s humanity and ultimately fails to build a reciprocal relationship with the audience. The vast majority of plays require performers to ignore responses from their audience (Shakespeare and his marvelous asides being the exception here). And love isn’t much fun when it’s not requited.

Immersive theatre requites. This genre offers actors the chance to be more human than stage plays ever dreamed possible. It’s up to creators to decide what we want to do with that power.

GEEZ, lady, What DID traditional theatrE EVER DO TO YOU?

It’s possible value language is creeping in here. I should perhaps state my bias before it’s too late, that I have a psychological fear of not being seen, and I love immersive theatre because it loves me back. Lately, when a close-up actor in a traditional play studiously ignores me, I’ve felt compelled to trip him on his way out, as negative attention would be better than none. And at least THAT would be REAL. I should probably stop seeing theatre.

So while I may find it personally frustrating, I don’t want to say categorically that the “bubble” is “bad.” But it is quite clear that immersives burst it, and some new powers come from that. And, well, I’m excited by that. I didn’t start a traditional theatre company.

More to come on this “superpower,” with comparative thoughts on improv and anecdotes from The Man From Beyond.

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Rules in Immersive Theatre

In the “anything’s possible” wide-open frontier of immersive theatre, creators are dreaming up all sorts of ways to make the audience active in the story. Unless you like chaos in your shows—I don’t, but I know some designers may like to set folks loose and “see what happens”—every show needs to start the experience stating very clear rules.

Traditional theatre rules

The rules for audiences of traditional theatre are so ingrained that productions don’t feel the need to remind you beforehand. Nevertheless, there are rules…

  1. No talking (or singing along!)
  2. Stay seated
  3. Turn off cellphones (this one’s less instinctual, so we have to be reminded)
  4. Overall: respect the actors on stage

It’s very passive, intuitive, and easy to learn. People seem to agree on what’s acceptable, although I have encountered audience members who, according to their evil glares, categorize my loud and frequent laugh as a violation of Rule #1. I’m not being passive enough.

Please disregard your feet, hands, voice, and personality for the duration of the performance. Thank you.

But when the audience has no seat to pen in their behavior, all hell can break loose.

Immersive Theatre Rules

Since there is not one structure for immersive theatre, the rules will vary based on the show’s unique structural design. The rules dictate our activity and help guide us to the most fulfilling way to experience the show. You’re inviting the audience to do something; we need to be confident in what we’re doing.

The most common rules will focus on speech (when it’s allowed, if at all) and movement (where I can and cannot go). One thing is clear: breaking the rules will essentially break the show.

Punchdrunk needs you to wear your mask, so a free-roaming audience can differentiate at a glance between actors and audience. Third Rail says only to speak when you’re spoken to—thus opening the door to personal connection with actors that doesn’t get too out of hand. These two leading companies have very, very different rules, and I’ll be posting from personal experience about what happens when you break their rules. (See: Breaking the Rules: Sleep No More and Breaking the Rules: Third Rail Projects)

Productions must take the time to make the rules clear at the start of the experience. Ideally they will make a scene out of it (as opposed to playing a video or posting a list for the audience to read)—both to continue the immersion and because it will be more memorable.

Avoid non-intuitive or complicated rules. The audience can learn only so much so quickly. Immersive theatre can’t be like those board games that take 30 minutes to read the rules; no one will know for certain what to do, and that guarantees a bad audience experience. And if there’s something you really, really don’t want participants to do, design the experience to make that behavior impossible, rather than throwing a non-intuitive rule at your audience.

Rather than say “don’t use the tools to disassemble the furniture,” why don’t you create a game that doesn’t give me a screwdriver? (Real Escape Game’s Escape from the Time Travel Lab)
Rules in THE MAN FROM BEYOND (SPOILER LEVEL 1)

As an immersive escape room, we present the rules for the game as rules for the séance. Our rules address the escape room aspects—do not abuse my room, no cellphone use, work together. We do not provide rules for the actor interaction. NONE.

Madame Daphne guides you through Rules Hall

We expected our players would default into the ingrained “polite audience behavior,” perhaps driven by “awe of the actor”—the kind of audience behavior that Sleep No More expects, even through the 1-on-1s. We were so wrong. Without any rules encouraging audience silence, people were treating our characters as people: contributing to conversations, assuaging fears, even making jokes. After all, the primary mode for the experience is game-play, which requires extreme activity, so audiences applied that same approach to our scene work as well.

With a few tweaks to the script, we were able to adjust for more active engagement. We may not incorporate audience responses as much as I’d like (things do have to keep on a schedule), but we made more space for it. For the moments where we needed to drive home the story and have much less back-and-forth, we made sure that the players were sitting down, thus prompting them to more typical “audience mode” behavior.

Important lesson here is to keep the rules consistent. You can’t have rules for one point in the experience, and then expect a completely different kind of behavior at another point. And if you don’t limit the audience’s behavior, expect real interaction at every point.

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Why not “Interactive Theatre”?

If the activity of the audience is key to a true immersive theatre experience, why don’t we call the genre “interactive theatre”? Isn’t that a better description?

Because I wince when I hear “interactive theatre,” and so do you. The phrase conjures up images of campy murder-mystery dinner-theatres, children’s shows, and theatre that entertains the audience by dragging an audience member on stage and picking on them for the amusement of others.

This is not immersive theatre.

Why does interactive theatre suck? When you pluck out an audience member from the safety of their seat and invite them to participate, it makes that person ferociously self-conscious. Once content in their passivity, now they’re suddenly under the spotlight, while the cast is seemingly chanting “Dance, monkey, dance!” It’s embarrassing. Nobody likes that.

