Wednesday, April 16, 2014
How Immersive Theater Changed Entertainment Forever
The Awl: Last month Heineken pulled off an epic experience for some unsuspecting New Yorkers when they invited them to an interactive theater production, “The Guest of Honor,” that invited them to become stars of the show.
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3 comments:
While I shy away from audience participation, I'm all for the idea of immersive theatre. For instance, CMU's production of Alice in Bed was one of my favorite theatrical experiences. I loved being able to choose my viewpoint of the story that was going on around me. While I had no control over the plot of the play, I was in control of how I was seeing the action. In addition, I'm very excited to see productions such as these taking flight around the world. Productions like Sleep No More and the Heineken performance are so successful because every experience is different. Is this the theatre of the future? Perhaps.
I really like both non immersive and immersive theatre. I think the idea of audience participation is a lot of fun though. I know for me, though, I have a tendency to be afraid of doing something wrong and so I don't know how well I would be at participating especially if I'm on my own and not with friends. I think it's fun seeing that Heineken experience but I don't know if I would be able to do it! Who knows, though, right? I have to get out of my little bubble and maybe I should go to more immersive theatre! Maybe I will!
I think this looks really cool, but I want to point out the difference between what i think can be called immersive theatre and interactive theatre. This happens to be both, but you can go to a show that calls for some audience participation, qualifying it as interactive theatre but not immersive theatre. Likewise, you can go to a show that is designed to transport you to the world of the play so that you are really immersed in the environment, but not actually be a part of the show yourself. That being said, this type of adventure theatre is really cool and I think would be a very fun evening of entertainment.
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