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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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