Audience Psychology – Immersology

July 23, 2019July 23, 2019

Relocating a Site-Specific Show

Strange Bird Immersive has officially reopened! It was an all-consuming journey, one I’ll recount in future posts, but more fascinating than the nuances of construction we had to master I think is how The Man From Beyond has changed.

What follows is a chronicle of some of those architectural changes and how audience responses have changed, so brace yourself for level-one spoilers (with photos and everything!) of what’s inside Madame Daphne’s. No puzzle solutions or plot points are spoiled, but you’ll see furniture and hear about function. And I’ll warn you clearly when there’s something level-three. So if you’re the type who travels for immersive experiences and wants to know absolutely nothing, go ahead and skip to the next post.

When we decided to move to an expansion location in Houston, we knew we didn’t want our award-winning show to change—at all. Escape rooms are delicate soufflés. Something as minor as a font change can take a clue from seen to unseen. We wanted to limit the changes as much as possible to avoid throwing off that balance we had worked so hard to achieve in our original location.

But changes are inevitable. In proscenium theatre, you can plan a show to fit on every major stage in the world, no problem. It’s cookie-cutter theatre. In site-specific theatre, there are some features of the space that you can’t change or can’t afford to change and you have to find a way to make it work in your favor. And then you have to do it all over again when you move.

Is strange bird really site-specific?

Many immersive theatre experiences find a location first and then create around that. Many escape rooms do this, too (which we kinda sorta totally recommend doing, because custom walls are expensive). This location-first, creation-second approach makes for a deep union of architecture with experience and earns the name “site-specific theatre.”

By the time we were real estate shopping for The Man From Beyond in the fall of 2015, we had written the show. We knew what furniture we needed and even had a layout. When we found just the right space, we still had to add two custom walls. So in the common use of the term, we really weren’t that site-specific. Of course there were many details we still had to figure out by the time we moved in, and we did what we could to embrace the space, rather than fight it.

When we submitted our floor plan to the architect of our new space, we planned for the parlor to be identical in size. Flipping the orientation of just one piece of furniture, or the location of the parlor door, hell, even the direction of the door’s swing, would throw something out of balance. The second time round, we built even more custom walls (to say nothing of our next show, Lucidity), so in a way, we became even less site-specific. Still, we had to adapt to the new space, and how people are responding to those changes, when all else is the same, is fascinating.

Ceilings

The original Silos location had low ceilings covered in pipes. PIPES EVERYWHERE.

You gotta have a vision! (Original Silos Studio 213, pre-construction)

Seriously, who would put a Victorian séance parlor in this industrial space?

We fought the pipes. We painted them black. Can confirm the color black does an amazing job of making things disappear. We also hung bolts of landscaping fabric to cover the hideous chicken-wire ceiling that frankly had a certain smell to it.

Painting ceiling pipes requires a hard hat. I learned that the hard way.

On the plus side, the pipes were great for hanging theatrical lights. They also did a phenomenal job of masking our deep magic, the magic we don’t want you to discover. With such a ceiling, who’s to know that junction box is a fake?

The ceilings in the parlor sloped, from about 8 feet to 10 feet. We used this to our advantage by putting our show-stopper piece, the historic mantel, at the high end. It had a certain psychological effect. But it did mean that another very impressive piece of furniture, “The Cabinet of Mysteries,” was crowded on the low-ceiling end and had a pipe that blocked the sign on top. Honestly, we’re lucky it fit at all.

In our new location? The ceilings we inherited are 12-feet high with black acoustic tile. It’s like night and day. The results? “The Cabinet of Mysteries” looks GREAT…

…but we’ve had to re-design all of our ceiling magic, and that includes a whole new mechanical device as well as software recalibration. Many elements are all in “beta test” again, against our will. Good news is they’re working well so far, but I don’t trust anything until it’s fired correctly 100 times.

On the plus side, the ceilings are high and clean, and while our previous guests may not have thought it was a show about pipes, our new guests have to suffer none of that subconscious crowding.

When Madame Daphne opens that door, they gasp. They never gasped before. It’s the same hand-stenciled wallpaper, the same furniture, the same lighting and music, but that gasp is all-new.

It’s the ceilings. I’m certain of it.

For love of a pipe

The old space had this gigantic elbow of a pipe coming out of the wall.

