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.

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.

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.

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.