Crafting Immersive, Pt. 2: Onboarding The Audience

Koryn Wicks is an immersive maker, choreographer and multimedia artist based in LA. Her immersive work has been shown at diverse venues in the U.S. and abroad including Highways, The Bootleg Theatre, UCI and Slamdance DiG. In 2019, her piece Casting took home the Grand Prize at the inaugural LA Immersive Invitational. She recently founded Willing Kompany with Hanah Davenport. Willing Kompany is an immersive production company specializing in movement based immersive design and digitally augmented work. This summer Willing Kompany is launching Litmus, an intimate, virtual dance experience for one audience member and one performer.

• Part One of this series: ‘Making It Physical” is here.
• Part Three of this series: ‘Make It Accessible’ is here.
• Tickets for the free May 25th discussion forum are available here.

Once the experience of an immersive production has been defined, the next question I ask myself is: How will the participation be conveyed? How do we let the audience know what to do? How do we establish the boundaries of the experience?

Immersive theatre has expanded tremendously in recent years, yet most audiences still enter any given performance with the expectation that they will sit quietly in the dark until it’s time to applaud. I want to let my audience know that there are other options for them in my work. There are ways I try and convey this before they even set foot in the performance. In my promotional material, I identify a work as immersive when there are opportunities for participation. When people purchase tickets, there is a disclaimer stating the immersive nature of the work and the categories of participation that may be required (standing, moving, being touched, etc.). But even with these primers I’ve found that audiences will still enter an immersive space with hesitancy.

A big question for immersive creators is, how do we give audiences the tools to feel comfortable in immersive spaces? This is sometimes framed in terms of “onboarding.”

One of the most useful tools I’ve developed in my practice is the inclusion of host characters in my work. These performers, like hosts at a party, welcome the audience into the performance space and describe the parameters of engagement. These characters exist in the world of the performance and act as a bridge to the audience. They literally explain to the audience, “you can explore the space, you may be touched, etc.” There is often an element of humor in the way they address the audience which helps to ease the tension many people experience when approaching immersive work for the first time.

My partner and collaborator Sam Alper writes the text for these characters and has both helped develop and performed some of these roles.

Sam Alper — writer/performer: I’m a huge proponent of performances being transparent about the ways the audience can engage or participate. In my work in experimental theatre, I’ve always been partial to breaking the fourth wall and letting the audience know, “Hey, I want you to date one of these actors,” or “Hey, I’m going to give someone $100,” [actual examples of audience participation in Alper’s work Love play/Play money]. I think that is something that is different between theatre and dance, theatre can be more direct whereas the language of dance is more ambiguous.

Koryn: Yeah, I think we often butt heads on the amount of direct address included in a given performance. It’s made for an interesting, ongoing dialogue.

The design elements of a performance can also help dictate the bounds of participation. Some of this is pretty straight forward. For example, I’ve had to stage immersive work in traditional theater venues where I needed to create clever set designs that discouraged the audience from sitting in the fixed seating. What I find more interesting, is the way design elements can be used to create an atmosphere that encourages participation. Morgan Embry, Alex Lough and Hanah Davenport are collaborators in my work and the work of Willing Kompany. They are instrumental in realizing the immersive worlds we imagine through light and sound. Embry is a lighting designer specializing in dance, Alex is an experimental musician, and Hanah is a composer and performer.

In this discussion we revisit The Wild Hunt again and discuss Casting.

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Casting is an intimate immersive experience that runs the audience through a mock audition. About half way through the performance, the audition devolves into an immersive dance and a metaphor for the moments we make cognizant decisions about the ways we shape relationships in our lives.

Alex Lough — experimental musician, performance artist, sound technician: I find it so interesting that it doesn’t seem to matter how inviting or dressed up a space is, most people will enter a performance space and immediately retreat to the edges or any place they can sit, even if that is the floor. I think that by employing interactive digital media, the spaces we’ve designed draw people out of that habit because even in traversing the performance space to find their hiding spot, they start to trigger interaction.

