Immersive theatres: intimacy and immediacy in contemporary performance

Contributing artists and referenced work. Michael Morris (Joint Artistic Director of Artangel) : H.G. , The missing voice (Case study B) ; Felix Barrett (Founder and Artistic Director of Punchdrunk) : Masque of the red death , The crash of the Elysium ; Bruce Gladwin (Artistic Director of Back to Back Theatre) : Soft , Small metal objects ; Christer Lundahl and Martina Seitl (Founders and Artistic Directors of Lundahl & Seitl) : Symphony of a missing room , Rotating in a room of moving images ; Silvia Mercuriali : Etiquette , And the birds fell from the sky ; Tassos Stevens (Co-founder and Co-director of Coney) : The gold-bug , A small town anywhere ; Samantha Holdsworth (Co-founder and Co-artistic Director of Nimble Fish) : The container , Re:bourne ; Punchdrunk Enrichment led by Pete Higgin (Enrichment Director) : Under the eiderdown , The uncommercial traveller ; Louise Ann Wilson : House , Fissure ; Bill Mitchell (Artistic Director) and Sue Hill (Associate Director of WildWorks) : Souterrain , The passion ; Adrian Howells : Foot Washing for the Sole , The Pleasure of Being : Washing, Feeding, Holding ; Tristan Sharps (Founder and Artistic Director of dreamthinkspeak) : Before I Sleep , The Rest Is Silence

Introduction. Immersive Theatre ; An immersive inheritance : Modernism, Antonin Artaud and 'total theatres' , Happenings and Environmental Theatre , Installation and intimacy , Immersive technologies, sensual technologies , Intimacy, involvement and communitas ; Immersive theatres : immediacy and intimacy today ; Immersion and interaction ; Presence as praesence ; The structure of Part One and Part Two pt. One. Defining Immersive Theatres. 1. Definitions and Details : Definitions ; Defining immersiveness, immersion, immersivity : Immersion, involvement and presence : Gaming Theory , Immersion, involvement and praesence : defining immersive theatre ; Gauging an immersive event

2.Features and Finer Details: A Scale of Immersivity Central features of immersive practice... ... Audience involvement, audience evolvement ... Sensual worlds: immediacy, intimacy and sensuality ...Space, place and praesence: site-inspired practice ...Immersive worlds: immersive environments and the environment The scale of immersivity 3.Immersive Perspectives Immersive perspectives: feeling, form and function Immersive practice and experiential form: (syn)aesthetics Immersive perspectives: making-sense/sense-making Gilles Deleuze: `immanence' and the ludic logic of sense Kathryn Linn Geurts: embodied feeling, embodied knowing: `Seselelame' Immersive perspectives: the pleasures of the audience Umberto Eco and open works Jacques Ranciere's `emancipated spectator' Nicolas Bourriaud and relational aesthetics

Contents note continued: Immersive perspectives: the significance of space

Juhani Pallasmaa: the sensuality of space

Doreen Massey: the politics of space and place

Gaston Bachelard: the poetics of space

Immersive theatres: audience, space, duration, sensation

pt. Two Immersion, Intimacy and Immediacy in Practice

Introduction

Conversations one. Michael Morris of Artangel : Immersive theatres : intimacy, immediacy, transformation ; Felix Barrett of Punchdrunk : Immersive theatres : intimacy, immediacy, imagination

Conversations two. Bruce Gladwin of Back To Back Theatre : The intimate (im)mediacy of sound ; Lundahl & Seitl : Challenging the (im)mediate interface ; Silvia Mercuriali : Immersive imaginations : the intimate and (im)mediate

Conversations three. Tassos Stevens of Coney : Playing with(in) the 'what is' and 'what if' ; Samantha Holdsworth of Nimble Fish : Immersivity and cultural production : 'permission to play' ;

Punchdrunk Enrichment : Immersion, enrichment and empowerment

Conversations four. Louise Ann Wilson : Immersed in the environment : 'off the beaten track' ; Bill Mitchell and Sue Hill of WildWorks : Immersive communitas : space, place and people

Conversations five. Adrian Howells : The epic in the intimate ; Tristan Sharps of dreamthinkspeak : The intimate in the epic

Conclusion : Immersive Theatres.