Friday, March 05, 2010
Wisdom of the crowd: interactive theatre is where it's at
guardian.co.uk: "Five years ago I wrote a piece for the Guardian arts pages about one-to-one performance. At the time these interactive performances in which it was just you and an artist – or, in one memorable case, just me, the artist and a very large, very dead pig – seemed as if they were merely an interesting sidestreet off the main theatrical highway. Not any longer. This week the British Council is hosting a raft of British artists and companies – including Tim Crouch, Melanie Wilson, Coney, Blast Theory, Stoke Newington International Airport with their Live Art Speed Dating and Duncan Speakman, amongst others – in a showcase of interactive performance at the Tokyo Performing Arts Market."
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Now here is an article I can really discuss! I am intensely intrigued by the possibilities of incorporating technology into theatre and creating transmedia storytelling experiences. The article mentions The Last Will, which is a multiplatform (live and computer) experience/game by the brilliant British company Punchdrunk where computer gamers and live audience members must work collaboratively to solve puzzles and find "the treasure" hidden in a 3D stage environment. The level of technological complexity to tie real-world and computer actions together is astounding, and is only the latest in brilliant productions from Punchdrunk, the company that brought Sleep No More to the ART earlier this year (which was a big topic on the blog).
To another point: it's really amazing to watch, in these circumstances, how deeply audience members invest into the universe of the story to the point of developing an identity in the world. Earlier this year I played in an alternate reality game (a social game/storytelling "experience" that tied with canon activities in a cable television show) and I marveled at how audience members created clubs at the fictional university, fell in love with the show's characters (who fell in love back via Twitter chats), and eventually ended up fleshing out the writers' universe to the point that some aspects/characters may be included in the show's second season this fall. "Collaborative creativity" is really the best word for it - when the audience interacts and impacts the story, it makes for unique, personal experiences for both the audience and the creative team that puts it together.
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