The infamous elbow, showing here to the left (along with our early “work light”)

It was about 5-feet high, jutted out, and didn’t even have the decency to be in a corner. Prime placement for “I hit my head in your escape room!” To mask it, while also drawing attention to it, we draped a red silk dupioni curtain over it.

No one ever hit their head—success!! The curtain also made for a lovely cinematic nook for our projector videos, encouraging people to gather around the projector as a team, rather than view it from across the room. It also softened the harsh white rectangle of the projector screen itself.

We loved our solution to that damn pipe so much we rebuilt the pipe. No joke. Same height and everything. We didn’t even debate it.

A matter of inches

Due to an architectural curiosity in the new parlor, the desk is about three inches closer to the corner than it used to be. No big deal, right? Wrong. Turns out every team isn’t noticing a detail about the desk until clued about it. It went from 90% notice to about 10% notice. Which, luckily in this instance, is actually better! We wanted them to need the clue. But seriously. Three inches! What was I saying about escape rooms and soufflés?

Rules Hall

The layout of our rooms in our original location left this little hallway, 5 ft by 10 ft connecting two spaces. While I initially imagined we’d just walk through this space, when the reality of decorating these spaces descended, I realized we could use a separate transitional space, for one little scene only: the reading of the rules.

Thus, Rules Hall was born. While all immersive entertainment needs a reading of the rules at some point, I doubt we’ll always create a separate space just for rules. But Rules Hall makes for excellent theatre: the darkness focusing player attention, the medium’s sinister teasing ramping up their anticipation, the cramped quarters making the parlor reveal more breath-taking.

Needless to say, Rules Hall is back, and just as small as ever.

Level-THREE-spoiler thing

But we couldn’t rebuild everything.

In our earliest blocking rehearsals, it occurred to me that we could use the stairs outside the studio as one of our sets. It was my favorite site-specific choice that we made.

We’ve done what we can. In our new location, Strange Bird has ownership of the world outside of Daphne’s, so this scene has become psychologically safer for players, which is both good and bad. We re-created the same stark aesthetic: bright lights, white walls, the need to whisper. But we could hardly rebuild the stairs themselves. A bench suffices, and while the cinematic picture of this moment has improved, it’s not inspiring quite the same flavor as the stairs. I miss them.

END OF LEVEL-THREE SPOILER.

Tarot Reading room

The most obvious change to veterans of the séance is in Madame Daphne’s Tarot Reading Room. Due to architectural restraints (we tried to preserve as many extant walls as possible), the room ended up longer and a foot less-wide than the previous space. This done screwed up the furniture.

Now instead of being tucked to the right of the entry door…

Daphne’s table is as far from the door as possible, past all the other furniture.

In the old space’s corner, she would often startle people, which was a sort of fun, but not elegant. Now, the visual is better: BAM! There she is when you open the door. Being further in challenges guests to venture deeper into the room, and if a line forms to greet her, everyone is immersed in this new space rather than waiting outside. But so far they seem far less inclined to sit on the couches. Perhaps there’s more room, or they don’t see the couches they passed by in the new configuration? Both of our Daphnes are reporting that they have to invite them to sit.

There are also a couple of moments with the mirror behind Daphne’s table; now that it’s not by the door, one of them is a bit awkward (but has to be powered through), and another moment we’re often cutting on the fly, because no one is there to see it. Little changes like this can have a big impact.

Old Tarot Reading Room layout (Silos) versus the new layout (Houston Design Center)

I’ve already had one veteran praise us for moving Daphne’s table, as if it were calculated. Truth is, it was the only layout in that room that worked! Not all design is deliberate, although it always reads as such—which means you do always have to own it.

You’ll notice in the new layout that we have an inexplicable second door in the middle of a wall. This is for players to exit from—the distance to exit could not exceed 75 feet, and with the door we wanted players to enter from, the path would have been over that mark. For experiential reasons, we wanted them to enter through a different door. For reasons of safety, we needed a second door. Thus, the Star Door was born.

My favorite thing I painted, and I painted a lot of things.

Again, not a thing we chose to do deliberately, but we do have to own it. The treatment of this door is totally a thing Daphne would do, and the reverse side is totally a thing Adrian Rook would do. World-building wins all-round.

Overworld

By far the most drastic change in our relocation is the addition of a meta-lobby space. Originally we conceived of renting out individual studios for each Strange Bird experience. This is why the Tarot Reading Room functions just like a lobby—we needed a space for players to gather “in-world” before the experience officially began. Of course, we never mentioned the phrase “Escape Room” in this hallowed space.

