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Spectator­Assisted Aesthetics in

Contemporary Theatre

Contemporary Theatre Theory

Semester Final Essay

Sarah Hoover

13250505

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Sarah Hoover (13250505)

Lecturer Lynne Kinlon

MA Theatre (EN674)

26 May 2014

Spectator­Assisted Aesthetics in Contemporary Theatre

This essay will explore ways in which contemporary theatre locates the body of the

spectator within the action so that the spectator assists in creating the aesthetic of the performance.

Punchdrunk, Coney, and ANU Productions, as contemporary theatre companies specializing in

productions which immerse the spectator in the experience of the performance, provide an

opportunity to examine this choice from an aesthetic viewpoint. A definition of theatre which

incorporates the spectator must be established, as well as a definition of aesthetic profitable when

discussing immersive theatre. This essay will then examine ways in which the body of the spectator is

both subject and object in these productions, how immersive theatre deepens the aesthetic through

liveness, and identifies the spectator’s body as a site of signification during performance.

The examination of immersive theatre demands clarification of the term ‘theatre’. Paul

Woodruff, in The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched, defines

theatre as “the art by which human beings make or find human action worth watching in a measured

time and place” (18). This presumes involvement is necessary from both audience and artist for an

event to be theatrical. David Davies examines this definition of theatre in his book Philosophy of the

Performing Arts and combines with it the work of Paul Thorn and Nelson Goodman, among

others, to establish a complex idea comprehending the artist’s intention to perform actions which will

affect a specific audience and her choice of these actions based on her expectation of that

audience’s reactions. He adds that the product of her actions is ‘theatre’, a by­product of the nature

of theatre as an embodied art form.

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Dancers, for example, perform whereas painters do not because, while each is

guided in their actions by expectations about the evaluations of an intended audience,

it is the product of the painter’s actions – the finished canvas – that he expects the

audience to evaluate, and not the actions themselves. (Davies 178)

In the case of immersive contemporary theatre, the theatrical product is a result of actions

performed by the rehearsed, directed agents of the production but also of the actions performed by

the audience members who participate. Therefore the definition of theatre in a space in which

spectators are physically included in the space and action of performance must encompass these

audience members as participants in the creation of the theatrical product.

As ‘theatre’ is defined in relation to these productions, it is now necessary to define

‘aesthetic.’ As Leonard Koren comments in Which “aesthetics” Do You Mean?: Ten Definitions:

“Yet because these terms confusingly refer to so many disparate but often connecting things, the

exact meaning of the speaker or writer, unless qualified, is sometimes unclear” (3). To narrow the

definition in practical terms useful for a discussion of immersive theatre, Gareth White’s book

Audience Participation in Theatre: Aesthetics of the Invitation offers: “An individual aesthetic

will contain an implicit definition of what art is, within its practice: what is, and by implication what is

not, to be viewed or experienced in an art­appropriate way in the context of this practice” (10).

Since components of the aesthetic of a theatrical production include the strength and saturation of

lighting, the volume and tone of sound and the texture and height variation of set pieces, the presence

of bodies in the performance area, within the frame of onstage space, must be included as part of the

look and feel of the artwork in its own context.

Limiting the scope of this essay to the production companies listed provides clear examples

of different ways in which the body of the spectator has become part of the look and feel of the

performance. Within each practice the body of the spectator is used as both subject and object, the

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aesthetic of each production is enhanced by liveness, and the spectator’s body is a site of

signification. Each practice varies the way in which the performance aesthetic is expressed through

the spectator, providing a useful comparison. Punchdrunk masks the spectator, does not interact

with him, and allows freedom of movement within the set space. ANU Productions requests that the

spectator interact directly with the performance and directs his body’s placement in scene after

scene. Coney maximizes the spectator’s role as a character in a co­creative narrative. An

examination of specific productions will provide the clearest contrast.

