[dropcap]I[/dropcap]mmersive” and “site-specific” were the buzzwords in theatre for 2014. Festival programmes were inundated with participatory performances following in the footsteps of industry leaders like England’s hugely successful Punchdrunk. Whole warehouses, sometimes even whole sides of town, have been taken over by these pioneering companies, hoping to engulf their audiences for the ultimate level of engagement. So much fuss has been made over these new dramatic heights, but what does all this innovation mean for the theatregoer? What happens when the spectator becomes part of the performance? tn2 spoke to practitioners of this kind of work about how they handle an immersed audience.

Breffni Holahan is an SS Drama student who recently performed in the final play of ANU’s Monto cycle, VARDO, which took its participants through the underworld of Dublin’s north inner city. The Monto — Europe’s biggest red light district in the 1920s, nestled in around Talbot and Foley Street — is back, but we just can’t see it. This time around, it’s populated by invisible immigrants.

Could you describe the scene you performed and how you prepared for it?
We based what the audience experienced on our interpretations of media coverage, urban legends, and, most directly, profiles and reviews on escort-ireland.com. Firsthand accounts from ex-sex workers also helped form the basis of our “script”. I escorted (pardon the pun) the audience between Busáras and the flat on Railway Street, where Bella Cohen, the prostitute of Ulysses fame operated. In the kitchen, three sex workers waited. We ate Cornflakes, talked about the soaps, described the parties thrown in the apartment, and performed a movement piece around the audience member — think of them sitting at a table, presented with crotch after crotch after crotch. Upon the rotation of these audience members, I brought one into a bedroom where I asked them if they recognised me and if they would recognise me if we met again. “It’s probably best if you don’t.” Phones rang, showers ran, and when the 12 minutes was up, we were out of there and onto the next snippet of the modern-day Monto.

How did being around the actual community you were portraying feel for you? Were you a kind of audience yourself initially?
Walking to and from rehearsals was just as much part of developing an understanding of the area as what we did in-studio or on-site. You’ve really got to have your eyes and ears peeled to spot and appreciate the workings of the area today. We moved into the flat about a week before previews. It’s strange how quickly it became our home. Everything changes when you move in. This is where the theatre becomes more “site-responsive” than “site-specific”.

VARDO forced its audience to feel complicit in dark and dirty acts; how do you cope with the tension in such an intimate exchange? Did you ever feel an urge to put the audience at ease in any way?
In relation to practicality, the show is timed out so exactly that we only open the floodgates when we can ensure that we have time to deal with the fall-out. Louise Lowe and Owen Boss, the founders of ANU, are incredibly skilled in managing the balance between the hyper-real and reminding the audience that they’re at and in a play. Learning this from them takes a while, but when you hit it, it’s really satisfying. It really comes into play when you have an audience member in front of you who is close to saying that they “want out”. Every audience member has a different gauge and the onus is on the performer to keep them in the in-between of ease and engagement.

We recently interviewed the star of a panto and she told us that the audience’s reactions are the top priority for the show. Would you say the same of the audience’s participation in this kind of performance?
There’s definitely a balance that needs to be struck between allowing the audience to have agency — which they’ve come to expect in work by ANU and their contemporaries — and hitting the marks of the show. The work is made to be accessible to those who want to sit back and “enjoy”, and to those who want to exercise their agency at every opportunity. Louise and Owen equip their performers with the ability to gauge and handle every shade on the spectrum. It really comes down to knowing the world you’re inhabiting right down to your bones. It’s bizarre how organically you come to know when it’s the right time to hit a mark, move on, or just be with the audience in a moment they have instigated. In fact, you know you’ve done it right when all three happen with one audience member.

Did the interaction with these small groups of people leave any lasting effect on you after the show’s run?
It’s funny you should ask. As my piece was based on warning them against acknowledging me with a “smile, or a nod, or a wave” if we met again, I’ve had some funny encounters of hesitant smiles and nods and waves. It’s pretty impossible to forget the face of someone you have shared something like that with. It’s private (a sort of unofficial confidentiality agreement in is place), and I have yet to forget a face and the experience that they contributed. Along with those experiences, the people in the stories we told, and all that informed them, won’t ever leave me, I don’t think. I feel a real affinity with them and what they are based on. The square quarter mile of the Monto itself was home for a very special part of my life, and “you can take the actor out of Vardo…!”

