Audience immersion

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Audience immersion is a storytelling technique which attempts to make the audience feel as though they are a part of the story or performance, a state which may be referred to as "transportation" into the narrative, permitting high levels of suspension of disbelief. [1] Audience immersion may be used to enhance learning or to create a more realistic experience. [2] Various methods may be employed to this end, including narrative perspective in writing or technical design in the performing arts. [3] [4] An early example of audience immersion is from the 1846 travelogue Pictures from Italy by Charles Dickens, in which the narrator, speaking in the first person, addresses the reader using second-person pronouns, allowing the reader to "picture themselves with Dickens as he travels." [5]

In theatre, audio-visual technologies have been increasingly employed to increase immersion. [6] For example, the 2019 Cold War play Anna used binaural sound transmitted through headphones to make "each spectator culpable in the tale of spying, surveillance and secrets" in a voyeuristic manner. [6] [7] Immersive theater is a style of theater that enforces audience immersion by physically placing the audience within the performance space, allowing interaction with performers, and breaking the fourth wall during the performance. [8] British theatre company Punchdrunk is well known for its immersive theatre productions, such as Sleep No More, an adaptation of Macbeth . [9]

Many audiovisual media formats including video games attempt to employ audience immersion. [1] [2] In video gaming, audience immersion has been studied as a strategy for promoting behavior change for the implementation of public health objectives. [1]

Related Research Articles

A narrative, story or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional or fictional. Narratives can be presented through a sequence of written or spoken words, still or moving images, or any combination of these. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, which is derived from the adjective gnarus. Along with argumentation, description, and exposition, narration, broadly defined, is one of four rhetorical modes of discourse. More narrowly defined, it is the fiction-writing mode in which the narrator communicates directly to the reader. The school of literary criticism known as Russian formalism has applied methods used to analyse narrative fiction to non-fictional texts such as political speeches.

Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story, to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the plot. Narration is a required element of all written stories, with the function of conveying the story in its entirety. However, narration is merely optional in most other storytelling formats, such as films, plays, television shows, and video games, in which the story can be conveyed through other means, like dialogue between characters or visual action.

Audience People who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature, theatre, music or academics

An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature, theatre, music, video games, or academics in any medium. Audience members participate in different ways in different kinds of art; some events invite overt audience participation and others allowing only modest clapping and criticism and reception.


Applied Drama is an umbrella term for the use of theatrical practices and creativity that take participants and audience members further than mainstream theatre, that is often in response to conventional people with real life stories. The work also often happens in non-conventional theatre spaces and social settings e.g. schools, prisons, streets and alternative educational provisions.

Readers theater

Readers theater is a style of theater in which the actors present dramatic readings of narrative material without costumes, props, scenery, or special lighting. Actors use only vocal expression to help the audience understand the story. Readers theater is also known as "theater of the mind", "interpreters theater", and "story theater", and performances might be called "reading hours" or "play readings".

A vignette is a short and descriptive piece of writing that captures a brief period in time. Vignettes are more focused on vivid imagery and meaning rather than plot. Vignettes can be stand-alone, but they are more commonly part of a larger narrative, such as vignettes found in novels or collections of short stories.

Punchdrunk is a British theatre company, formed in 2000 by Felix Barrett. The company developed a form of immersive theater in which the audience is free to choose what to watch and where to go. The format is related to promenade theatre, but utilizes audience immersion more extensively. In 2015, Punchdrunk formed a new company, Punchdrunk International, which produces a selection of Punchdrunk's commercial productions for national and international audiences.

Immersion (virtual reality) Perception of being physically present in a non-physical world

Immersion into virtual reality (VR) is a perception of being physically present in a non-physical world. The perception is created by surrounding the user of the VR system in images, sound or other stimuli that provide an engrossing total environment.

Immersive design

Immersive design describes design work which ranges in levels of interaction and leads users to be fully absorbed in an experience. This form of design involves the use of VR, AR, and MR that creates the illusion that the user is physically interacting with a realistic digital atmosphere.

Interactive theatre is a presentational or theatrical form or work that breaks the "fourth wall" that traditionally separates the performer from the audience both physically and verbally.

Sleep No More is an immersive theatre production created by British theatre company Punchdrunk. Based on Punchdrunk's original 2003 London production, the company reinvented Sleep No More in a co-production with the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.), which opened at the Old Lincoln School in Brookline, Massachusetts on October 8, 2009. It won Punchdrunk the Elliot Norton Award for Best Theatrical Experience 2010.

