Interactivity In Theatre For work that reconsiders the audience-performer relationship // a place to discuss, argue, and interact…

1. 

   An Observer
   December 25th, 2009 - 12:29

   I think if you give an audience a chance to challenge the story, they will always explore the limits of what they’re allowed to do – that’s the point of it, isn’t it?

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     Yaz (admin)
     December 27th, 2009 - 01:46

     True, but exploring the boundaries needn’t mean derailing the plot, surely?
     I think it’s all got to do with getting the audience to want the work to succeed – or at least, the majority of them.

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2. 

   Richard Stamp
   December 28th, 2009 - 12:43

   Well, I guess it largely depends on what you mean by “derail”. I don’t think many people come along to the theatre with the specific aim of being disruptive – and if they do, there are plenty of ways to ruin a conventional play for the rest of the audience, still less an interactive one.

   But interactivity (or even immersion) opens up the possibility that the audience will *accidentally* derail the plot, in a sincere attempt to push it forward. Unless he has a whole alternative play up his sleeve, Macbeth had better not seek advice on the wisdom of killing Duncan.

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3. 

   Richard Stamp
   January 4th, 2010 - 11:55

   Thinking about it more, I’ve come up with a concrete example – one I referred to in another thread – of how derailment may be a problem. This is from The Factory, which was a highly immersive (if not necessarily very interactive) work replicating a Nazi death camp at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008.

   The makers of The Factory got into a certain amount of hot water for their alleged behaviour towards two reviewers, Ian Shuttleworth from the FT and Chris Wilkinson from the Guardian. Each of the reviewers had elected at one point to refuse to cooperate with the “guards”, a reaction which they say was genuinely inspired by dialogue in the play. I won’t go into the subsequent events because I’m sure they’re disputed, but I think it’s safe to say that the performers were both unprepared for that event and very angry with the reviewers (a reaction which went beyond the bounds of the play and into the real world).

   I can kind-of see both sides, but my ultimate view is that the incident highlighted a fundamental weakness in the concept. In the real world, of course, the guards’ response to a rebellion would be swift and deadly. It simply wasn’t possible to replicate that within the theatrical context and so, as soon as the audience member chose to go off down that path, the objective of creating a realistic simulation of a death camp was derailed.

   Of course, a valid response to that observation is to say that they simply shouldn’t have attempted such a simulation (and I’m afraid I’m in the group who found the whole thing in rather poor taste). However, it does highlight a general pitfall: an audience member *might* choose to do something which their character would *never* do. How do you cope then?

   [On a different point, there's some interesting discussion of the role of the reviewers in the comments following the article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/theatreblog/2008/aug/22/edinburghfestivalholocausts. Quick disclaimer: I cannot independently confirm the incident described in the article, nor do I have any reason to disbelieve it.]

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