Author: HER Cooper

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Breaking the Rules: Third Rail Projects

Third Rail Projects takes a very different approach to immersive storytelling than Punchdrunk (see Breaking the Rules: Sleep No More). Instead of an open-world, “sandbox” experience, a Third Rail production divvies up the audience and puts them each on a set of rails, something kin to a “dark ride” of amusement parks. (I’ve always thought this company was well-named, given the house-style they developed). To keep audiences on these invisible rails, they provide an unusual set of rules.

(See my post on the importance of rules in immersive theatre here.)

RULES FOR THIRD RAILS PROJECTS
  1. Do not open any doors yourself
  2. Do not speak unless spoken to

I’ve witnessed these rules in action in their productions of Then She Fell (ongoing in Brooklyn), The Grand Paradise (Brooklyn 2016), and Sweet & Lucky (Denver 2016), and I expect the same rules will apply in their upcoming Ghost Light (limited run in NYC this summer).

Calm Down, PLEASE

When I attended Then She Fell for the first time, Sleep No More was my only point of reference for immersive theatre. That show rewards me for being a hyper-aggressive weasel and will never be surpassed in my esteem because it made me realize who I really am.

Author showing here in SNM-mode, poised to tail her prey

To put it mildly, this is not the skill-set needed in Then She Fell. I entered the lobby space a little late, having waited in line for the restrooms, and when I noticed folks exploring the space, I went up to the closed door and opened it.

Luckily, the nurse pounced on me, iterating the rule “not to open doors.” Which she hadn’t told me yet. (All the more reason to cover the rules with the whole audience present instead of piecemeal.) Not a big deal, but I did have the reveal of one of the more magical sets spoiled for me. Me and my lame curiosity!

My first scene also made swift work of correcting my weasel-instincts. The doctor wanted me to sit far away from him across a table. I thought that was lame and got up to get closer to him. He insisted I sit back down—I bet they can tell when you’ve been to the McKittrick. I eventually took my cues from the performers, and I highly recommend that audiences accept the more relaxed, under-active, “you’re in good hands” experience. It opens you up to a different kind of connection. Third Rail Projects is never a game, and it’s certainly not a sport. The only way you can fail the show is by failing to be present with the actors.

DEfine “Door”

Unfortunately I still had not learned my lesson when I went to see Sweet & Lucky in Denver.

Those who experienced this production were indeed lucky (Sweet & Lucky)

I attended on the opening weekend. Again, we heard the rule not to open doors. My group had been following our main character for a while, but she yielded the set (and us) to another character, who turned off a few lamps and then promptly went through an “L shaped” passageway made of curtains. The show took place in a giant one-story warehouse, so sometimes curtains filled in for walls. PLEASE NOTE that she did not part the curtains, she didn’t need to touch them at all to go where she was going.

Naturally, I followed.

And my group of 7 more followed me.

About 15 minutes later, when we’d seen the most incredible sequence in the show (in a rather overly-crowded house), they activated the God-mic: “HOLD, PLEASE. ACTORS HOLD.” My heart was pounding, screaming “God, please no. No fire, no medical emergencies, don’t let them stop this show, I HAVE TO SEE THE END OF THIS SHOW.”

“We have a sorting error.” Eventually a very unhappy stage manager walked up to my overly-large group and asked, “Who here hasn’t seen ‘Swimming Hole?'” I raised my hand. Seven other people sheepishly raised theirs.

We had jumped the tracks.

He politely guided us to the space where we were supposed to be, but resetting a show of Third Rails’ complexity is no easy feat. If they take the show back 15 minutes, every actor has to go back 15 minutes, but so does every single audience member to the exact place where they were on the ride. Sorting the audience backwards couldn’t have been easy.

A typical Third Rail Projects spreadsheet. Not really. But I bet I’m close.

And in fact, they tried to start the show again, realized they had picked the wrong spot, and had to stop it and re-sort us all AGAIN in a totally different place (a mistake I am so grateful they caught—every moment in Sweet & Lucky matters). It wasn’t Episode 2 Cycle 2, but Episode 2, Cycle 1 where we needed to be!

Once we were all properly placed, they still had to work on going back to the right spot in the tech cues. The audience waited in place for 20 minutes in an un-air-conditioned warehouse while the tech team got things going again for us. I’ll never forget that moment. Nobody talked. NO ONE. We stuck to the rules. We believed in them. We all wanted to sustain the emotional place where we had been before the interruption. I’m grateful to everyone in that truck with me for committing to the magic so completely.

The show resumed, and it was magic. I don’t think I’ve ever cried so thoroughly.