When we opted for many reasons to expand to a single, larger location, we had to take on a lobby to connect our different experiences, just like all the other escape room companies.

But what does a Strange Bird lobby look like? What do Strange Bird restrooms look like? How do we want people to feel and act in this extra-lobby space? We knew we wanted to keep our commitment to immersion, so if this isn’t an escape room company’s lobby, whose is it?

I took to calling it the Overworld. Just like in Zelda, our Overworld connects each of our games into a cohesive world, the games in turn functioning like self-contained temples.

The Overworld has its own story to tell and its own emotional effect, an ideal prologue to every game we’ll ever create. And when the time comes and Madame Daphne opens her doors, she’s greeting guests who are more excited and even more eager for interaction than before. The ice has already been broken.

In order to make a clear delineation of who is in charge of which spaces—I am the set dresser of our rooms, at the end of the day—we went with strong bright lights and a black, white, and chrome aesthetic. It is very modern and very now.

And you notice when it changes. When you enter Madame Daphne’s, you know you’re in somebody else’s space. I also suspect we won’t get any more people wondering if they have suddenly time-traveled to the 1920s when they step into her parlor. Our experiences are designed to be as real as they come, and our Overworld reinforces that.

The Overworld is also architecturally weird. It’s just a little bit disorienting—always an immersive plus. And it is impressive. I recently overheard a player conversation, “ARE THOSE DOORS REAL?” “I THINK SO???”

Ultimately, more space means the experience is bigger. It feels like you’ve arrived someplace special. Now that’s a change I can live with.

August 28, 2017

Meisner for the Immersive Audience

Last week, I examined the Meisner technique for the immersive actor. I am particularly excited by the genre’s promise of a scene partner who has no script. Who is, by the way, you. You’re my scene partner.

In immersive theatre, the audience becomes actors. Think of them that way. When sold out, The Man From Beyond has a cast of 10. It’s precisely this radical reconception of the audience that energizes immersive theatre. Hell, I love it so much, I extended Meisner language to include the audience and enshrined it in the Strange Bird mission statement:

But if audiences are truly actors, then they are now facing the same pitfalls all actors do. The audience doesn’t need to worry about not listening—they are hearing the script for the first time—but they do need to overcome the bigger demon: feeling self-conscious.

Most folks associate interactive theatre with self-consciousness, and with good reason. Performances that pull an audience member on stage typically thrive off that person feeling awkward. The performer points up the audience member’s behavior, and the audience subsequently laughs at that person’s expense. This is the stuff of nightmares. This is the OPPOSITE of immersive theatre. Let’s run as far away from that kind of “interaction” as possible.

Lest we forget, there’s this thing called stage fright. We must take this phobia seriously.

Training audiences to be in-the-moment like actors are trained isn’t possible, but what we can do is design environments that engender real interaction. Armed with an understanding of the Meisner technique, designers can help slay self-consciousness for audience-actors, so they, too, can live truthfully in imaginary circumstances.

Here are my Meisner-inspired design principles for killing self-consciousness and eliciting truthful behaviors from your audience…

Make your world rich
Start your world as soon as possible
Limit audience watching audience
Stakes
Dialogue that matters
Really doing stuff
The element of surprise

Make your world rich

Children have no trouble with imaginative play. The entire world still feels novel to them, so behind a bush is as rich a secret hangout as the fanciest speakeasy with trick-wall entrance. But adults must preserve their dignity and need much more help to get them to a point of make-believe. And make no mistake, make-believe is our ultimate goal.

The less your audience has to imagine, the easier it is for them to believe. Immersive actors can help tremendously—they belong to the world, so interacting with them requires adopting their world—but production design also plays a major part. The more you can WOW your audience with a sense that they have been transported, the more they actually have been transported and can act in that world with ease. If you do your job right, they won’t even realize they’re making believe.

Do you have to have a big-budget build-out? No, of course not. While I don’t know of any immersive productions that have done so, you can ask your participants to use their imaginations like black box productions do, but you risk losing a few people in that leap. It’s just easier for me to behave like I’m in a hospital if it looks like a hospital.

Start your world as soon as possible

No matter what you do, there will always be an awkward transition from real world to imaginary world. The earlier your participants can pass through that transition, the easier it will be for them to believe.