Punchdrunk’s production of The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable is typical of the

company’s recent work. participants are given very little information in order to enhance the mystery

of the narrative and experience. On entry, all communications devices are stored and each

participant provided with a mask. A brief elevator ride brings spectators into contact with a

character who explains the minimal plot conflict briefly, instructs participants not to speak, and

suggests they split up to explore. The set, comprised of huge warehouse spaces, small side rooms

and maze­like interiors designed to appear as movie sets, is spectacular in its diversity. Each space

is filled with detail to be explored, some of which alters as actors perform scenes in the space.

However, performers rarely interact with masked spectators, simply moving through them. Narrative

is addressed with virtuosic physical performance supported by a few lines of text in each scene.

Participants are given characters to play, while actors serve only as functionaries providing

extra information to keep plot moving. The badges and hats participants wear are the only changes

they are asked to make to their appearance, and choice of characterization is largely theirs. The set

is simple and basic, facilitating ease of movement while maintaining visual contact between

participants. Lighting is used to indicate the passage of time; sound is used to set tone and mood and

share information to the entire audience simultaneously, being played to all as a radio broadcast. Plot

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is determined by the choices of the audience as they navigate an important decision the town must

make.

ANU Productions’ The Boys of Foley Street typifies the company’s use of participants as

subjects of the performance, placing the spectator in the position of being acted upon. Actors

request participants make decisions within the performance, act directly with and around them, and

interact physically and emotionally with the performers and the performance space to the extent that

participants are getting in cars and hiding cell phones for actors. One reviewer, Susan Conley of

Irish Theatre Magazine, says: “We are powerless to look away from what unfolds before us, and

are transformed not so much into participants as accomplices”. The narrative is fixed and its intensity

shocks the participant into experiencing panic and helplessness through these direct interactions and

through demanding movement through the performance spaces, maintaining a sense of unfamiliarity

and disorientation.

In the case of each of the three production companies listed, the body of the spectator may

be considered to be both subject and object of performance. To return to White, “Subjectivity in

itself can be said to be largely a matter of the point of view of the subject, and their capacity for

action, and of the recognition of this position by the subject herself” (26). The two component parts

of subjectivity, he says, are:

...the recognition of the participant as a subject within the field of activity of the

performance with the potential to enter into dialogue with it, and the addressing of the

performance to forms of subjectivity or subject positions that have a special point of

view in relation to the performance by virtue of their participation in it. (White 26)

Therefore the spectator of an immersive performance is the subject of the performance, as within its

field of activity, and has an internal point of view into it. This point of view identifies the spectator in

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this type of theatre as also the object of it, since the work is performed to be received by the

spectator.

A philosophical contributor to this discussion is Maurice Merleau­Ponty. In his work

Phenomenology of Perception: An Introduction, Merleau­Ponty notes:

...[expression] is indeed part of the experience of thinking, in the sense that we

present our thought to ourselves through internal or external speech. It does indeed

move forward with the instant and, as it were, in flashes, but we are then left to lay

hands on it, and it is through expression that we make it our own. The denomination

of objects does not follow upon recognition; it is itself recognition. (206)

When the spectator in an immersive theatre performance sees herself expressing a character, the

psychological construct of that character becomes the subject which she sees, a performer in the

play. At the same time, she experiences the play as its object, the spectator who receives it. If the

spectators ‘present [themselves] through internal or external speech’, in other words if expressing a

thing imposes reality on it, then the expression of the participant as part of the performance is an

expression by the character to the spectator.

