Decolonising immersion: Translation, spectatorship, rasa theory and contemporary British dance

Abstract

Current scholarship on immersion links this embodied and experiential audience phenomenon to the emerging, populist and participatory performance genre of immersive theatre, focusing on: ‘what may be gained from considering the full sensorium we bring to spectatorship, beyond sight and hearing: haptics, proxemics, smell, the affective dimensions of performance experience?’ (Werry and Schmidt; 2014: 469). Characterised by the blurring of space and action between performers and audience members in order to offer this ‘full sensorium’ experience, immersive theatre, as sensationalised by the British companies Punchdrunk and Shunt, claims to enable its audience members to exercise choice and control to physically navigating their own experiences through an event. To this end, immersive theatre companies profess to design and facilitate immersion through physical interactivity with, and being surrounded by, the theatrical space, action and scenography. Embedded in this way of thinking is the idea that this kind of immersion creates an active audience, who are distinct from their passive counterparts in a more conventional theatre setting, where they are separated from the performers by both the theatre’s architecture and the codes that accompany it.