I think escape rooms in particular suffer from starting their worlds way too late. You spend a good 15-20 minutes checking in, signing waivers, chatting up the gamemaster, hearing the rules of the game, getting the lock tutorial (oh lord), and then, THEN you cross the threshold to your exciting Egyptian Tomb adventure. No one really expects me to start acting like a cursed archaeologist now, do they? After treating it as a game for so long, I’d feel silly, and making that transition to play-acting would make me feel self-conscious. So I just don’t do it.

(Note that this is where actors inside the game can really help. Escape rooms with actors are the only times I’ve felt motivated to play along. Peer pressure can move mountains!)

I like aggressive worlds, worlds that bleed into the street if possible, with hosts who contribute to the make-believe instead of tearing it down. Think of the pre-show experience in Sleep No More, Then She Fell—even Accomplice. You may be waiting to enter the main attraction, but as for the world, you’re already there. You’re already playing.

”How would you like to die?” he asked me. ”In media res,” I said. (The Manderley Bar at the McKittrick Hotel, NYC)

Limit audience watching audience

There’s nothing worse than feeling the eyes of strangers—or worse, your friends—on you during imaginative play. You feel a little judged, and just like that, you’re hyper-aware of yourself, and all doors to transformation slam shut.

When I speak of The Man From Beyond to people who haven’t played yet, I often have to assuage fears of embarrassment. They don’t want to be actors in the traditional sense: they don’t want to be watched. So we should take great care that they are watched as little as possible. Disperse the audience. I’ll examine in more detail later how audience distribution affects the experience, but for now, I’ll just say that it matters a great deal.

There’s a reason 1-on-1’s feel special—with no one else watching, you’re more open to connect with the performer. You can even keep the content a secret to your grave. Case in point, I am still deliciously creeped out by the fact that a Then She Fell interaction I had (solo with two cast members) was in fact observed by another audience member via a secret hiding place (I found this out later from a friend—such a great psychological twist!). Knowing I was watched at the time would have changed everything.

The sandbox-style also does a good job of freeing folks from the gaze of others; if you don’t like the audience energy where you are, you can leave. Escape rooms and dark rides, however, involve audience groups with no hope of relief. Someone is almost always watching your interactions, and if that someone’s not playing along, your entire show is screwed. Third Rail Project shows always make me feel really uncomfortable with whatever it is I’m wearing—and that has nothing to do with my fashion choices.

Stakes

Not just your characters: the audience too needs stakes in the story they inhabit. Following the Meisner Independent Activity guidelines for drama, actors should be doing something “important, on a deadline, and difficult to do.” Importance is paramount here. If the audience thinks what’s happening around them matters, they’ll enter a true state of flow. Their awareness of themselves will slip away, as they laser-focus in pursuit of their goal. You’ll get some wonderful make-believe behaviors that way. But if the story lacks importance, you’ll wind up with a bunch of disengaged people reaching for their phones.

But that doesn’t mean the world should always be ending. Higher stakes do not translate to better results, as you can easily break the ceiling of believability. See: most escape rooms.

Threatening the explosion of the earth or even just my death if I fail is frankly beyond my imaginative pale (we all know the game master will just enter to console us), so you might as well have just skipped the stakes part entirely. Sometimes the best stakes aren’t the highest or even the most personal ones. We have stakes in other people all the time, so perhaps this is where your characters can step up.

Dialogue that matters

Meisner wants us to really listen. Your audience should be all ears in an immersive, and listening—or navigating to the right place to listen—should engross them. The script should reward those who listen, with every word providing insight into a part of the story. Avoid dialogue that is obtuse, or your audience will quickly learn that their efforts are for naught.

really Doing stuff

To reach a proper flow-state, where the knowledge of the self disappears, you need to be doing something. Like actors on stage, tasks and challenges—from holding up a mirror to deciphering the riddle inside a poem—offer a great path for audiences to forget themselves and engage in the story world.

Escape rooms are masterpieces of doing stuff, and fans get addicted to that sweet puzzle-flow-state. Third Rail Projects adores simple tasks as entry points to relationships, and even Sleep No More, often maligned for not giving the audience activity, packs a wallop of stuff happening in their one-on-ones to the point that you don’t have time to catch your breath.

