Further thoughts on immersive theater

Let me be clear. I’ve had some thrilling experiences “getting caught up in the action” over the years. In Moscow, I wandered through a house on Basmannaya Street representing the home of Chekhov’s three Prozorov sisters and followed the actors from room to room while they reenacted that eponymous masterpiece. In the same city, I joined other audience members invited onstage to peer into a wooden structure and watch the inmates of an insane asylum in a vivid staging of Chekhov’s short story, Ward No. 6.

In Philadelphia, I stood cheering and clapping with 1,000 others through a thrilling Gospel at Colonus at the Annenberg Center, where we joined with the onstage choir of 60 voices to celebrate Oedipus’s death and resurrection. (Years later, the community of Malvern turned up en masse to celebrate the same ritual with the People’s Light & Theatre Company). Also at the Annenberg, I joined others who were invited onstage to witness up close the starvation of an African tribe in Peter Brook’s compelling drama The Ik. (We surrounded the ensemble of actors, helpless, while they ingested and regurgitated the sawdust underneath our feet.)

In contrast, two summers ago, I was wined and dined at the replica of a lavish Russian nightclub in New York while a troupe of actors performed Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, a streamlined musical version of War & Peace (some actors sat at our table). Yes, it was Tolstoy-lite, but it was memorable. Last spring, at The Testament of Mary, we were invited onto a Broadway stage to inspect an assortment of strange objects (including a live falcon) that surrounded Mary, Jesus’s mother (the incomparable Fiona Shaw), who sat enclosed in a plexiglass cage.

The commonality to all these innovative theater experiences? We were involved, first-hand, in a deeply moving, transformative way.

Of course, there’s the delight of audience participation offered every year at the People’s Light’s holiday panto show (thanks to Peter Pryor & Co.). We reserve our seats early, so family members can be assured of getting called up on the stage to “get caught up in the action.” It’s become an annual pilgrimage.

But nothing matches the immersive, interactive experience I had as a groundling in the Mystery Plays at the Royal National Theatre. Based on the Wakefield cycle of plays and adapted by poet Tony Harrison, the RNT produced this extraordinary trilogy — Nativity, The Passion, and Doomsday — which included narrative, music, and dance movement. It was first performed on Easter Sunday 1977 on the banks of the Thames and then again in 1999 in the intimate Cottesloe Theatre at the National, where I saw it. We stood for hours, while all around us a troupe of actors reenacted a series of stories that included the creation of the universe and the crucifiction of Christ. The actor playing Jesus walked amongst us, carrying the cross, on the road to Calvary.

Perhaps the most sublime moment (no pun intended) was when God Himself (played by the fine British actor David Bradley) walked through the throng. Instinctively, we all reached out to touch Him.

Years later, I ran into David by chance at JFK airport in New York. We talked about that extraordinary event, unparalleled in shared joy. We bonded. David and I have since become friends and colleagues (as a result, he has performed in one of my plays numerous times in the UK).

A moment in the theater — one shared by performers and audiences, one that transforms and inspires all — It lasts. It’s what live theater, and “getting caught up in the action,” is all about.