Immersive theatre currently enjoys ubiquity, popularity and recognition in theatre journalism and scholarship. However, the politics of immersive theatre aesthetics still lacks a substantial critique. Does immersive theatre model a particular kind of politics, or a particular kind of audience? What’s involved in the production and consumption of immersive theatre aesthetics? Is a productive audience always an empowered audience? And do the terms of an audience’s empowerment stand up to political scrutiny?
Beyond Immersive Theatre contextualises these questions by tracing the evolution of neoliberal politics and the experience economy over the past four decades. Through detailed critical analyses of work by Ray Lee, Lundahl & Seitl, Punchdrunk, shunt, Theatre Delicatessen and Half Cut, Adam Alston argues that there is a tacit politics to immersive theatre aesthetics – a tacit politics that is illuminated by neoliberalism, and that is ripe to be challenged by the evolution and diversification of immersive theatre.
Table of Content
Introduction.- 1.Theatre in a Box: Affect and Narcissism in Ray Lee’s Cold Storage.- 2.Theatre in the Dark: Spectatorship and Risk in Lundahl & Seitl’s Pitch-black Theatre.- 3.Theatre through the Fireplace: Punchdrunk and the Neoliberal Ethos.- 4.Frustrating Theatre: Shunt in the Experience Economy.- 5.Theatre in the Marketplace: Immaterial Production in Theatre Delicatessen’s Theatre Souks.- Conclusion.
About the author
Adam Alston is Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Surrey, UK. His research explores immersive theatre, theatre in the dark, and a range of themes in contemporary theatre including secrecy, labour and error. He is a contributing editor to
Contemporary Theatre Review’s Interventions and a Creative Associate with Curious Directive.
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