Total immersion

By 2025 the immersive entertainment sector in the UK alone is projected to exceed £8bn, with a recent Mintel report stating that: ‘consumers seek out more experience-led activities.’ After many years of relying on Frantic Assembly, Brecht or Kneehigh when exploring devised theatre with my students, I find that I am increasingly turning to the work of companies such as Punchdrunk and the style of immersive theatre as a way of exciting the young performers that I work with. How did this way of working begin and how is it being explored by different theatre practitioners?

Immersive theatre originates from a 19th-century tradition associated with pantomime where a leader would put out a call and the audience would respond. As the artform has developed we have seen audiences becoming involved in shaping the plot, as in 1985's Tony Award-winning Best Musical, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, where the audience voted on who killed Edwin, resulting in one of seven possible endings. The performance art movement and Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed have also influenced the style, whereby the barrier between actor and spectator is regularly broken down or non-existent.