HowlRound: Which of our senses are the ones that normally perceive an artistic manifestation? About two years ago I asked myself this question, and it led me to the following: Sight and hearing are the predominant senses we use when experiencing live arts. Some of the very terms we use in the field support this statement, such as viewer, spectator (from Latin spectator, spectatoris, means the one with the habit of watching or observing), or audience (from Latin audire, to listen). I’ll even go as far as stating that this isn’t exclusive to the arts, but also evident in every aspect of daily life in which we tend to focus our attention on those things we perceive through sight and hearing, while we put taste, smell, and touch in the background.
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This article seems like captain obvious at first stating that the predominant senses we use to watch theater is sight and sound. Despite this, we can enhance the audience’s experience greatly with such a simple fix: incorporate other senses! Scent would probably be the easiest one to recreate simply by providing the audience with different smells. Touch would be another easy one, especially in theater where the fourth wall is broken and audience members are, for example, sprayed with water or interacted with physically. Taste would be more difficult but the author of the article was intrigued by the tastes of different foods and explained what feelings he experienced through them. Although pulling this off and getting it right can prove to be extremely tricky, if you can get the audience involved through all five senses, they can experience theater to a greater level.
I was more interested in some of the other uses of taste that the author mentioned, like giving the audience members soup to start to immerse them in the production’s setting, than how she used taste. I think that appealing to senses other than sight and sound could be interesting. I’ve been in short IMAX movies before where they make the seats move, turn on fans, or spray water, so that you feel like you’re in the environment on the screen. That said, I like that theatre works with only a few of the senses. In theory, appealing to all of the senses sounds great, but I think that it would just be overwhelming. As it is, some people can’t be around strobe lights, for others it is strong smells. I don’t think that the audience members need to feel like they are in the performance. It’s an interesting concept to explore in some experimental theatre, but I don’t foresee (or want) more sensory theatre to become the standard. Not to mention all of the potential allergy issues if one were to give food to all the patrons as they entered the theatre. They would have to put an ingredients list in the program. Or having the food stocked and ready to use as the taste to start a performance. It seems like more trouble than it’s worth to me.
This is actually one of the more interesting topics to me that currently surround the entertainment business. How can we use every available resource (counting the senses of the human body) to create a more immersive, fulfilling experience? I think the author's use of taste is very interesting, though I don't see it being implemented in theatre at all. Perhaps I am being closed-minded, but it seems the theatre is hardly the place to be handing out things to taste. Unless there were some form of technology that allowed for an audience member to taste something without having to receive it and place it in their mouth, which would really be fantastic. I think the next step in immersing the senses is going to be scent design. We had an excellent class with Sarah Picket last year where we discussed the future of scent design, and it excited me a whole lot. Unlike any other sense, our sense of smell is the one most capable of bringing memories and feelings to the surface of our minds. I think it's a very tricky challenge, but if done correctly can be extremely effective. Scent design is already in the works in several theme park shows and attractions, as well as some restaurant storefronts, but I would really like to see it implemented in theatre in the near future.
I'm interested in seeing how the concept of using the other senses in theatre can grow, but some of the practices mentioned in the article are already found in other sectors of the entertainment industry. For example, at places like Disneyland and Universal Studios a few of the rides include bursts of fire or water and spray scents which match the story line, making your skin hot and your nose itch. But if these elements are refined and introduced in theaters, does it become gimmicky? If dinner theatre meals become more tailored to the show, is the artistic value heightened? I don't know the answers to these questions, but for now it seems like the distinction between theatre and performance art lies in the employing of these "extra" senses. I would love to read about more experiments in this field, but am skeptical of their integration into professional theaters. Maybe for Playground...
While the incorporation definitely feels a little bit more...grass roots than what we see in the themed entertainment universe, I think the exploration of the inclusion of our other senses in performative experiences is nothing really new. Disney and Universal started incorporating scents into their "4D" experiences many moons ago (see: Shrek 4D at Universal Orlando and PhilharMagic at Magic Kingdom) and it worked pretty seamlessly. While there are definitely challenges in incorporating things like scent into live productions, I do imagine that the future of any theatre-based entertainment will be including many more senses than just sight and hearing. How can we call any a show a true "treat to the senses" if we're not pioneering the inclusion of other senses into our productions? In addition, I think that it's important to point out that the production featured in this article managed to incorporate taste and scent into their show without even needing the multi-million dollar technology that Disney and Universal have relied on.