But a simple rule in a vague situation misinterpreted by a single audience member literally broke the entire experience for all 70 people.

This is sort of on them for making the door in this case ambiguous. Are curtains that we don’t even have to touch technically doors? It’s also on the actress we followed for not clearly signaling we were to stay where we were and wait patiently for another character to guide us to where we needed to go next. (I bet she got much better at directing audiences as the run went on; I know I have.) It’s also on the story for having a moment where we didn’t have a guide and weren’t left closed off in a private room (we were in a large, open corridor).

But it’s also sort of on me and my damn weasel-mode. So let me say definitively, THIRD RAIL PROJECTS AND OFF-CENTER AND THE WHOLE CAST AND AUDIENCE OF SWEET & LUCKY: I AM SO SORRY. 

This is not a conversation

Since the audience activity isn’t “where to go,” Third Rail uses eye contact, speech, and the occasional task to great affect to make the audience feel active in the story.

Most people come back from a Third Rail show recounting the profound questions they were asked. More than the tasks, the questions forge deep connections between character and audience, and the audience gains a sense of how the story relates to them. It’s brilliant. But it’s also dangerous. Hence the rule, “do not speak unless spoken to.”

They smartly recognize that too much speech in the experience would ruin the magic. You’re not often the only audience member in the scene, and if you can speak freely within your group, you might brush it off, make light, break the immersion. Enforcing silence makes us process what we see differently.

I’m not a fan of The Grand Paradise for many reasons, but no doubt my particular experience tainted it for me. You never get to choose your audience group. By bad luck, I was paired through the whole show with a talker. She kept asking our actors questions, engaging with them with tongue firmly in cheek, and making jokes—essentially making the show about her. It was a power play. She was clearly uncomfortable and refused to let the actors have any power over her whatsoever. Talking was her defense mechanism.

I was miserable. Magic wasn’t possible. I’ve never been made so wildly self-conscious, even as an actor, as “the talker” made me feel.

If only I could have drowned her in that tank (The Grand Paradise)

I partly blame the performers of The Grand Paradise for not enforcing their own rule on this unruly participant when the behavior presented itself and continued to present itself. It wouldn’t have taken that much effort to correct, and instead, it broke my show.

rules on rules

Audiences: know the rules of the particular show, and stick to them. Rules for one immersive are not the rules for another. More than just the quality of your personal experience is at stake here; everyone’s show is at risk. When in doubt, resort to passive-audience mode.

Producers, designers, actors: enforce your rules in real-time. Always err on the side of too much direction than too little. You’re doing incredible work, and you should stand ready to defend it.

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Breaking the Rules: Sleep No More

99.9% of audiences don’t want to break the rules. But sometimes people go rogue, or more commonly, someone makes a mistake, and when a rule gets violated, the entire experience can break.

(See my post on the importance of rules in immersive theatre here.)

RULES FOR PUNCHDRUNK’S SLEEP NO MORE (NYC)
  • No talking
  • No cellphone use
  • Follow the guidance of the black masks
  • Wear your mask the entire time

Simple. Right? And yet I will hear people talking to their friends, flipping their masks up, or fiddling on their phones in the stairwell (which despite appearances is the highest trafficked area in the entire McKittrick). I WILL SHUSH YOU. If more than 1% of the audience committed these behaviors, I’d stop going. It’s no longer the experience it was designed to be.

I know it’s uncomfortable and sweaty. DEAL WITH IT.
No mask? No Mask!

The most unusual rule on this list is “to wear your mask the entire time.” While Punchdrunk’s custom-made bautas do wonderful artistic work (empowering the audience with anonymity, making the otherwise dopey-looking audience look spooky), their primary purpose is practical. Given the show’s large real estate and free-roam structure, audiences need to tell at a glance who’s a performer worth pursuing and who’s an audience member just screwing around.

At one memorable performance, my close friend earned the Malcolm one-on-one. He removed her mask, as in all SNM one-on-ones, to facilitate a more intimate connection. But he had gotten behind in the scene, and when the bell tolled Duncan’s death (Malcolm’s cue to run),  he bolted out of there even faster than usual.

He forgot to return her mask.

She bolted out of there, too, tailing Malcolm down to the mezzanine. She arrived but didn’t realize she had no mask, and there was no way for her to get it back behind the locked door set on the fourth floor. Luckily a black mask pulled her aside, pointed out the problem, and asked her to wait. She sat on the couch and waited for her new mask.

Now I advise all of my friends to dress distinctively for immersives. Bold, dressy clothing tends to get the actor’s attention. Plus the performers can quickly confirm that it’s you that’s still following them.

