The main inspiration to devise immersive theatre is Josephine Machon.
Since the beginning of the process, we were keen on developing an immersive theatre performance. Josephine Machon, a writer, and practitioner in contemporary performance defines immersive theatre by expressing the meaning of immersive: “the action of immersing or the state of being immersed; whereas Immersive, develop from computing technology, describes that which provides information or stimulation for a number of senses, not only sight and sound” (Machon, 2013). This definition focuses on how the word immersive is the combination of physically entering a space and the active involvement with the current event. This definition helped me to understand how adapting to the digital setting, we could use social media as our stage, since “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content” (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010, p. 61) we found Instagram to be a great platform to develop our performance. We developed a piece that explores the topic of isolation through tools taken from immersive theatre, realism, and digital theatre.
My main inspiration to devise theatre is The Frantic Assembly Book of Devising Theatre.
Linked to the writer role I learned from the Frantic Assembly how bringing exercises for the rehearsals and develop improvisation is essential in the devising process. And if you approach the devising process “as a series of tasks” (Hoggett, Graham and Middleton, 2020), the process will stop seeming overwhelming and it will flow gently, with every piece of the research falling into place. I apply this approach to both times where I had to develop ideas: the first (Compass Productions) and the last company (Soleca Teatro Company).
One of the theatre companies that influenced my work the most is Punkchdrunk.
Punchdrunk is a theatre company based in London, UK. It is known for its mask productions; however, this only represents one of the numerous types of shows. It is named Punchdrunk since this name “represents the company’s ongoing ambition to make their audiences feel ‘punch drunk’. This state represents feeling alive, alert, emotionally and viscerally impacted; all your senses firing and tapping into the core human instinct of fight or flight” (Wright, 2014) the idea of having an active audience when having and immerse theatre production, becomes essential. This is one of the many reasons why the theatre company Punchdrunk was a major influence on our work. From their show Sleep No More (London 2003, Boston 2009, New York 2011 - present, Shanghai 2016 - present) (Wright, 2014, pg. 4) a three-hour performance, the audience wore white masks, which led by the company could go through “six floors and over a hundred rooms” (Wright, 2014). The fact that physically they used different levels, was a guide which we could follow on how to use the different floors that we had available in the jail and give it the best use possible. Another relevant approach that we used for our performance was that the “experiences are designed to focus on the individual journey of an audience member which is not reliant on the presence of others (either performers or fellow audience members) as well as communal moments of sharing where everyone comes together in one space for the finale” (Duncan and Higgin, 2020, pg. 7). This idea of focusing on the individual journey of each audience member was something that I wanted our performance to achieve.
By watching closely parts of their production Sleep no more, I additionally learned how the “audiences are given the autonomy to create their own journey no two audience members experiences will be alike. Some people may choose to follow a particular character, some decide to linger in a specific area, and even with an audience capacity of over 500 people, there are some experiences that are designed for only one audience member at a time” (Duncan and Higgin, 2020, pg. 7). It was obvious that we could not have such an extensive audience, but we wanted to implement this idea of giving some autonomy to the member of the audience.
Dream Think Speak was another theatre company that I got inspired from. They are pioneers when it comes to “site-responsive” performance, “this UK-based company creates immersive and site-specific works in a variety of provocative locations, placing audio-visual technology” (Duncan and Higgin, 2020). Their work initially inspired me to explore how audio-visual technology could affect our performance. Thus, discovering that by using a projector, we could communicate the message more alluringly. Soon after, when we had to adapt the performance to a digital setting, thanks to this company I started to research the audio-visual technology which they used. The idea of using a projector became more feasible when I saw the Wooster Group’s production of Shakespeare’s (Wyver, 2020) Hamlet. They play in the background a projection of John Gielgud’s 1964 production of hamlet in the live performance.
Regarding theatrical styles initially, we wanted to introduce some voice and choreography to the performance in jail. We found the dance Choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her work, the choreography that struck out the most was Rosas Danst Rosas (Teresa De Keersmaeker, 2020). They use the repetition and overlapping of movements. Further in the process, when we adapted to the digital setting, this idea of repetition and overlapping was fit to be used again. I wanted to apply these ideas to show the decadence of the relationship between the characters. My aim was to apply this in the video calls, by abstracting the sentence which reflects more their objective of the character through the performance. This sentence would have been used as the trigger for the repetition to begin, which initially can seem like a technical issue. The conversation between characters would continue, even though the repetition of the rest of the characters would follow and progressively overlapping each other until reverberation transforms into noise. Researching this area of noise, I came across Rosa Menkman’s definition of such: “However complex or inclusive noise appears as a signifier, it is always a kind of negativity: it stands for unaccepted sound, not music, invalid information, or the absence of a message. Noise is unwanted, other and unordered.” (Menkman, 2020). As a group, we wanted to portrait this sentiment of confusion, and researching found the digital agent of the glitch, which “comes hand in hand with a feeling of shock, with being lost and in awe. The glitch is a powerful interruption that shifts an object away from its flow and ordinary discourse, towards the ruins of destructed meaning. This concept of flow I emphasize as both a trait within the machine as well as a feature of society as a whole” (Menkman, 2020, pg. 30).
As part of the research, when we were developing the mental health issue as the main theme, I wanted to incorporate the play 4.48 Psychosis of Sarah Kane, which portraits depression from a subjective point of view, since Kane, was suffering from it and a year later she would commit suicide, which left critics like Michael Billington referring to her play as her “75-minute suicide note?” (Dickson, 2020). An alternative inspiration was the immersive theatre play Great Gatsby (Wright, 2020) which we saw in London. From this performance, I wanted to use the idea of separating the audience member in groups, but unlike Punchdrunk, this division of the audience had a purpose and was guided by the actors. We decided when to let the audience roam free around the performance space and when to guide them to specific scenes. Thanks to watching this performance I also learned different ways of how to guide them to the scenes and interacting with them. An additional tool that I wanted to incorporate to the performance was the live use of technology. I got inspired by the theatre company of Paper Birds, from their play Ask Me Anything (McDonnell, 2020) they use video cameras live and they project the images and videos live on the performance.
Bibliography
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Teresa De Keersmaeker, A., 2020. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQCTbCcSxis&t=169s> [Accessed 25 April 2020].
Menkman, R., 2020. [online] Dpya.org. Available at: <https://dpya.org/wiki/images/5/59/NN4_RosaMenkman.pdf> [Accessed 21 April 2020]. Pg 30
Dickson, A., 2020. 'The Strange Thing Is We Howled With Laughter': Sarah Kane's Enigmatic Last Play. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/11/448-psychosis-sarah-kane-new-opera-philip-venables-royal-opera-house> [Accessed 21 April 2020].
McDonnell, J., 2020. Ask Me Anything - The Paper Birds. [online] The Paper Birds. Available at: <https://www.thepaperbirds.com/ask-me-anything/> [Accessed 15 April 2020].
Wyver, K., 2020. Hamlet Review – The Wooster Group Resurrect Richard Burton's Dane. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/apr/02/hamlet-review-wooster-group-richard-burton> [Accessed 20 April 2020].