When I first read the title, I assumed it was some kind of multi-sensory media-based experience requiring some kind of technological advancement. The fact that it was actually a very simple approach using familiar objects-- food-- made the article a little more interesting because it seemed like a surprisingly basic approach to a kind of theater that doesn't necessarily seem basic. Approaching a multi-sensory experience from a taste perspective isn't something that I have ever thought of before, but after hearing about this author's experience with it it seems slightly ingenious. After all, everyone, whether they think about it or not, has experienced emotions associated with particular kinds of food. To use these emotions and sensory experiences and build them into characters is unconventionally clever. An interesting challenge that I could see with this kind of theater is that not every audience member might respond to a food in the same way, so the characters created from them could seem odd and alienating to some.
I agree with Lucy that I expected more from this article. There is a sense that the author clearly was reaching when they decided to write this article, since tactile entertainment is always going to be a tricky proposition. People have allergies, people have triggers, people have diets, you can't expect that an artistic piece that is supposed to be accessible to the masses will include multi-sensory elements when some of these elements may prove to be dangerous to the audience. I also agree that the article describes a very simple way around this through the use of food, but it isn't more interesting to me because of it. Dinner theatre has persisted through the ages not because the dinner enhanced the theatre, but because it meant that the audience had to make one less stop on their night. People are always looking for ways to streamline the theatrical experience, and including all these facets is one of those ways, but food as a part of the show strikes me as something that could never be successful with a broad audience. I also think that because certain foods conjure up different reactions for different people based on their upbringing and the things they like, it is very possible to turn someone off completely to your work just by introducing food to the mix that has a negative connotation for a subset of the audience (see: Broccoli).
On the general idea of more sensory in theater, I am all for. However, the ideas that the article presents are not really something I think is all that vital. Food and the experience food tasting gives you is interesting to think about in an art form, but I don't think it really belongs in theater. I agree with others in that I was wishing they would explore other forms of sensory. I think that theater is going down the path of 4D and media sensory very strongly. I think that it would be more interesting and surprising to experiment with touch and feel. I also think that this idea of further exploring the senses, goes out of the world of theater and into the world of experience based entertainment. Themed entertainment is much more experimental and accepting of the stranger things than a traditional theater house is. If you get tickets to see a show you are expecting to sit and be an audience member, if you get a ticket to an experience then as an audience member you feel much more open to the unknown.
To me, this seems like a really cool concept, and while it obviously could not work in every production, and probably not in large theaters, it does seem like an interesting idea that would be cool to play with on fully immersive productions. Other senses besides sound and visuals are rarely explored in theatre, and while I don't think they should become as ubiquitous as sound and light, they do offer an interesting twist for directors who could deem them necessary. Waitress, currently running on Broadway, experimented with this, baking a special blend of pie in the back of the theatre at the end of each show, which supposedly is effective at subtlety making the theatre smell like pie without it being overwhelming. And, while I can't name other examples, I'm sure that other shows over the years have experimented with smell to further immerse the viewer into the art. However, I also agree with the other commenters on this thread--based upon the title one would expect this article to be about a full immersion, not just adding food to make it smell good.
One thing that I think is important to note is scent, like the rest of our senses, should be there to enhance our theatrical experience and help us better invest and be a part of the world of the play. Some of my experiences with scent in movie theaters/theme parks are that I immediately withdraw from the world of the play because I am all of a sudden aware of the artificialness of the scent. However, I feel like the author of this article is trying to add storytelling to the sensory recipes that she has already created, making her piece based around the scent itself rather than the storytelling. The performances that the author mentions in her article reminds me more of magic shows rather than shows in theater which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's definitely interesting to see how these shows develop and what kinds of responses they yield, given that some scents might be familiar to some audiences but strange and completely irrelevant to others.
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