Examining Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man, one could argue that the masked, silent

spectator is only the subject of the performance for other participants. Indeed, the image of many

blank grey masks gathered above the body of a ‘dead’ character is a powerful one. Voyeurism is a

strong aesthetic of the play, as indicated by the number of sexual scenes played by performers, the

overtone of sexual power throughout the narrative, the broken intimacy of settings containing

one­way mirrors, the lighting of bathtubs and beds. But it is this very point at which the subject of

the performance becomes also the object of it. The sense of being unseen by the performers as they

move spectator’s bodies but do not acknowledge them

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is constantly challenged by the sense of being watched by fellow spectators. The chaotic,

uncontrolled movement of silent watchers also serves the horror aesthetic by emphasizing the threats

implicit in the narrative. In these, it is clear that the aesthetic of The Drowned Man is supported by

the spectator within the action of the play. However, the limitations placed on the masked

participants miss an opportunity to investigate and complicate the horror and voyeurism of the

performance. If actors swept a glance across the assembled masked audience, the human element

would return and the audience would be challenged further to experience both the revelation of their

masked character, the subject of the play, and their full psyche with its past and future lying beyond

the theatre walls: the object of the play.

In contrast, Coney’s A Small Town Anywhere prioritizes the subject of the play, the

character which the participant creates, through affording a great degree of agency to that character.

Performance as an aesthetic is therefore deprioritized, though the participant can build a character

sketch beforehand and rehearse their construct in the same way an improvisational actor can

rehearse a character without a text or narrative. Lyn Gardner, reviewer for TheGuardian.com,

describes the experience:

The show doesn't require any acting skills, and, because there is no audience in a

traditional sense, all social anxiety about being on show or not doing the right thing

quickly evaporates. I play it as if it's real – and that's exactly how it feels. For two

hours, I lose myself in the show.

The psychological construct of the character becomes the live, vital subject, and Gardner’s own

psyche and morals retreat. However, the object, the spectator, remains to address the results in the

form of narrative resolution and the completion of the play. Tassos Stevens, co­creator of the

production, comments on it in a blog post on ConeyHQ.org: “It might be that interactivity replaces

the way distance is charged with the ways intimacy is charged. The aesthetic pleasure of watching

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with that of playing/improvising, and a sense of competition with the performance.” The spectator

has moments within the performance when she returns to being its object and viewer, contributing to

the look, sound, and feel of the performance both as character and spectator, subject and object;

the tension between ‘losing oneself’ and ‘competing with the performance’ contributes to the unique

aesthetic of Coney’s production.

Another unique aesthetic, primarily grounded in setting, is that of ANU’s The Boys of Foley

Street. The tiny apartment, graffiti­covered walls, claustrophobic alleyways all have a psychological

effect on the participant, who is then thrust from object into subject by being asked to interact and to

make decisions in crisis. With a narrative so little under the control of the participant, the illusion of

control itself becomes an aesthetic choice: to hide the mobile phone (which may be allowing a

character to make drug deals) develops a sense of panic and complicity enhanced by the shouting

mother of the mobile’s owner; to refuse to hide it develops a sense of embarrassment and shame as

the mother uses it as justification for her anger. In neither case will the narrative actually be affected

but aesthetic is concerned with appearance, tone, and emotion rather than narrative. Therefore

ANU effectively conceives an aesthetic which supports its narrative, using the confusion of its

participants between subject (the accomplice) and object (the spectator watching the accomplice).

Whether made explicit by requesting the participant to embody a character, buried by

asking him to react as himself, or allowing a mask to act as a partial character which reveals

suppressed impulses, choosing to site the participant bodily within the performance produces a

participant who is both subject and object of that performance. The tension between those positions

can be used to support the aesthetic of the production.

The confusion of ANU’s spectators is not simply an emotional or mental one; it is a bodily

confusion generated as they are asked to act roles for which they have not been prepared, to

physically sit in a car or repair the dress of an abuse victim. Through the work of many theorists and

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practitioners including John Keefe, Simon David Murray, Lesa Lockford and Ronald Pelias, we

understand that embodiment affects perception: the body attempts to understand its experience. As

Lockford and Pelias say in Bodily Poeticizing in Theatrical Improvisation, “Specifying the

performer’s body as a site of knowing privileges the sensuous, the experiential, the participatory. It

insists upon the act of doing as a way of coming to understand” (432). Therefore the participatory is

privileged as a means of understanding, a method of not simply categorizing but experiencing bodily

the aesthetic choices of a production. Keefe and Murray, in Physical Theatres: A Critical

Introduction, note of watching performances: “As spectators, we know that it is a represented

experience, which we treat as ‘real’ through varying degrees of suspension of disbelief”(61). But

evolution has prioritized bodily learning as accurate; the spectator who participates is immersed in a

sense of liveness and it is more difficult to disbelieve that which the body experiences as real.

