chrisamaphone (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chrisamaphone) wrote2014-08-22 11:39 am
chrisamaphone) wrote2014-08-22 11:39 am
two approaches to immersive theater
i've attended two theater pieces this year (thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_tove alerting me to them) in the category of "immersive theater," i.e. theater where the audience shares the "stage" with the actors, and multiple concurrent things are happening:
Her Things:
Tamara:
the approach Her Things took to storytelling reminded me of Gone Home's: allow intimate interaction with the physical space to uncover a story piece-by-piece. it also included and encouraged interacting with the characters, meaning there was a lot of improvisational dialogue. this approach made sense for the "single room" stage, where all participants could observe all action simultaneously.
Tamara, on the other hand, took an approach to storytelling which seems like it should be possible in digital games, but i haven't really seen it. i think it's because what it did was, to put it controversially, anti-interaction. it wasn't about giving the viewer control over the course of the story -- it was just offering a finite choice at each character exit: stay or follow? so you could tailor your individual perspective on the story, but the play had a static script. it was a concurrent program, but not a reactive one.
i believe i've seen interactive fiction authors discuss the desire to make, if not the actual existence of, games that work this way, more or less -- at least following the general idea of "the player can switch between the perspectives of different characters throughout."
incidentally, i liked the experience of Tamara much, much more.
_tove alerting me to them) in the category of "immersive theater," i.e. theater where the audience shares the "stage" with the actors, and multiple concurrent things are happening:Her Things:
Her Things is an immersive theater and art piece -- a live video game, really. Participants will be invited to rifle through the objects and papers of "Poor Willa," a recently deceased turn-of-the-century recluse, to discover her story and more about her fate. Participants will be allowed to fully explore the space, touch and read artifacts in search of clues, interact with actors, as well as bid on certain objects by sharing their own memories as currency.
Tamara:
The barrier between spectator and actor is dissolved. TAMARA has been described like an elaborate movie set, with each audience member poised as a camera. The audience certainly has choices to make, journeying from room to room in Rodef Shalom Congregation, a magnificent stand-in for Il Vittoriale degli Italiani. As characters leave a room, which will you follow? Or will you wait and see who shows up? As in life, each is the star of his own story and the stories intersect (think Downton Abbey) with the audience free to drop in on their most dramatic moments.
the approach Her Things took to storytelling reminded me of Gone Home's: allow intimate interaction with the physical space to uncover a story piece-by-piece. it also included and encouraged interacting with the characters, meaning there was a lot of improvisational dialogue. this approach made sense for the "single room" stage, where all participants could observe all action simultaneously.
Tamara, on the other hand, took an approach to storytelling which seems like it should be possible in digital games, but i haven't really seen it. i think it's because what it did was, to put it controversially, anti-interaction. it wasn't about giving the viewer control over the course of the story -- it was just offering a finite choice at each character exit: stay or follow? so you could tailor your individual perspective on the story, but the play had a static script. it was a concurrent program, but not a reactive one.
i believe i've seen interactive fiction authors discuss the desire to make, if not the actual existence of, games that work this way, more or less -- at least following the general idea of "the player can switch between the perspectives of different characters throughout."
incidentally, i liked the experience of Tamara much, much more.
no subject
i don't know about Tamara, but Sleep No More pulls an interesting psychological trick -- since the audience is all masked, and cannot interact with the actors (well, you can, but basically as much as a ghost can -- you can't influence events) -- you begin to feel that you have a very important role to play, that of the observer, a witness to the events as they unfold. you feel very intimately connected to the characters and the story, because it IS so immersive, and especially if you choose to follow a single character, you begin to feel very close to them -- and yet you cannot help them, cannot save them, cannot even communicate with them. at least for me, this was a powerful and intensely emotionally affecting experience (i still have vivid dreams about Sleep No More).
the style of storytelling, incidentally, reminded me of Choose Your Own Adventure books more than anything else -- not because you can affect anything, but because of the thing that happens where you can see the same event from different perspectives by making different choices. you can, with multiple readings/shows, witness concurrent events and gain a deeper, more nuanced knowledge of the full story than you can by reading a single narrative all the way through. getting to do that, and getting to choose how you relate to the story each time, is incredibly rewarding.