So give your audience something to do other than “watch.” All the better if it’s important, on a deadline, and hard to do.

the element of surprise

Actors often perform from their heads instead of their guts; knowing what’s going to happen, they plot out their reactions ahead of time. The result is it feels fake—and we remain unmoved. Since rehearsal is unavoidable, Meisner offers tricks for actors to rely more on their gut, but immersive audiences don’t rehearse, and they have no lines to learn. If they go into the experience without any foreknowledge of the script, they are very likely to respond from their gut. And that’s a very good thing.

I don’t recommend reading too much about an immersive theatre production you plan to see. Read just enough for you to decide to buy a ticket, and then STOP. Don’t read the reviews, blogs, or facebook comments, or you could walk into a show like a cold, premeditated killer, acting cerebrally: “What’s a clever thing I could do or say in that situation to surprise them?” When the mind holds the reigns, we stay firmly on the ground. We can’t be transported.

Gut-response requires the element of surprise.

Creators get this. Immersive theatre productions typically say as little as possible about a show. The mystery entices you, and you go maybe not even knowing the themes of the piece until two-thirds of the way through, when it hits you like a hammer. That’s special indeed.

But creators can take surprise too far. Immersive theatre is uniquely visceral—you are there, participating in the world, and leave with a real memory—so we should appropriately warn audiences of potentially traumatic content within. We need to be responsible, to care for our audience, rather than to ambush them. After all…

Given what they’re doing, they’re actually very responsible about it.

But when are warnings needed? It’s hard for me to draw the line. I think The Man From Beyond capitalizes a great deal on thematic surprise, and taking away that surprise at the start would damage its power. Surprise has a huge payoff, but if it comes at too high a cost (trauma to a reasonable percentage of your guests—we’re not talking about that one guy who has a fear of taxidermied turkeys), the art is not worth the cost. We need to be responsible, first and foremost, and earn the trust of our audiences. The genre won’t get very far if our chief weapon is surprise.

Okay, so apparently hurricane stay-cations inspire a lot of meme generation in me. Apologies for that. (Luckily, Strange Bird is coming out just fine through Harvey.)

To wrap up…you know you’ve been self-conscious in an immersive before. It happens—and it’s awful. Think about why you got kicked out or perhaps why you never started the make-believe in the first place. Maybe I mentioned a reason above. If designers are in turn conscious of the scenarios that create it, they can reduce its likelihood and boost the chances of audiences acting truthfully and emerging transformed. Just as Meisner would have wanted it.

June 1, 2017February 1, 2019

Answering the Smart-Ass

If an immersive production offers the audience any opportunity to speak, chances are actors are going to get some smart-ass remarks.

Design can do a lot to reduce this problem: invest the story with importance, make the stakes personal, have the actors take the story seriously, deliver a realistic world so the audience isn’t embarrassed to be “caught” playing along. All of these things can help communicate to the audience that it is in their best interest to go along with the world. But there’s inevitably still that person who would rather watch the world burn.

And The Man From Beyond has lots and lots of opportunities for the audience to speak.

Why Be a smart-ass?

While audiences may not be aware when they are disrespecting the actor, smart-asses know full-well what they are doing. A smart-ass wants to assert his/her power, usually at the expense of someone else. There’s a “Gotcha!” edge to these remarks, whether they are pointing out a technicality in your language or just screwing around with you.

The story of The Man From Beyond climaxes with a very hard question. It’s jolting, it requires a deep belief in the world we’ve built to answer, and it’s HARD. (And we know it. We have a complex decision tree for the actor to memorize for this moment.) Some teams sit in silence, barely daring to breathe. Sometimes, a brave soul steps up. And every once in a while, a wild smart-ass appears. Or 2 or 3 at the same time.

The audience has paid good money to enter a new world and to play along. Why would someone want to break it? Some theories…

Believing in the world makes you emotionally vulnerable. A “smart” comment keeps you in control and emotionally distant (= safe).
Your friends are watching: you don’t want to appear foolish in front of them and instead you want to show them how “smart” you are.
You want to see the actor squirm. Treating the performer as an actor instead of as the character also translates to enforcing your emotional safety.

All of these motivations are ultimately about maintaining power. But no worries, smart-ass audience member. I get it. Emotions are scary, powerful things. You don’t have the dark anonymity of a traditional theatre to protect you. You don’t want to betray your “weakness” under the lights of the show or in the eyes of your friends.

