IMMERSIVE

THEATRE AND

AUDIENCE

EXPERIENCE

Rose Biggin

Space, Game and Story in

the work of Punchdrunk

Immersive Theatre and Audience Experience

“Rose Biggin offers a richly nuanced model for understanding immersive practice

that will be applicable well beyond the example of Punchdrunk. Interweaving

theories of interactivity, aesthetics and ludology, the careful frame Biggin estab-

lishes lets her skilfully unpick the structures of theatre events and probe the

nature of ‘immersion’ at the level of audience experience. Punchdrunk’s pio-

neering work emerges vividly in this discussion, with the author’s research into

audience response demonstrating why their practice has drawn criticism as well as

extraordinary devotion. This energetic, imaginative and intelligent study will be a

catalyst for further scholarship in the eld.”

—Dr. Frances Babbage, Reader in Theatre and Performance, University of

Shefeld, UK

“Alongside the fascinating, in-depth study of the company, this volume offers

us a new framework for analysing immersive experience in performance. This is

something I can use in the studio with the next generation of theatre-makers,

helping them think about how and why they might create immersive experi-

ences.”

—Professor Jane Milling, Associate Professor in Drama, University of Exeter, UK

“This is a distinctive and very useful study, with detailed analysis and original the-

orisation, challenging as well as celebrating the work of this important company.”

—Dr. Gareth White, Reader in Theatre and Performance, Royal Central School of

Speech & Drama, University of London, UK

Rose Biggin

Immersive Theatre

and Audience

Experience

Space, Game and Story in the Work of Punchdrunk

Rose Biggin

Independent Scholar

London, UK

ISBN 978-3-319-62038-1 ISBN 978-3-319-62039-8 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-62039-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944604

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Acknowledgements

I am very happy to be able to thank members of Punchdrunk: in particu-

lar Felix Barrett, Rebecca Dawson, Maxine Doyle, Peter Higgin, Jennie

Hoy, Colin Marsh, Colin Nightingale, Jen Thomas and the Crash of the

Elysium actors, for generously giving me access to their time and exper-

tise at various stages of the project. Punchdrunk’s interest and enthu-

siasm remained steady and encouraging throughout the process. Of

course, all errors and opinions are my own. Particular thanks are also due

to the always brilliant Jane Milling, who has been supportive from the

start.

An earlier version of Chap. 4 was initially published as “Reading fan

mail: Communicating immersive experience in Punchdrunk’s Faust

and The Masque of the Red Death” in Participations (Volume 12, Issue

1: May 2015). Reprinted here with permission of the editors, Kirsty

Sedgeman and Martin Barker.

vii

contents

1 Immersive Theatre, Immersive Experience 1

2 Interactivity and Immersion: Theoretical Approaches 59

3 Interactivity and Immersion in The Drowned Man 79

4 Fan Interactivity: Communicating Immersive Experience 97

5 Follow the Story: Narrative and Immersion 113

6 Exploring Multistories: Narrative, Immersion and

Chronology 135

7 Play the Story: An Approach to Narrative in Immersive

Theatre 157

8 Environment and Site-Specicity: Space, Place and

Immersion 177

viii CONTENTS

9 Conclusion 207

Bibliography 213

Index 219

generAl IntroductIon

The essence of Punchdrunk is that you have to feel it.

(Barrett in Machon 2013: 163)

How exactly to dene immersive theatre? In 2012, Lyn Gardner called

immersive “theatre’s new buzzword” and joked that, as a result of vari-

ous associations with trendiness or cutting-edge experimentation, or

promises of excitement and wonder, in marketing terms immersive had

come to mean “practically anything that isn’t a play by David Hare”

(“Theatre Roundup: Advice for Playwrights”). But some people can, and

presumably do, become highly engaged while watching a Hare play: so

while this denition is, of course, too broad to be useful, it is also not

quite broad enough.

This book proposes a distinction between immersive theatre and

immersive experience as a new way of looking at audience experience in

a form of theatre that is often characterised by certain aesthetic signi-

ers or audience congurations. I draw from philosophical aesthetics,

cognitive science and computer games to dene immersive experience

as a graded, eeting, intense and necessarily temporary state dened by

an awareness of its temporal and spatial boundaries. Immersive theatre,

then, is a genre of theatrical work in which certain audience congura-

tions might be expected, but in which immersive experience itself can

only be allowed for, not guaranteed. With this distinction in place, it is

CHAPTER 1

Immersive Theatre, Immersive Experience

R. Biggin, Immersive Theatre and Audience Experience,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-62039-8_1

2 R. BIGGIN

possible to consider how different aspects of an immersive theatre pro-

duction might achieve various effects on its audience.