I’ve seen Lowe mention a “communion” with the audience; did she or ANU in general train you in any specific way to achieve that?

Moments of “communion” between performer and the audience member aren’t necessarily the end-goal for which we were gunning and trained to achieve. They’re a beautiful bonus for both parties in what is always an individual experience with another human being. It can be as simple as asking a question and not demanding an answer or the explanation behind an answer given. “Have you ever been loved?” “Are you going to let this happen?” These questions provoke the audience to reflect on themselves. They then have the option of sharing that reflection with you, the performer, or not. Either way, that is the moment of communion and, yeah, we strive for them, because we thrive on them – in life and in performance.

San Francisco’s Odyssey Works produce durational single-audience works. Most recently, the company tailor-made a three-month performance for the author Rick Moody which infiltrated all aspects his life in New York City, even flying him to Canada for one ephemeral encounter. Their other participants haven’t been famous, and their application process is open to anyone, followed by months of immersion in the successful applicant’s life for the team before any “performance” begins.

Could you give us an insight into what makes the ideal participant?
There is no ideal participant. We trust that the right participant — whatever that means — will come to us. It is a complicated process, but to be brief — and secretive — our decision comes down to three factors:

1. Does it feel right? We discuss each participant in depth at our meetings. So much of the process is from the heart. How does the applicant make you feel? If they feel right, you just know it. These meetings are very funny. We get so passionate; it’s like an election! An election with too many candidates…
2. Is the applicant emotionally stable enough for us to give an Odyssey to? We get so many applications from a wide variety of people. In the realm of those applying for a life-changing experience, a percentage are very unhappy and unstable. We make it clear that we are not art-therapists, and we do not take on subjects whom we do not think we can handle.
3. Can we find someone who is very unlike our last participant? We like to change it up. If our last participant was a woman, maybe this time we’ll choose a man. If they were young, let’s find someone older. Rick was very different than Laura, the last participant in San Francisco, which means that the entire performance and preparation structure is different too.

How much is your work at the whim of their family and friends?
I have never thought about our work being “at the whim” of family and friends, but I think you are right to use that language. We work with the family very closely, and they could blow our cover in a heartbeat if they wanted to. At the same time, we are very careful to gauge our trust with everyone involved in the project, including collaborating artists, the public, and even the participant. The process of making an Odyssey is a process of building trust, in order to produce a magical experience that appears to be working all on its own — and sometimes is! When family and friends help, the Odyssey can very quickly become a life-changing experience for one person to a lives-changing experience for everyone involved.

Photo by Ayden L.M. Grout, courtesy Odyssey Works.

A map from the Samsara Cartographic Consultants office. Photo Credit: Ayden L.M. Grout

After being kidnapped, Carl was tied to a stake and released into a wild bacchanal. Photo Credit: Ayden L.M. Grout

Is there any element of post-performance support, or are the participants left to process the experience by themselves?
We do a debrief between a week and a month after the performance with the participant and main creative contributors. We spend an hour, interviewing and discussing the piece and its effects with the participant and we briefly share our own responses. At the debrief, our participant is allowed to ask any questions. Sometimes this is where our literary forgeries and website hacks are revealed, but sometimes participants don’t want to know everything because it disrupts the surface of reality in their experience of the Odyssey.

As for other post-performance support, we leave it in the participant’s hands to further pursue a relationship. While often we would love to be friends with our audience, I imagine it’s overwhelming for them to know where to begin. They have made themselves so incredibly, beautifully vulnerable to us, sharing some of their most private feelings and experiences, and yet they know next to nothing about our team. In the process of devoting ourselves so much to make this singular experience, we fall in love, but there’s a bit of imbalance in that relationship and we’ve always been a bit sad about how one-sided it is.

You’ve had an actor arrested while performing, can you tell us about any other impediments like that?
Oh boy, we’ve had a lot of run-ins with police. It is striking how easy it is to run afoul of the standard ways of doing things, and to stick out. We’ve never had real legal problems, thank God, though we’ve had a few annoying tickets to pay. Even at our most recent performance, part of which happened at a museum in San Francisco, the guards were very very worried about us, and tried to break us up and keep us out many times, even though we were just doing what you are supposed to be doing in a museum, though with more intensity I overheard one guard talking to another: “What are they doing?” and the other replied: “I don’t know, I think they’re looking at the art?” as if it were the weirdest thing in the world.