Talking about Immersive Theatre: Conversations on Immersions and Interactivities in Performance

How do theatre makers in Britain produce immersive, participatory experiences for audiences? How are productions designed and rehearsed, and how can the experience of different companies inform your own practice and understanding of this burgeoning craft?

This collection of original discussions with some of Britain’s leading immersive and interactive theatre makers explores their processes, methods and practices, offering a behind-the-scenes tour of how they make their work. It provides new material addressing a range of previously undisclosed topics including approaches to casting and rehearsal strategies, through to more concrete concerns such as funding and finance models. They reveal the discrete nuts and bolts of building audience-experience, and candidly discuss their own position to the term ’immersive’ and how they perceive their place within the wider experience-centric cultural landscape.

This collection combines perspectives from practitioners across the spectrum of immersions and interactivity in performance to showcase working methods across a variety of forms; from one-on-one, to gamified, playable experiences. The diversity of conversations captured in this volume reflects the polyphony of the immersive and interactive landscape in Britain, introducing readers to the work of Les Enfants Terrible, Parabolic, COLAB Theatre, The Lab Collective, Cross Collaborations, and ZU-UK. Makers participate in frank dialogue that reveals the ways in which they employ scenography, design, game and structural mechanics, approaches to stage management tactics, as well as the development of audience relationships, the role of intimacy and agency.

Joanna Jayne Bucknall is a lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Drama and Theatre at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is the artistic director of Vertical Exchange Performance Collective (VEX) and has been an Associate Artist at the New Theatre Royal in Portsmouth. She is the creator, producer and host of the Talking about Immersive Theatre podcast series, (TAIT) (https: //soundcloud.com/dr-joanna-bucknall)