My discussion is broadly divided across three areas: environment and

space; narrative and story; and interactivity and game. These aspects

make much immersive theatre visibly different to (for example) a pro-

scenium arch production: the ability of an audience to wander with

apparent freedom through a spatially innovative environment, usually

scenographically rich and multisensory; a non-chronological and/or

impressionistic approach to narrative; and interactive elements or charac-

ters, often with an emphasis on empowerment, choice or freedom for the

spectator. Each chapter in the book considers the relationship(s) between

these areas and immersive experience.

Throughout the book, my discussion is framed using productions

by the theatre company Punchdrunk. They are a prominent company

working in the form: in 2008 when speaking of “the kind of work that

is being called ‘immersive theatre’ […] the leading company working in

this idiom is probably Punchdrunk” (Nield 2008: 531); by 2011 they

could be called “immersive theatre pioneers Punchdrunk” (Arnott 2011:

n.p.). Or at least, pioneers of a current interest in the form: the traits

listed earlier regarding space, narrative and interactivity can be traced

at least to the early twentieth century in terms of performance history,

and immersive experience per se goes back long before that (as does my

own denition of immersion.) Punchdrunk’s work has an international

reach: Sleep No More, which premiered in London in 2003, continues

to run in New York (2011–) and recently opened in Shanghai (2016–).

Punchdrunk’s prominence in the contemporary theatrical landscape, and

their continued association with immersive theatre as a form or genre,

makes their work ideal for providing extended case studies of immer-

sion and audience, and keeping my analysis to a single company gives

this project a focus for its theory. There is also a practical reason for the

Punchdrunk focus which is worth declaring at the outset. The process

of research that informs much of this book was made possible due to my

having continued access to the company, giving me the means to con-

sider their work closely.

This book is the product of research conducted as part of an Arts and

Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Collaborative Doctoral Award

(CDA) between Punchdrunk and the University of Exeter between 2010

(when the company were celebrating their ten-year anniversary) and

2014. As an embedded CDA researcher, I was able to explore audience

1 IMMERSIVE THEATRE, IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE 3

immersion with access to Punchdrunk’s archives and through interviews

with company members, as well as through maintaining an extended

presence at rehearsals and performances. In this way this book sits in

the tradition of Spectator-Participation-as-Research (SPaR) approaches

(Heddon et al. 2012), a methodology in which writers draw on rst-

person accounts of their own experience as audience members alongside

more theoretical writing (Babbage 2009; Machon 2016; Alston 2016a).

I remain extremely grateful to Punchdrunk for their openness and enthu-

siasm throughout the process of my research. It is important to stress,

however, that although I spent time embedded within the company, I

have never been a member. My research conclusions are my own, and my

arguments do not reect the opinions of Punchdrunk.

Nor is my focus on Punchdrunk intended to suggest that their work

is in any way the denitive example of any theatrical form, technique or

trope. Punchdrunk and immersive theatre are not synonymous, and any

research into the wider genre of immersive theatre must of course take in

more examples than the productions of a single company, however inu-

ential or “pioneering” (Hoggard 2013) that company may be perceived

to be. My being embedded with Punchdrunk for a time enables their

work to be considered here in detail, as well as drawing on exposure to

ongoing processes and archive material: and a long-form critical study of

their work is overdue. However, this book’s other (and to some extent

primary) aim is to develop theoretical perspectives on immersive audi-

ence experience that will be of use for considering other immersive-iden-

tifying theatrical forms. Focusing on one company allows this book to

propose approaches to analysing immersive work—in reference to inter-

activity, narrative and environment—that I hope will be of use to other

researchers, students, artists and makers.

Sophie Nield’s denition of the “kind of work that is being called

‘immersive theatre’, in which the audience inhabit the space of the play

alongside the actors” (2008: 531) makes spatial and structural elements

key to whether a piece of work might be dened as immersive or not.

A pragmatic outline of what happens in terms of performer action and

movement—the basic structure of audience logistics and layout—makes

a show immersive in terms of its shape. Nield’s denition continues to

specify that actors and audience jointly inhabit “a tricked-out space […]

perhaps infused with smells, sounds” (2008: 531). This kind of emo-

tional/visceral/multisensory experience is often cited as what makes

Punchdrunk’s work uniquely exciting, as in Barrett’s emphasis on feeling