“This is your house”: Audience engagement approaches in (Finnish) Immersive Theatre.

Abstract

A current participatory turn in consumer behaviour and cultural policy-making is exemplified by the rising popularity of “immersive” theatre, a genre in which the audience are cast as the protagonists of open-world spaces to construct their own narrative arc of a production. This thesis uses qualitative case study to deconstruct the audience engagement approach of an award-winning Finnish immersive theatre production, Book of Rooms (Huoneiden Kirja) in order to offer insight into the facilitation of immersive audience experience. The data gathered includes pre- and post-production interviews with the Artistic Director and Head of Audience Experience of the production, triangulated with data from interviews with other Finnish immersive theatre makers, contextualised with the author’s own phenomenological experience of Book of Rooms as an audience member. The research suggests that it is through non-hierarchical leadership processes combining artistic and logistical thinking with value-driven decision-making that agency-driven audience engagement arcs can be created. The holistic nature of this approach means that these findings may be relevant to wider discussions of cultural participation, impact and inclusion.