Despite its reputation for intimacy, immersive theatre is a profoundly public experience. To be active is to be an actor. Even in a 1-on-1, you are being watched.

It’s okay. Your behavior is totally justified. But you’ll also never be moved.

What happens next?

When smart-asses play “Gotcha!” they are expecting the actor either to:

1) Flinch momentarily, and then keep plowing through the script, or

2) Break character, so that “they win.”

Which means the actor should respond with…

3) Taking what was said as truth and responding to it honestly from the character’s POV as much as possible.

They aren’t expecting that at all. The world is not supposed to be that real. This tactic has the two-fold advantage of not-rewarding the smart-ass (so the behavior won’t continue) and making for a better, more truthful scene. At the end of the day, the smart-ass is my scene partner. I need to take as true whatever text and subtext they give me. For me, even more important than the planned script is the truth of the moment. I follow that truth wherever it takes me. And most often my audience quickly follows in my wake. (And then I can get back on script.)

The mantra to not take it too personally is important here. The goal is not shaming or revenge; it’s honesty. You don’t want to answer your smart-ass with anger. In fact, upping your vulnerability may work best. I advise against aggression and recommend making a positive claim: “I thought we were friends. Please help me,” etc. It’ll depend on the situation. But I do sometimes tell someone who’s obviously lying, “You’re lying.” They guffaw and agree—I’ve just won them with that response.

But this technique does come with a risk of escalating the situation, in a way pretending you didn’t hear them doesn’t. It feels really, really good to the actor and potentially puts down the smart-ass—this is a power-play situation, after all! But 95% of cases I’ve seen won’t fight when they realize I can fight back within the parameters of the world.

But when they smart-ass me again, and again, and perhaps a fourth time, I bow out. They clearly want nothing to do with me.

May 28, 2017February 1, 2019

Respect the Actor: the Unspoken Rule

The most important rule goes unspoken. I have not yet encountered a production—immersive or otherwise—that explicitly told audiences “to respect the actors.”* After all, no one sneaks tomatoes into the theatre anymore.

Theatre creators hope respect happens naturally.

Spoiler: it doesn’t.

Note that I am not defining “disrespect” as talking to the actors (unless there’s a no talking rule). Disrespect in immersive theatre is any audience behavior that blocks the actor from performing the rehearsed scene/interaction. This block may be verbal or physical (refusing to leave a chair, stealing props, not moving out of the way, etc.). Immersive theatre is often a designed experience (rather than an emergent one), and the show is at its best if audiences yield us the space to deliver the experience we designed for them.

*I haven’t witnessed it myself yet, but some immersives like Delusion do deliver rules about actor-audience interaction. Haunts definitely have a long history of rules like “don’t touch the actors,” and immersives could do worse than to borrow a page from the haunt playbook.

When was the last time you saw a play?

It is very, very rare for an audience member to behave badly at traditional theatre. But what if you’ve never attended traditional theatre before? Or maybe the last time was 10 years ago, back in school? The passive-mode that comes naturally to those of us attending shows on a monthly or even weekly basis isn’t an ingrained behavior in such a person.

Immersive theatre reaches out to new audiences. Younger generations who would find The Odd Couple boring (and offensive). People who play video games. Tourists. Sky-divers. Seekers of the new. Runners who think stories are better when you’re running after them. You know, anyone under the age of 60.

When the theatrically-uninitiated encounter an actor on their own plane, they don’t default to respectful-audience-mode. Immersive theatre puts them in active mode; why should they suddenly be passive just because an actor showed up?

We’ve had several teams come through The Man From Beyond that I lovingly deem “assholes” who do not know they are being assholes. Their faces betray no smirk, no smugness, no consciousness of power play. They see nothing inappropriate in their behavior with the performer. Since they seem so ignorant of their disrespect, I can only conclude that they go to the theatre very, very rarely. To such an audience, an actor is just another person; s/he has no privileged status in the group. How can we get mad at such an audience? They believe in the world perhaps more deeply than we do.

Why are you here?

In proscenium theatres, the audience signs a contract: whatever it is the actors are doing is what I’m here for. Even if it’s crap, the story they are telling is what I paid good money to see—so hush up. But immersive theatre offers myriad goals. People can attend to explore environments, to experience a dreamscape, to play a game—or to interact with actors and witness the story. If you’re not attending for the actors, you’ll be less inclined to give them the space they need to proceed with their part of the experience—because you’ve got something more important to do! Sometimes the actor’s goal and the audience’s goal may even be in conflict, say, if you’re exploring a desk, but the actor needs to sit there. There can be only one winner.