Morgan Embry — lighting designer/performer: Yes, its almost like we trick them into participating right out of the gate. From a lighting perspective, there are also ways to use color to affect people on a subconscious level and prime them for interaction. In Casting people entered a monochromatic, red space, which is very hard on the eyes and puts people on edge. The first part of that piece was pretty confrontational with Sam putting the audience through a farce of an audition, the second half was more reflective and allowed the audience to participate in a more collaborative interaction with the dancers. That transition was highlighted with a softening in the lighting design which helped the audience release tension and become more amenable to physical interaction.

Hanah Davenport — composer, vocalist, development: Sound and music work on a similar level. Sonically, there was a similar transition in the soundscape of Casting. As a performer and vocalist in that piece, I moved from an over-the-top character injecting humor and surprise, to a more background performer contributing to the affect and tone. In the piece we did for Yule 2019, The Wild Hunt, the soundscape and vocals played a huge role in creating an atmosphere that supported the audience interaction at the heart of the piece. I tried to create a visceral composition to encourage participation. To this end, the music incorporated a lot of breath, percussive voice, and shouts.

Morgan: I think immersive theatre is most accessible when the audience walks in knowing their role in relationship to the performance and are empowered to make decisions and participate based on this. The host characters have been really helpful for setting up that understanding. With that taken care of we’ve been free to be more experimental in our designs and to focus on using light and sound to mold the quality of the experience.

Of course, there elements of audience participation need to be communicated in the moment and rely on the performers. I think a lot of this communication can happen silently through body language, which is part of the reason I think dance is so well suited for immersive work.

Morgan: When I was performing immersive dance on the East Coast, the biggest struggle I encountered, in terms of directing the audience, was creating space when I needed to perform a more choreographed section. There were moments when I needed to move someone out of the way so they didn’t get kicked in the face. That imperative can lead to anxiety. It took me a minute to learn that it is ultimately the experience of the audience that takes priority and that sometimes that means that choreography has to change or adapt.

Brittany Tran — dancer/performer: Building off that, I think that when we’re trying to hit a cue we can get into this manic space of grabbing, pushing, and pulling audience members around. Over time I’ve learned that putting my whole body behind my intention to move someone is more effective. There’s a presence to that that people really respond to.

Morgan: Or, other times we need to figure out what kind of communication people are going to respond to. Some people can’t handle as much physical contact so you need to throw them a ‘come hither’ with your fingers.

Robyn O’Dell — dancer/performer: I think also just making people feel comfortable and helping them understand that there are no wrong answers helps. Part of this comes from approaching the audience without an agenda. I mean, it depends on the work and the level of collaboration involved, but even in a structured piece like I love you so much, SQUEEZE ME TO DEATH I was cognizant that I had to listen to the audience members I approached and react to the information they gave me.

Anytime we are creating work that asks for interaction from the audience, we need to think about how the audience will understand that exchange. For myself and the work I do with Willing Kompany, this is communicated through a combination of advertising, direct address, design, and choreography. You can think of these approaches in terms of layers ranging from transparent to subconscious communication. The balance between these strategies varies from project to project, but I’m always considering all of these elements throughout the process.

This series can also be thought of in terms of layers, we started by looking at the overarching experience at the center of an immersive project, now we’ve explored how audiences are prepared for those experiences. Next, we’ll tackle questions of accessibility and the ways immersive work foregrounds the need for accessible design.

The third part of Crafting Immersive: “Make It Accessible,” will publish on Thursday May 20th.

On Tuesday, May 25th at 5PM PDT the series will culminate in a live discussion forum featuring Koryn Wicks and some of her collaborators. Tickets are available now at no cost, with a reserve pool for NoPro Patreon backers.

Discover the latest immersive events, festivals, workshops, and more at our new site EVERYTHING IMMERSIVE, new home of NoPro’s show listings.

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