A brief thought after a flash of clarity, drawing on my many, many previous blogs on interactive immersive theatre.
Situation-room interactive immersive theatre tends to explore theme via evolving its world in response to audience actions, but under-develops how its characters develop in response to that beyond rugged struggling, possibly due to naturalism or possibly due to centring the fun of agency over a focus on theme.
That is to say, I’d like to make an interactive immersive show (such as Come Bargain With Uncanny Things, tonally) where characters can make bigger choices in response to the audience’s choices.
It is why Punchdrunk shows in the actors-still-talk days were able to be so dramatically effective: not only did the world shift in line with the evolving theme, but so did the characters. Even though an audience member might bounce between many different characters, they would still see a consistently-evolving tonal and thematic palette.
This feels possible in interactive immersive theatre, as long as all performers are supported to make good choices in this regard.
But something to dwell on.