Certainly the award for most-likely-to-disrespect in The Man From Beyond are die-hard escape gamers who buy tickets for the pleasure of solving at least three convoluted ciphers (so sorry to disappoint, guys!). While we carefully crafted the show so our actors don’t interrupt game play, these sorts of players will always consider the actor a bit of a nuisance, or sometimes even an obstacle in the way of solving the next puzzle. Which (spoiler!) is not the case.

how to earn respect

Like with all rule-breaking, it is up to the immersive actor to enforce the rules in real-time.

Earning the audience’s respect starts with “presence”—that allusive magic that all actors seek. The performer is on the same plane as the audience, but with physical presence, can establish a privileged status within that group. The actor’s confidence will lead to audience trust. It is perhaps not pure coincidence that when I was most exhausted as an actor, I hosted one of my most disrespectful teams to date. I failed to establish a strong presence, and they caught on to that energy and so ran a few circles around me that afternoon.

The writers must also invest the actor’s role with importance. If the audience sees that what the actor is doing matters and isn’t just a waste of their time, they will give the actor room to work. The actor, too, must take the story seriously—certainly for dramas, but even if it’s a comedy, as all comedies are funnier when they’re deadly serious to the characters. A serious tone leads to respect.

But even with strong presence and a sense of importance, you’ll still get that kid in school who refuses to respect Teacher on principle. When disrespect happens, the actor must immediately address it (verbally or physically). The audience doesn’t always know in immersive theatre what we want from them, so a prompt correction will let them (and anyone around them) know they are crossing the line. Once is usually enough. Performers in the McKittrick correct behavior all the time with glares or physical maneuvering. I like to use words, so the correction is even more public.

But what about the second time? Or the third time? What if correction fails to stick? Well, then…I guess they didn’t want that scene…did they?

We have aborted scenes before in The Man From Beyond. We fight hard and try to win them, but when the audience continuously fails to yield the actor the floor, then we simply retreat. I guess story isn’t why you bought your ticket. And that’s okay.

a word on walls

As stage actors, we want to take everything personally—to have “no wall” with our scene partners. But immersive actors can’t take everything personally. The audience is our scene partner, which could lead to some truly hairy customer service situations when they disrespect us and we take it too personally. Immersive actors need to keep a wall up, but about 20-yards back from the usual wall. When audiences hit that wall? Shut down, retreat, and don’t take it personally. It’s not you, it’s them. You fought valiantly.

May 9, 2017February 1, 2019

Breaking the Rules: Third Rail Projects

Third Rail Projects takes a very different approach to immersive storytelling than Punchdrunk (see Breaking the Rules: Sleep No More). Instead of an open-world, “sandbox” experience, a Third Rail production divvies up the audience and puts them each on a set of rails, something kin to a “dark ride” of amusement parks. (I’ve always thought this company was well-named, given the house-style they developed). To keep audiences on these invisible rails, they provide an unusual set of rules.

(See my post on the importance of rules in immersive theatre here.)

RULES FOR THIRD RAILS PROJECTS

Do not open any doors yourself
Do not speak unless spoken to

I’ve witnessed these rules in action in their productions of Then She Fell (ongoing in Brooklyn), The Grand Paradise (Brooklyn 2016), and Sweet & Lucky (Denver 2016), and I expect the same rules will apply in their upcoming Ghost Light (limited run in NYC this summer).

Calm Down, PLEASE

When I attended Then She Fell for the first time, Sleep No More was my only point of reference for immersive theatre. That show rewards me for being a hyper-aggressive weasel and will never be surpassed in my esteem because it made me realize who I really am.

Author showing here in SNM-mode, poised to tail her prey

To put it mildly, this is not the skill-set needed in Then She Fell. I entered the lobby space a little late, having waited in line for the restrooms, and when I noticed folks exploring the space, I went up to the closed door and opened it.

Luckily, the nurse pounced on me, iterating the rule “not to open doors.” Which she hadn’t told me yet. (All the more reason to cover the rules with the whole audience present instead of piecemeal.) Not a big deal, but I did have the reveal of one of the more magical sets spoiled for me. Me and my lame curiosity!

