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

1. 

   Richard Stamp
   January 4th, 2010 - 11:20

   I think the thing which strikes me most about this interesting diagram is how small a proportion of the book any “journey” through it actually involves. Tracking back from the “rich!” ending, you only go through 13 of the 109 non-illustration pages. The rest of the book is, in a sense, wasted.

   Of course in the case of the book, you’ll take several attempts to reach the winning ending, so you’ll cover much more of the text overall. But what would concern me about replicating this kind of structure in a play would be that any given audience would only experience about a ninth of what had been prepared and rehearsed – and that some of the more obscure paths might only be travelled once in a run (or might not be experienced at all).

   Unless you can afford to spend nine times as long on rehearsals, you’re clearly going to be under-prepared on some of the paths, compared to where you’d be with a conventional linear play. The challenge is to find some way of staging the work so that the audience either accepts this – in the way that we accept the inevitable patchiness of comedy improv – or is simply too distracted to notice.

   ( REPLY )

Leave a comment