Killing self-consciousness

Self-consciousness is the enemy of the actor, and in immersive theatre, self-consciousness also becomes the enemy of the audience. Building a world around the audience as only immersive theatre does makes it possible for the audience to act naturally in a way they never could in a traditional theatre. In sophisticated works of immersive theatre, you never feel like you’re under the spotlight because…

  1. The world is richly detailed, thus making make-believe for an adult less embarrassing.
  2. The world lacks the seat-stage divide (one zone is safe, the other is scary) so you never have that awkward transition from passive to active-mode.
  3. The rest of the audience is well-dispersed, so a bunch of people aren’t there just to watch you.
  4. You’re so busy doing the thing you need to do in the world that there’s no time to feel self-conscious.
    (More on Meisner theory in immersive theatre to come.)

When I speak of The Man From Beyond to someone who hasn’t played yet, I often have to assuage their fears of embarrassment. No one will be watching, judging, and calling you stupid, I promise. Besides, you’ll be too busy doing things to even think of that!

I regret that we cannot reclaim “interactive theatre,” but most people don’t think of “interactivity” in the context of theatre as a good thing. Get them through your doors under any other terms, and then they’ll know that interacting in theatre is FREAKING AMAZING.

 

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What is Immersive Theatre?

You’ve heard of it, maybe even done it, but what does it mean? To flourish, immersive theatre needs a hard definition—what it is and what it isn’t. When my friends says, “I bought tickets to this new immersive theatre piece, want to join me?” I need to be able to imagine the experience I’m signing up for. Imagine buying musical theatre tickets only to discover upon arrival that the production involves no singing because someone in PR was confused about what defines a musical. That’s not okay.

“Immersive” is a buzz word right now in video games and entertainment, and journalists are bandying about “immersive theatre” as if the phrase means a cool set. NO. A favorite twitter account of mine, @isitimmersive does an excellent job of policing the term “immersive theatre,” documenting when it is used appropriately and when it is misunderstood, and I wholly agree with the author.

I propose the following rules to serve as a definition…

1. Immersive theatre surrounds the audience with the world of the story.

This characteristic is what “immersive” primarily denotes. It is as if the audience is drowning in the world. The story-world may be a custom-built set or the streets of a city. Either way, the story exists in a fully-realized world that doesn’t require audience imagination to fill out the edges. We don’t need to believe, because we’re there. And that’s seriously powerful. And often leads to dreaming.

Proper “immersion in the world” also means eliminating the divide between audience and performer. Both exist inside the same world; there should be no “safe spaces” in immersive theatre, where the audience should be and where the performer should be. It’s not so much “breaking the fourth wall” as it is refusing to build the wall in the first place.

I am certain at some point, some audience member has climbed into that bathtub. What I really want to know is if that happens once a week. (Sleep No More)

If there’s a stage where the performance happens, and you’re not invited near it, it’s just an elaborately decorated theatre. Site-specific theatre is not necessarily immersive theatre. And prosceniums are right out.

And don’t get me started if there’s an assigned seat on your ticket.

This is the most basic criterion for immersive theatre, and a lot of people think this is enough to qualify. It’s NOT.

2. The audience is active.

This is where immersive theatre truly gets interesting. The audience is not passive in the traditional sense; they do not just “receive” the story. Instead they become something more kin to a player or participant.

Immersive theatre isn’t something you SEE; it’s something you DO. One of my favorite taglines for Strange Bird Immersive is “Don’t just see what happens. Be what happens.” This difference is what makes a generation who doesn’t see theatre suddenly buy tickets.

Immersive theatre is to traditional theatre what a video game is to movies. Sometimes you’re tired and want to sit passively while a story gets told to you. But if you’re feeling a little more energetic…

There are many ways to make the audience active, and documenting the wide-range of possible structures for activity is what Immersology is all about. Sometimes the audience exists to the performers; they may answer questions and form relationships with the characters. Or the audience can choose what they see. Or the audience may make a choice or perform an activity that alters the story.

The activity does not necessarily have to have an impact. While it’s most rewarding for an audience to see that what they do has ramifications, it’s enough for them to be spinning cogs in the well-oiled machine. In a Third Rail Projects show, the audience will never alter what happens to them, but a proper run of the show cannot take place without their participation.

“Why yes, I do take dictation!” But in all seriousness, what happens if I say no? My best guess is she’ll respond, “Well, learn on the job!” (Then She Fell)

Most shows that get mistakenly classified as immersive theatre fail this rule. I am also supremely frustrated that many critics fail to explain HOW the audience is active in an immersive theatre piece. Sometimes I can’t even tell from a review if a show fulfills this rule or not! It’s not rule #1 that’s shaking things up, guys! It’s the promise of participating in the story, the gamification of theatre, that’s, well, the game-changer.

Companies must write and generate their own work, because the notion of an active audience isn’t something playwrights have worked with in the past. Maybe someday you can license an immersive, but for now, if you’re paying royalties to Samuel French and selling it as “immersive theatre,” please stop.

3. It needs to be theatre: live performers telling a story.

This is perhaps the easiest criterion to meet. But I have participated in work that is truly immersive, yet does not qualify as being theatre, so it doesn’t go without saying!

When I call something “theatre,” that means at least one living, breathing performer was there with me. It also means that that performer devoted herself to a coherent whole, something more than a medley of impressions—a story. The end goal of the piece is to communicate something particular with a beginning, middle, and end.

In so many ways, the reward for your activity is the story you unravel and the intimacy you can earn with a performer.

Where are you taking me? (The Man From Beyond)

And that’s the genre. Immersive theatre is at its core experiential entertainment. You’ll want to wear comfortable shoes, because you’re very likely about to do something extraordinary.