Storytelling within the immersive theatre: towards a concept of userly narratives
Author(s)
Date Issued
2025
Type
bookPart
Start Page
33
End Page
60
Abstract
I shall illustrate the extent to which immersive theatre practices involve a radically different conception of narrative and montage unlike the stage/auditorium theatrical forms. These practices largely refer to performances that use installations and extended environments with mobile audiences through radically different modes of spectatorships compared to, for example, frontal spectating modes.
I shall outline to what extent immersive theatre experiences entail a reconfiguration of the categories of space, time and action if comprare to those one is usually accustomed as a spectator seated in the audience. To describe these unprecedented dynamics of narrating and of interpreting (in terms of meaning creation) the immersive experience, I shall refer to The Burnt City performed by the British theatre company Punchdrunk as a case study. What is at issue here is the enclosure of the story, which is no longer (monstrated) within a defined frame, but has to be continually fixed
and (re)framed by the spectator according to a process that is analogous to the one engaged in when, for example, navigating via internet. In other words, there is a form of interactive participatory storytelling that can be defined as userly narratives, which are forms of environmental storytelling.