Sporting my SNM uniform (center): no one can resist the red dress paired with running boots.

As my interestingly-attired friend sat on that couch without her mask, the audience started noticing her, and a small crowd formed. Unsurprisingly, she felt very self-conscious and did her best to look uninteresting. Which only made her more interesting. For some guests that night, she was a performer. What story of loss or acceptance did they see in her profound stillness?

The mistake wasn’t her fault, and it didn’t take long to correct. But within five minutes, the show broke because of a missing mask. Keep your mask on, please.

At New Year’s Eve 2014, the McKittrick spray-painted their typically white masks gold.  A nice aesthetic touch, but practically it was a disaster. The gold didn’t contrast well enough in the dark for me to tell who matters at a distance. And when you’re on the actor-hunt, every second counts. Good designers know these details matter.

I am uncertain that a free-roam immersive can function smoothly without a means to distinguish audience from performers. I could be wrong. Maybe it’s not that hard to tell: audiences tend to be pretty boring. I hear that Speakeasy in San Francisco doesn’t make any distinction, and they even encourage the audience to dress in the time period.  I look forward to a trip out there where I’ll wear my white beaded flapper dress, style my hair in bobbish curls, and fool the hell out of everyone.

No talking?

After (only) seven visits, I am still uncertain if Sleep No More wants me to hew religiously to the no-talking rule. It’s definitely a clear requirement out in the open world of the hotel. But what about in the locked door one-on-ones?

Most of the one-on-ones scripts don’t invite any response from you, but a few of them do present the possibility for you to talk.

Light spoilers ahead. I am often near Malcolm at the right time (or perhaps I’m subconsciously addicted to his wall slams), so I’ve won his one-on-one four times. Malcolm asks “Who are you?” Seems like he’s asking a question, right? I’ve offered four different actors different responses: Donalbain (my favorite), the Raven Queen, “never more.” In all of these Malcolm fails to acknowledge my response, and he never plays back in turn. In fact, I think he just slams me harder. Once I even filled out his line “Me thought I heard a voice cry” with “Sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder sleep!” (Okay, that was just pure cheek). From none of the actors, did I get a clear behavioral signal that he wanted me to answer his question.

But then why ask the question? This rule has me very confused! I’ve recently stopped answering Malcolm and focused on enjoying the ride instead. I think he prefers it that way. I think, even with the door locked and your mask off, Punchdrunk wants you to stay silent. The performer is the one showing you incredible things, after all, and (as witnessed above) he’s got a schedule to keep.

While we may like exceptions to rules in life, designing for a little exception in an immersive experience will only sow audience confusion and lead to behaviors you didn’t intend.

(See: Breaking the Rules: Third Rail Projects for more).

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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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Odyssey Works: transformative experiences for an audience of one

I recently had the very good fortune to attend a two-hour workshop by Odyssey Works. And I fell in love. With their approach, with their work, with my partner who, 20 minutes prior to our interview, had been a total stranger.

About Odyssey Works

Odyssey Works started with the question “How could our art have the deepest possible impact on our audiences?” All artists want to move their audience, to have a lasting impact, but without knowing the audience—their struggles, their childhoods, their obsessions and bugbears—it is impossible to guarantee such an impact. Odyssey Works asks, “If our art could change just one life, wouldn’t it be worth it?” And from that resounding YES came a company devoted to designing immersive experiences for one person.

It starts with a long and detailed application—you know you’re signing up for the experience, and you know if you’re chosen. The survey digs into real personal meat: what’s your relationship with your mother? Where do you feel at home? What’s something you do every day that others don’t? What is your relationship with death? Once Odyssey Works chooses their participant, they interview you, family, friends, and enemies, read what you write, read your favorite books, listen to your favorite music, attend your houses of worship, doing everything they can to immerse themselves in your life. They call this “radical empathy.” Naturally, they fall a bit in love!

After studying the participant for months, Odyssey Works asks “What do I wish for this person?” They’re not talking wish-fulfillment, like a new job or a better house, but more along the lines of “I wish you felt a connection to your body” or “I wish you could experience beauty in new ways, seeing beauty even in your tiny apartment.” It’s usually a life-changing wish. With the wish the ultimate goal, they then map the emotional affects they want to achieve in the participant, and then design the experience to achieve those affects.

The Odyssey begins slowly, perhaps with a newly-discovered book by your favorite author that has an uncanny resemblance to some of your life experiences or with a dancer in red on your subway ride to work. Sometimes you’ll meet new people, and they will be part of the Odyssey you experience (note that they never play characters other than themselves; all of the actors stay true to who they really are, but they will tailor themselves to serve a purpose in the experience). The experience then culminates in a single weekend of events—often you’re kidnapped and whisked away someplace else. And you emerge on the other side deeply moved and fundamentally transformed. Guaranteed.