That which is real necessarily contains an aesthetic, though not necessarily an organized one,

and the embodiment of a character or a quality within the performance itself forms a separate

dimension of aesthetic awareness which can be effectively used to enhance and deepen the

participant’s experience by promoting its authenticity. Philip Auslander’s statements on ‘liveness’ in

Liveness, Mediatization and Intermedial Performance promote aesthetic sensibility through

replication:

The use of giant video screens at sporting events, music and dance concerts, and

other performances is a direct illustration of Benjamin’s concept: the kind of

proximity and intimacy we can experience with television, which has become our

model for close­up perception, but that is absent from these performances, can be

reintroduced only by means of their videation. (6)

But limiting close­up perception to videation ignores the fuller experience of embodied participation

as an alternate model for close­up perception, one in which the body of the spectator reacts to the

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action around her with the body’s and the mind’s evolutionarily and culturally developed responses

to actual proximity.

Masking the audience in The Drowned Man establishes an identity (the masked audience)

which both unifies and homogenizes a background that protects the spectator from an over­intense

encounter during the experience of embodiment while allowing bodily perception to accept the

intimacy of that encounter. Choosing instead to ask the participant to appear as himself, as in The

Boys of Foley Street, or minimally costumed but verbally involved, as in A Small Town Anywhere,

develops an awareness which is clear to other spectators and becomes part of the memory of the

event for the participant herself. The body of the postmistress in A Small Town Anywhere is at

once the same as that of the person participating and different; it moves differently and reacts to

stimuli differently. The Boys of Foley Street challenges the participants further by refusing to

provide a different character to embody and instead asking the participant to bodily experience the

challenges of characters placed in a situation which echoes the performers around them. It is worth

noting that in The Boys of Foley Street and in The Drowned Man, mirrored surfaces are used to

reflect the body of the participant and place it in the setting of the production. This emphasises the

embodied experience by reminding the participant of their own contribution to the aesthetic in both

physically and emotionally proximate ways.

Liveness, the immediate and unmediated experience of actions performed by an agent, is a

defining quality of theatre in contrast to recorded visual performance. It then follows that the

immersive nature of these productions enhances liveness by allowing the spectator to experience

bodily the established aesthetic as a character embedded within the onstage frame.

This embedding also allows the spectator’s body to become a site of signification. Keefe

and Murray note that: “We witness live bodies on stage, and as spectators we invest every

performer’s action, gesture and spoken word ­­ whether intentional or uncontrolled ­­ with

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significance and meaning” (4). When the spectator becomes the participant, it is impossible to ignore

the signification happening in the body of the spectator.

Firstly, if a body is perceived by any other participant to be on the stage, it is a site of

signification, as Keefe and Murray state. Bert O. States, in The World on Stage, writes specifically

about the proximity of the signified and the sign­vehicle:

But putting semiotics aside, we tend generally to undervalue the elementary fact that

theater­­unlike fiction, painting, sculpture, and film ­ is really a language whose words

consist to an unusual degree of things that are what they seem to be. In theater, image

and object, pretense and pretender, sign­vehicle and content, draw unusually close.

(442)

The act of making theatre, defined as the product of choices intended to produce a response, is

located in the embodied performer: a thing that is exactly what it seems to be. In immersive theatre

the stage encompasses all bodies present, each of whom chooses actions to produce a response in

the rest. These choices become part of the aesthetic fabric of the production, and the skills with

which they are incorporated into the tone and mood of the whole performance are necessary skills

for rehearsed actors in a piece of immersive theatre.

