Yasmine Agocs, Cassandra Friesen, Samantha Heath
‘Spectator’ typically describes a member of an audience perceiving and acknowledging a performance that is displayed before them in an organized manner. Coined by Robin Nelson, the term ‘experiencer’ shares some of these qualities, but here the individual is part of immersive performances where the audience is enveloped in the performance and sensorial stimuli is heightened. Being a spectator/experiencer is just as much a job in making the art and performance come to life as the creator’s themselves; in essence the experiencers are an integral component to the “immersive engagement [of the piece which] is designed to elicit a broadley visceral, sensual encounter” (Nelson 45). While a spectator can be merely one that is viewing the performance, an experiencer, building on the concept of the “spect-actor”/”immersant” (as coined by Augusto Boal), is absorbing much more than sight. They are fully enveloped in a new reality orchestrated by the creator and perceive the performance as a new reality; the experiencer’s belief may be fully suspended to soak in the new multi-sensorial world. This is often displayed in VR (Virtual Reality) where a headset, goggles, and/or glasses, simulate a designed reality; this technology fools the senses into thinking what is heard, seen, and manipulated is happening in real life and real time. Technology and digital theatre has enabled experiencers to live within the performance through interactivity and control “the dimensions and image itself” (Bay-Cheng 86).
For spectators, being part of immersive, digital performances—the first-person experience of making crucial decisions in a video game or seeing through the vision of your own avatar—can be thrilling and outside of everyday experience. Heidi Leidke describes this as the “feeling I”, which can draw the spectator into a new narrative domain different from reality (7). However, Leidke cites Keren Zaiontz’s concept of “narcissistic participation” to point to how this feeling can play out in a competitive way, with spectator/experiencers trying to have the best, most immersive experience (8).
In contrast, Imanuel Schipper emphasizes the need for community and collective witnessing in order for spectatorship in digital media to be effective. Schipper notes that while all spectators have a personalized experience of the performance, it is still part of a collective made from a single source (Schipper 199). Schipper points to Rimini Protokoll’s Situation Room as an example where experiencers have specific roles in the overall machine of the narrative, and through iPads and headphones are able to be immersed in a story that is all mutually shared. Movements and actions of individual experiencers here have a direct impact on how others experience the performance. For example, one spectator is asked to pour soup into a bowl and hand it to the person next to them. The other spectator is instructed to receive the bowl and eat the soup. If one spectator ignores this instruction, the experience could fall apart.
Even though participants don’t directly encounter one another in Lobster Frock Theatre’s Blueprints, the performance similarly relies on the relationship between experiencers.
Blueprints is a multimedial narrative that combines in-person exhibits and recordings to guide a spectator through a personalized experience. Each participant decides which route they will take, and with each decision the story is altered, much like a decision-based video game. Autonomy is given to the spectator to make these decisions within their own interest and is later compared to the differing experiences of other participants.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, much has shifted in the theatre world, requiring a re-evaluation of what might be expected of experiencers and spectators. While many creators worked to simply shift work intended for in-person theatre online (particularly in the early days of the pandemic), other creators took creative leaps that more directly utilized the possibilities of online spaces, including participatory media. For example, the rise of TikTok, an app that allows users to post videos that are 30 seconds or less, led to new possibilities for sharing and accessing performances. The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical and Ratatouille: The Musical are two examples of musical theatre that were created on the site through sharing videos. These two projects led to a concept album and full cast production featuring Broadway stars respectively. Both examples point to a blurring between performer and spectator that can take place in online spaces, as users were able to witness and take part in the entire creative process, whether through small acts like likes and comments or by contributing videos.
There has also been an upsurge in audio-based performances since 2020. Digital, site-specific audio experiences offer opportunities for experiencers to traverse both familiar and unfamiliar locations in unexpected ways. Many of these experiences are done by a solo audience member, who can engage with the audio as much or as little as they like. For example, Silvia Mercuriali’s Wondermart invites a spectator to go through a grocery store, blending in with the other shoppers while also following the audio narrative which highlights often unnoticed aspects of these spaces, such as video surveillance. The audio instructs the audience to perform certain actions, but unlike Situation Rooms, there is no direct consequence tied to whether the experiencer takes up these prompts or not.
Works Cited
Bay-Cheng, Sarah, et al. Mapping Intermediality in Performance. Amsterdam University Press, 2010.
Leidke, Heidi. “Emancipating the Spectator? Livecasing, Liveness, and the Feeling I”. Performance Matters. OJS, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2019, pp. 6-23.
Lobster Frock Theatre Company. “BLUEPRINTS Trailer”. YouTube. Uploaded Sept. 29, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90IiMLd-iKQ.
Nelson, Robin. “Introduction: Prospective Mapping and Network of Terms”. Mapping Intermediality in Performance. Amsterdam University Press, 2010, pp. 13-25.
Schipper, Imanuel. “From flâneur to co-producer: The performative spectator”. Performing the Digital: Performance Studies and Performances in Digital Cultures. Transcript Verlag, 2017, pp. 191-210.
Tim Ackroyd. “CROOKS – immersive theatre captures for VR”. YouTube. Uploaded May 16, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4CcAR_4NV0.
Digital performance repository 