<i>Sleep No More</i> (2011 play) Play written by Punchdrunk

Sleep No More is the New York City production of a site-specific work of theatre created by British theatre company Punchdrunk. It is primarily based on William Shakespeare's Macbeth, with inspiration also taken from noir films, as well as some reference to the 1697 Paisley witch trials. It is expanded from their original 2003 London incarnation and their Brookline, Massachusetts 2009 collaboration with Boston's American Repertory Theatre. The company reinvented Sleep No More as a co-production with Emursive, and began performances on March 7, 2011. Sleep No More won the 2011 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience and won Punchdrunk special citations at the 2011 Obie Awards for design and choreography.

<i>The Drowned Man</i>

The Drowned Man was an original theatre production by British theatre company Punchdrunk, in collaboration with the Royal National Theatre.

<i>The Masque of the Red Death</i> (play)

The Masque of the Red Death was an original theatre production by British theatre company Punchdrunk, in collaboration with the Battersea Arts Centre that ran from September 2007 to April 2008


CREW is a Belgian performance group, founded in Brussels in 1991 by Eric Joris. CREW operates on the border between art and science, between performance art and new technology. Artist Eric Joris develops his live-art projects in close collaboration with scientists and other artists

Eric Joris is a Belgian multidisciplinary artist and stage director. In 1991 he founded CREW Eric Joris.

Immersive theater differentiates itself from traditional theater by removing the stage and immersing audiences within the performance itself. Often, this is accomplished by using a specific location (site-specific), allowing audiences to converse with the actors and interact with their surroundings (interactive), thereby breaking the fourth wall.

Taylor Stoehr (1931–2013) was an American professor and author. He edited several volumes of Paul Goodman's work as his literary executor.

Immersive learning is a learning method which students being immersed into a virtual dialogue, the feeling of presence is used as an evidence of getting immersed. The virtual dialogue can be created by two ways, the usage of virtual technics, and the narrative like reading a book. The motivations of using virtual reality (VR) for teaching contain: learning efficiency, time problems, physical inaccessibility, limits due to a dangerous situation and ethical problems.

"The Trial for Murder" is a short story written by Charles Dickens. It was originally published under the title “To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt” as a chapter in Dr. Marigold’s Prescriptions in an extra Christmas volume of the weekly literary magazine, All the Year Round. It was later published in 1866 in a collection of ghost stories known as "Three Ghost Stories", along with "The Haunted House" and "The Signalman".

References

  1. 1 2 3 Lu, Amy Shirong; Baranowski, Tom; Thompson, Debbe; Buday, Richard (June 2012). "Story Immersion of Videogames for Youth Health Promotion: A Review of Literature". Games for Health Journal. 1 (3): 199–204. doi:10.1089/g4h.2011.0012. ISSN   2161-783X. PMC   3833363 . PMID   24416639.
  2. 1 2 Lu, Lilly (2013). "3D Virtual Worlds as Art Media and Exhibition Arenas: Students' Responses and Challenges in Contemporary Art Education". Studies in Art Education. 54 (3): 232–245. doi:10.1080/00393541.2013.11518896. ISSN   0039-3541. JSTOR   24467862. S2CID   150559818.
  3. ↑ Freitag, Florian; Molter, Céline; Mücke, Laura Katharina; Rapp, Helena; Schlarb, Damien B.; Sommerlad, Elisabeth; Spahr, Clemens; Zerhoch, Dominic (2020-12-11). "Immersivity: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Spaces of Immersion". Ambiances. Environnement Sensible, Architecture et Espace Urbain. doi: 10.4000/ambiances.3233 . ISSN   2266-839X.
  4. ↑ Shearing, David Richard (April 2015). Audience Immersion and the Experience of Scenography (PDF) (PhD thesis). The University of Leeds School of Performance and Cultural Industries., p2.
  5. ↑ Rutledge, Alison (2015). "Travelling Narrator, Travelling Characters: Developments in Narration and Characterization in the Novels of Dickens". Dickens Studies Annual. 46: 59. doi:10.7756/dsa.046.003/51-70. ISSN   0084-9812. JSTOR   44372247.
  6. 1 2 Suine, Emily (2021-03-17). "How sound design is reinventing the way we experience theatre". Happy Mag. Retrieved 2021-09-15.
  7. ↑ Dilek, Mert (2019-05-26). "Ella Hickson's "ANNA" at The National Theatre". The Theatre Times. Retrieved 2021-09-15.
  8. ↑ Bouko, Catherine (May 2014). "Interactivity and Immersion in a media-based performance". Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. 11 (1).
  9. ↑ Prudhon, Deborah (2018-07-01). "Punchdrunk's Immersive Theatre: From the End to the Edge". Sillages Critiques (24). doi: 10.4000/sillagescritiques.6341 . ISSN   1272-3819.
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