In addition, the effect of proprioception is significant in a production which incorporates

signs demonstrated by spectators as legitimate meaning within the performance. Proprioception is

defined by Davies as “the means by which we obtain information about, and awareness of, the

positions and movements of our own bodies” (194). Proprioception speculatively refers to the

activity of mirror neurons in responding to signification by another human with similar gesture and

expression, thereby creating internal signification to the responder. Whether or not the responder

experiences these signs as more credible than those communicated verbally is a debatable question.

Keefe and Murray discuss this:

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In debates and conversations about contemporary physical theatres it is sometimes

suggested that there is an authenticity and truthfulness about these forms because they

retain the potential of being untainted and unmediated by the sophistry and deceit of

language. (21)

However, it is incontrovertible that the body has a strong effect on the mental and emotional

perception of reality. Even if the reaction is to a situation that does not actually exist, it is the reaction

which develops the most meaningful signifiers for the reactor as well as the viewer from an aesthetic

standpoint. Davies comments on the signification communicated by an actor as part of the aesthetic

sense of the performance for the actor:

...if proprioception were to be an aesthetic sense, this seems to imply – at least on the

first reading rehearsed above – that there are aesthetic properties of some artworks –

dance performances – that are accessible only to a single individual – the performer

herself. (195)

While the concept that only the performer may experience certain aesthetic properties of a

performance may be unproven (as Davies goes on to note), the assumption that the experience of a

performer develops meaning for herself can be used to examine the experience of a participant in an

immersive performance. Aesthetic awareness of the position and movement of her body serves to

enhance the experience for a participant both as the body responds without instruction to the

situations in which it finds itself and as the awareness itself becomes part of the aesthetic in an epic,

Brechtian sense. Becoming aware of his own role in the production, the participant experiences a

new range of meanings within the performance, all of which offer the opportunity for an additional

flavor in the aesthetic experience for the entire audience.

In conventional theatre the participant’s static body may or may not be a site of meaning to

herself, but in immersive theatre the moving, acting body is clearly the creator of signification for

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other participants as another human in a similar role (participant). It may well also be a site of

additional meaning for the participant through the aesthetic functions of proprioception, layering

experience on experience within the production.

The awareness of meaning comes at different levels depending on the role of the audience

within the production. In A Small Town Anywhere, the participants’ additional roles as specific

characters make this signification obvious as they maintain or break character, attempt to create

meaning or create it without intention. The aesthetic of this production has an element of group

creation, of world­building, which is actually enhanced when the participant’s ‘character’ breaks and

the real personality of the participant is revealed. Though this may temporarily spoil the illusion which

could be described as ‘small town under attack’ or self­contained, isolated world,’ the visible

awareness of these illusions regained as the participant renews his character is a viable, interesting

aesthetic choice for all those who view it.

In contrast, The Boys of Foley Street invents an aesthetic which prioritizes the tension of

embodied reaction over awareness of the performance as performance. In this case, the function of

mirror neurons in creating meaning within another person give an added depth to the experience of

performance as the unintentional response of the participant itself is a primary signifier. When a

young girl shows fear of her home situation to the participant and asks for rescue, he will find it

nearly impossible not to respond in some way. This response will carry within it the recognition that

the performance is simply that­­a performance­­and at the same time that his emotional responses

(his desire to save her, his fear, his anxiety about his role within the performance) are authentic.

Understanding the many responses a participant might have allows ANU Productions to shape the

pacing and action of the performance in ways which enhance the overall tone, look, and feel of the

production.

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The meaning devised by participants in The Drowned Man is comparatively little used.

