An immersive experience or audience abuse?

More and more often today, theater productions are offering “audience participation” components that attract the public in droves. Some of these shows are set in conventional theaters, others — called “immersive” experiences — take place in unconventional settings. What I’m calling audience abuse is taking place in both, and it warrants scrutiny.

Take for example, the wildly popular Sleep No More, Punchdrunk’s immersive theater experience loosely based on Macbeth, which is happening over on West 27th Street.

Sleep No More, simply put, is an adult house of horrors. For the sake of catching a few moments of Shakespeare, you’re put through hell. You’re herded in groups of 50 into the so-called McKittrick Hotel (a series of five abandoned multistory warehouses), where you’re ordered to “check in” and put on a frightening white mask. Then you’re let loose to grope blindly through a maze of dark rooms, corridors, and stairways, in desperate search of random scenes from Macbeth mimed by silent actors who keep disappearing. Meanwhile, you’re pushed, shoved, and jostled by other confused masked audience members who are lost, like you. Don’t bother asking one of the unfriendly ushers for directions, because talking is forbidden. It’s an intimidating, disorienting, claustrophobic experience.

Then there’s Here Lies Love, the Public Theater’s hit poperetta, to be remounted this spring by popular demand. The theater is reconfigured as a discotheque, where an ensemble of performers enact the life story of Imelda Marcos, infamous first lady of the Philippines. (Why a disco? Imelda had one built on the roof of the presidential palace during her husband’s tenure.) There, you’re bullied into dancing for the entire duration of the show, along with the cast, while they tell their story. Meanwhile, you’re shoved by harried stagehands moving platforms around the dance floor or forced to dance cheek-by-jowl with strangers. Don’t even think of taking a rest: You’re not allowed to stand on the sidelines.

Remember Pay Up, the cutting assault on our culture of commodity that appeared in September’s FringeArts Festival? The feisty Pig Iron Theatre Company devised an immersive theater experience in a large white empty space of a North Philadelphia building, divided into a series of eight prefab rooms. There, each audience member is given real dollars and then forced to compete for admission into each of the rooms, where short performances would be taking place. The catch is that there are not enough spaces in the rooms to seat everyone, so if you don’t literally push your fellow audience members out of the way, you’re left out in the empty space, as I was on several occasions. The white-garbed, blank-faced ushers didn’t seem to care. “Wait for the next chance,” they shrugged.

The kind of audience abuse in Stop Hitting Yourself, currently at Lincoln Center, may not involve uninvited physical contact, but it ends up being more compromising in an insidious way. You’re lured up on stage with an offer of $20 and then embarrassed into giving it to someone else as an act of charity. Next, you’re invited up on stage with a lure of $1 and then asked to reveal your belly button to the audience. What’s your choice? Create a scene by refusing, or humiliate yourself by complying?

In all the above theater experiences, you can’t argue with the value of the message. Macbeth is worth revisiting in whatever form it’s offered; Imelda Marcos’s excesses offer an urgent warning for our times; and our money-obsessed culture is one worth exposing. But must the audience get trapped into the experience and abused in the process? Competition, fear, humiliation, physical discomfort — is this what we’re paying for when we attend the theater?

Immersion without tears

On the other hand, smart theater producers are discerning that what the audience really wants is not abuse but rather interaction — the kind that is spontaneous, entertaining, and often inspiring.

The most ingenious example of audience interaction occurred in the recent hit London production of One Man, Two Guvnors, the wacky and wonderful farce that came to Broadway last year. In the play, inspired by Goldoni’s eponymous classic, comedian James Corden plays the role of a witless servant of two masters. Forever in search of a free meal, at one point Corden suddenly stops the show and begs the audience: “Does anyone have a sandwich?” (The audience explodes with laughter.) Someone actually offers Corden a hummus wrap (laughter again). Later, Corden asks for volunteers to come up on stage and help move his master’s trunk (more laughter). The next volunteer (Christine) didn’t fare as well — she ended up getting caught in a farcical free-for-all and sprayed with a fire extinguisher.

But that wasn’t audience abuse. As it turns out, Christine and the hummus man are actually “plants” (meaning actors posing as spectators). The same thing occurred last spring in Bette Midler’s solo show, I’ll Eat You Last, involving a man in the first row whom she called on stage to light her cigarettes. In both cases, the illusion of spontaneity provides the delight — and no one gets hurt.

This season, the virtuosic all-male company from London’s Globe dazzled Broadway with a brilliant double bill of Twelfth Night and Richard III, performed in the Elizabethan style. One of its thrills was the opportunity to come 30 minutes in advance to watch the cast getting into costume. While they dressed, actors would chat with audience members seated onstage and answer questions about their traditional garb.

There are other opportunities this season to participate in the theater in an exhilarating way. At shows like Motown, An Evening With Janis Joplin, and Beautiful, enthusiastic audiences join in with the cast to sing their favorite ’60s songs. In past seasons, I’ve watched spectators flock to the stage at the end of the rock musical Hair to dance to “Let the Sunshine In.” I’ve seen Savion Glover invite kids up on stage to tap dance with him. And so on.

All this goes to the heart of why we go to the theater. To make spectacles of ourselves? To be shocked? To be exposed? Clearly there’s a market for that kind of experience. We have these cravings in our culture — and there are producers who will provide experiences to meet our needs. So if you get burned by an embarrassing audience interaction, don’t blame it on the theater companies — blame it on your own tolerance for ridicule or your need to “let it all hang out.”

On the other hand, if you want to feel alive, if you want to experience shared inspiration, keep going to the theater — just be selective. Perhaps, as they do in the movies, there should be a rating system to forewarn audiences of any possible risk to their self-esteem. Do you really want to bark like a dog in front of 200 people?

For Carol Rocamora's further thoughts on immersive theater in reaction to some of the comments below, click here.

For Tom Purdom's thoughts on immersive experiences in classical music, click here.