A scene from The Map Is Not the Territory where the participant was blindfolded and tied to a stake. (Odyssey Works)

Like so many worthwhile artistic projects, Odyssey Works relies on grants and commissions to keep going, and their many collaborators (from medievalists to chefs) work on a volunteer basis. Odyssey Works does not categorize themselves as “immersive theatre,” although they do use the entire world as their “set,” and an even more profound blurring between what is the real world and what is the artistic world occurs for the participant. So while we may not be completely overlapping in our projects, Odyssey Works has a lot to teach Strange Bird Immersive and other immersive theatre companies.

Six proposals

In their book, Odyssey Works outlines six proposals for artists looking to achieve a similar impact with their audiences…

  1. Begin with Empathy
  2. Involve Your Audience Completely
  3. Stop Pretending
  4. Design Experiences, Not Things
  5. Experiment with Form
  6. Produce, Don’t Reproduce

I highly recommend reading their book from cover to cover. While I must warn that it does sometimes stray from practical language into something more kin to academic art-lingo talk, it’ll undoubtedly inspire any experiential artist to re-examine their work. I sure did!

Take-Away: Personalize it

I was particularly struck with the call to radically personalize the experience. The lack of personalization is a big part of what makes traditional auditorium-stage theatre so static. Everyone is asked to receive the same story and to stay completely anonymous in the dark. In immersive theatre, you exist in the story, you matter to the characters, and you may even affect what happens. Eye contact alone is AMAZING. This is a great beginning. Can we go even deeper than that?

A little personalization goes a long way. In The Man From Beyond, we like to surprise guests with a personalized gift as well as with an intimate tarot reading. Madame Daphne also has the opportunity to learn her guests’ names without much trouble. Odyssey Works reminded me how powerful someone calling you by name can be, and now my character may call out to you for help by name. I’m already noticing that deeper relationships are now possible the moment you introduce a name.

I’m also imagining a show structured around a survey: your answers could set you on a particular story/character track in the show that either appeals to your personality or specifically challenges you to face what you’re uncomfortable with. The Hex Room, created by Cross Roads Escape Games in Anaheim, CA, makes guests take a brief survey to find out what stereotypical horror character they are, and then promptly locks you in a room themed to fit that character. (I am proud to report I’m the detective).

Haven’t played it yet, but when I do, that’ll be my coat. (The Hex Room)

Then She Fell achieves personalization by asking personal-history questions of the audience: “When did you first fall in love?” “Have you ever done something you weren’t supposed to?” Answering these questions unlocks new meaning for the audience.

Each person is an endlessly complex individual, and everyone fundamentally wants “to be seen.” Immersive theatre gives artists the opportunity to give that gift of “being seen” to their audience. There’s a lot of fertile ground to explore here.

Take Away: Design Experiences

I am also moved by the idea that we are designing experiences here, and we should approach our work in those terms. We’re turning flat stories into four-dimensional, fully lived experiences. The experience of the audience is primary.

Actors never want to think in terms of emotions and moods (MOOD is DOOM spelled backwards, as my Meisner acting coach says). But that’s not a rule designers should follow.  The best immersive theatre experiences will be carefully crafted with the emotional impacts in mind. Next time I am working on a new immersive experience, I intend to begin with a concrete wish for the audience, and then map out the emotional journey we want the audience to undergo.

We should also be thinking about experiences in more sensory terms as well. In one show, Odyssey Works added mulch to the participant’s secret room, with the explicit goal of triggering the feelings aroused in that room in the participant for years to come whenever he smelled mulch again. YES. Immersive theatre introduces a new design category (and my favorite credit in my own show): scent design.

Life Take-Aways

In the workshop I attended, I asked a stranger five questions, but these questions weren’t about where she works or lives or her opinions of movies or politics. They were meaty questions that established intimacy in a flash. The question “What’s been on your mind lately?” unlocked a staggering amount of emotion and detail. I left wondering if I knew my closest friends in this way. I now want to go ask them all of these questions, and so personalize our relationship more.

Human beings are always designing experiences for each other, from hosting a friend’s birthday party to choosing how to split up the family into separate cars. Odyssey Works calls us to be conscious about these choices, and to design them with an eye to the participant. This is how we can transform experience into a gift.

So get out there, ask the real questions, and design experiences!

For more on Odyssey Works, visit their website.

And buy their book. Seriously, wow.

 

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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.