Beyond Immersive Theatre: Aesthetics, Politics and Productive Participation

by Adam Alston

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137480446
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	05/18/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	241
File size:	943 KB

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. 

Table of Contents

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.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Bringing to the table energy, rigour, and a depth of knowledge of an exciting range of companies and works, Alston's encompassing study is both robust and compelling.” (James Frieze, Liverpool John Moores University, UK)

“As immersive theatre grows ever more widespread, popular, and even loved, Adam Alston’s nuanced and rigorous political critique of it in Beyond Immersive Theatre becomes increasingly urgent. Not only one of the most important books about immersive theatre, this is an important book about the arts and inequality.” (Jen Harvie, Queen Mary University of London, UK)

“This book is full of exemplary, detailed expositions of the sensuous pleasure of participatory performances and environmental scenographies, along with a rigorous critique of the contemporary economy that drives and facilitates them.” (Gareth White, Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, UK)

Editorial Reviews

Beyond Immersive Theatre asks important questions and offers apposite interpretations according to the parameters for analysis it sets. These undoubtedly inform and challenge the reader. … I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in engaging in discussion around, and beyond, the aesthetics and politics of immersive theatre.” (Josephine Machon, Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, Vol. 6 (2), November, 2018)

From the Publisher