Friday, August 25, 2023
What’s It Like to Go to an Edinburgh Fringe Show That You Can’t See
Playbill: Are you afraid of the dark? Hi I'm Jeffrey Vizcaíno, the Director of Social Media for Playbill, and good lord, do I have an experience to tell you about. Now first, imagine that a friend says to you, “Hey, wanna go sit in a small, enclosed room in complete darkness, void of any light and then have the most intense ASMR experience of your life?”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Firstly, I thought both Séance and Eulogy had very cool concepts for their set (if you could call it that?) designs. They were both incredibly simple, easy to load in, and likely not that expensive, but they both clearly got the message that the show was trying to send across. Something I struggle with however is would you call these shows? Are these even performances? They’re not live shows. The voices are recorded and the second show, Eulogy, was not really a communal experience because each person had their own cubby. In Séance it was only communal because everyone had to keep their hands on the table. Reading about the voices these shows reminded me more of a video game or an audiobook than a performance. I understand that the point is to get the audience to experience extreme fear and that the lighting sound and media added to that, but does a set and lighting automatically imply a “theatrical experience?”
As someone who has previously experienced immersive theater, I think it is an extremely cool form of art that can create wildly different emotions than traditional theater can. Reading this article, I was shocked at the uniqueness of the experience and already was thinking about how to see this myself (no, sadly the shows aren't coming to the U.S. anytime soon). This is definitely a type of experience that you can gain very little reference for by just reading about it. This did make me question where we draw the line for what is theater and what is not. These experiences use prerecorded voices and potentially don't have anyone running the show besides one person pressing a button to start. Is this still considered live entertainment? Or is it more like a movie? There is no clear answer for what theater is, and it is likely something that will continue to drastically change throughout the next years and decades.
Post a Comment