While the aggregate influence of homogeneously masked watchers is aesthetically significant, their

inability to affect the performance means that they are relatively unconsidered as significators of

meaning. No action on the part of a spectator will affect the actions of the performers, and for the

most part they maintain a rigid adherence to the physical and verbal script of the production. It

should be noted that the performers do have a reaction but suppress it. Tori Sparks, who played

Lady MacBeth in a very similar Punchdrunk production Sleep No More, comments on an

participant’s choice to throw props at her from behind a glass wall:

I was in shock, just, you’re really making that choice right now. Why? ...so I just

tried to stay in character and the steward that’s in this room of course went to try and

stop her, and she just, she was just oh I didn’t know, just completely clueless. (Qtd

in Dubner and Levitt)

The body of this participant is clearly a site of signification for those around her, including Sparks,

though to preserve the sense of controlled chaos that is part of Punchdrunk’s aesthetic Sparks must

not acknowledge the meaning devised by the participant. In my personal experience of The

Drowned Man, I saw the other spectators as the creators of meaning and experienced dissonance

with the performance when spectators whose acknowledged presence could have enhanced either

the voyeuristic or controlling aesthetic were ignored by performers.

While each of these production locates meaning in the body of the spectator within the

action, each company incorporates that meaning to a greater or lesser extent in both the narrative

and the aesthetic of the performance. In exchange, each sacrifices control over the full aesthetic to a

greater or lesser degree.

Punchdrunk, Coney, and ANU Productions all demonstrate an awareness of the spectator’s

body as a useful tool when creating the look, feel, tone, sound, and mood of their immersive

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productions. Embracing the choices made by participants while maintaining the sense of cohesion

necessary to the generation of a strong aesthetic is a difficult task, as theatre makers must recognize

that the spectator is both subject and object of the performance, understand that immersion and

participation emphasize the liveness of a production, and accept the spectator’s body as a site of

signification, a meaningful contributor to the performance. The more specific use of this tool

promises to develop skills which will open this form of contemporary theatre to the powerful

potential it has as a transforming, informing, reflecting art.

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Works Cited

A Small Town Anywhere. By Tassos Stevens and Tom Bowtell. Battersea Arts Centre, London.

May 2012. Performance.

Auslander, Philip. Liveness, Mediatization and Intermedial Performance. Atlanta: Georgia

Institute of Technology, 10 Apr. 2014. PDF

Conley, Susan. "Dublin Theatre Festival: The Boys of Foley Street." IrishTheatreMagazine.ie.

Irish Theatre Magazine, 29 Sept. 2012. Web. 15 May 2014.

The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable. By Punchdrunk Productions. National Theatre, London.

21 Mar. 2014. Performance.

Davies, David. "Elements of Performance II: Audience and Embodiment."Philosophy of the

Performing Arts. Vol. 3. N.p.: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. 172­99. Print.

Dubner, Stephen, and Steven Levitt. "Fear Thy Nature." Audio blog post. Freakonomics.

Freakonomics LLC, 14 Sept. 2012. Web. 16 Jan. 2014.

Gardner, Lyn. "Join in the Murder Game at Battersea Arts Centre." TheGuardian.com. Guardian

News and Media, 19 Oct. 2009. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.

Keefe, John, and Simon David Murray. Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction. London:

Routledge, 2007. Print.

Koren, Leonard. Which "aesthetics" Do You Mean?: Ten Definitions. Point Reyes, CA:

Imperfect Pub., 2010. Print.

Lockford, Lesa, and Ronald J. Pelias. "Bodily Poeticizing in Theatrical Improvisation: A Typology of

Performative Knowledge." Theatre Topics 14.2 (2004): 431­43. Project Muse. Web. 4

Mar. 2014.

Merleau­Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception: An Introduction. London: Routledge,

2002. Print.

Sleep No More. By Punchdrunk Productions. National Theatre, London. 15 Jun. 2013.

Performance.

Stevens, Tassos. "What's Gained and What's Lost When People Get to Their Feet in Interactive

Theatre?" Coney. Network of Coney Magazine, 26 Sept. 2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.

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White, Gareth. Audience Participation in Theatre Aesthetics of the Invitation. Basingstoke

[u.a.]: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Print.

Woodruff, Paul. The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched. Oxford:

Oxford U, 2008. Print.