What is immersive theatre?

Immersive theatre is a whole new type of theatre which is unlike anything else, and it is growing in popularity rapidly. As this is one aspect of theatre in particular I am passionate about, I thought it would be of some use to explain what immersive theatre is for those of you who may be a little in the dark on the whole subject…

Disclaimer: I only discovered immersive theatre two years ago and although I am friends with creators and actors and actresses within immersive theatre, so have been able to build up my knowledge on what it is, I am still by no means an expert. If you are someone reading this who thinks I have written something that you don’t agree with, or think is incorrect…feel free to (kindly) correct me!

So, as I have already said – immersive theatre is a whole new type of theatre, and it is a completely different experience to just sitting down and watching people perform before you on a stage. Immersive theatre puts audience members at the heart of the acting, involving them in what is going on, and in some types of immersive theatre, audiences and their decisions made in immersive theatre shows can have a direct impact on what happens next and can ultimately effect how a show ends.

The problem with immersive theatre is it can be hard to define, for me at least, as there are different kinds of an immersive theatre show you can see. I like to view it as a spectrum – one one end of the spectrum is the immersive theatre where it is more following characters around to different areas, maybe having lots of scenes happening at once but you get the same story from a different perspective depending on who you follow – an example of this is ‘The Great Gatsby‘ (currently running in Mayfair). This is what I personally like to call a ‘starter’ immersive theatre show – it was the first  immersive theatre show I ever watched and if you are more inclined to want to sit back and watch a show, this is the closest thing I have seen that you will get to that – although audience members are involved with the show, the plot stays the same throughout and the ending is fixed.

In the middle of the spectrum is where I would put shows that audience members are actively doing things to move the show along, they are making decisions or carrying out actions which effect the show, but there are some set plot points along the way. This is where I would place shows like ‘Illicit signals: Bletchley’ and the ‘For King and Country‘ shows.

Both of these show have now sadly closed, but they allowed audience members to control how the show progressed. They both were set in 1940’s war time and in ‘Illicit signals‘ you could have found yourself cracking codes and ciphers, without which, the show could not go anywhere, as doing that led directly onto everything else. In ‘For King and Country‘ in both parts, it was pretty much free reign for audience members to decide everything – whether to evacuate London or not, whether to move the king to safety, where you would like to move troops, how to carry out secret missions in which the outcome could mean winning or losing the war. I saw both of these results, and a rather unusual and dramatic third ending too…but despite all of this, both of these shows – although gave a lot of freedom for audience participation and the endings may have differed, leading up to this there were still some plot points that had to happen along the way.

On the other end of the spectrum from ‘Gatsby‘ entirely, is the audience having all the control and there are absolutely no limits as to what an audience member can do. The most recent show I have seen like this is ‘Bridge Command‘ (which is currently running at the Colab Factory). The best way to describe this show is like video gaming meets theatre. I for one, do not play video games as avidly as I used to, and I am very much a massive theatre nerd, and still found this enjoyable. As an aspiring actress myself, this kind of immersive theatre is right up my street – from the get go, audience members decide what they are going to do, where they are going to go, and how it is going to happen.

As ‘Bridge Command‘ is the only immersive theatre show this flexible I have seen, this is the only show I can talk about, but there is only one cast member in the room with you, and they seem to be there very much to just help with the technical aspect of the show – to make sure everyone knows where everything is and how it all works. In fact, in the second episode (that’s right – this show has multiple episodes), there is no cast member with you at all and you are in complete control of the whole show.

There are, of course, many more immersive theatre shows that I’ve not even touched on – secret cinema, the ‘War of the Worlds‘ experience, ‘Wolf of Wall Street‘, and at one point ‘Spy City‘ was also running, however, I can only comment on immersive theatre I have seen and I can only define it by experiences I have had.

Immersive theatre is something I think is already incredible, but is really just getting started and I believe this is going to be a theatre genre which will be hugely popular one day, more so than it already is. If you are someone who is an avid theatre fan but finds the idea of immersive theatre a little intimidating, I wouldn’t let that put you off – a very apprehensive Leyla was once terrified of the thought of immersive theatre, but tried it anyway, and now…well now I just cannot get enough. The possibilities are truly endless, and is there really a better way to immersive yourself in live theatre, than actively being involved in the story yourself?