My first scene also made swift work of correcting my weasel-instincts. The doctor wanted me to sit far away from him across a table. I thought that was lame and got up to get closer to him. He insisted I sit back down—I bet they can tell when you’ve been to the McKittrick. I eventually took my cues from the performers, and I highly recommend that audiences accept the more relaxed, under-active, “you’re in good hands” experience. It opens you up to a different kind of connection. Third Rail Projects is never a game, and it’s certainly not a sport. The only way you can fail the show is by failing to be present with the actors.

DEfine “Door”

Unfortunately I still had not learned my lesson when I went to see Sweet & Lucky in Denver.

Those who experienced this production were indeed lucky (Sweet & Lucky)

I attended on the opening weekend. Again, we heard the rule not to open doors. My group had been following our main character for a while, but she yielded the set (and us) to another character, who turned off a few lamps and then promptly went through an “L shaped” passageway made of curtains. The show took place in a giant one-story warehouse, so sometimes curtains filled in for walls. PLEASE NOTE that she did not part the curtains, she didn’t need to touch them at all to go where she was going.

Naturally, I followed.

And my group of 7 more followed me.

About 15 minutes later, when we’d seen the most incredible sequence in the show (in a rather overly-crowded house), they activated the God-mic: “HOLD, PLEASE. ACTORS HOLD.” My heart was pounding, screaming “God, please no. No fire, no medical emergencies, don’t let them stop this show, I HAVE TO SEE THE END OF THIS SHOW.”

“We have a sorting error.” Eventually a very unhappy stage manager walked up to my overly-large group and asked, “Who here hasn’t seen ‘Swimming Hole?'” I raised my hand. Seven other people sheepishly raised theirs.

We had jumped the tracks.

He politely guided us to the space where we were supposed to be, but resetting a show of Third Rails’ complexity is no easy feat. If they take the show back 15 minutes, every actor has to go back 15 minutes, but so does every single audience member to the exact place where they were on the ride. Sorting the audience backwards couldn’t have been easy.

A typical Third Rail Projects spreadsheet. Not really. But I bet I’m close.

And in fact, they tried to start the show again, realized they had picked the wrong spot, and had to stop it and re-sort us all AGAIN in a totally different place (a mistake I am so grateful they caught—every moment in Sweet & Lucky matters). It wasn’t Episode 2 Cycle 2, but Episode 2, Cycle 1 where we needed to be!

Once we were all properly placed, they still had to work on going back to the right spot in the tech cues. The audience waited in place for 20 minutes in an un-air-conditioned warehouse while the tech team got things going again for us. I’ll never forget that moment. Nobody talked. NO ONE. We stuck to the rules. We believed in them. We all wanted to sustain the emotional place where we had been before the interruption. I’m grateful to everyone in that truck with me for committing to the magic so completely.

The show resumed, and it was magic. I don’t think I’ve ever cried so thoroughly.

But a simple rule in a vague situation misinterpreted by a single audience member literally broke the entire experience for all 70 people.

This is sort of on them for making the door in this case ambiguous. Are curtains that we don’t even have to touch technically doors? It’s also on the actress we followed for not clearly signaling we were to stay where we were and wait patiently for another character to guide us to where we needed to go next. (I bet she got much better at directing audiences as the run went on; I know I have.) It’s also on the story for having a moment where we didn’t have a guide and weren’t left closed off in a private room (we were in a large, open corridor).

But it’s also sort of on me and my damn weasel-mode. So let me say definitively, THIRD RAIL PROJECTS AND OFF-CENTER AND THE WHOLE CAST AND AUDIENCE OF SWEET & LUCKY: I AM SO SORRY.

This is not a conversation

Since the audience activity isn’t “where to go,” Third Rail uses eye contact, speech, and the occasional task to great affect to make the audience feel active in the story.

Most people come back from a Third Rail show recounting the profound questions they were asked. More than the tasks, the questions forge deep connections between character and audience, and the audience gains a sense of how the story relates to them. It’s brilliant. But it’s also dangerous. Hence the rule, “do not speak unless spoken to.”

They smartly recognize that too much speech in the experience would ruin the magic. You’re not often the only audience member in the scene, and if you can speak freely within your group, you might brush it off, make light, break the immersion. Enforcing silence makes us process what we see differently.

I’m not a fan of The Grand Paradise for many reasons, but no doubt my particular experience tainted it for me. You never get to choose your audience group. By bad luck, I was paired through the whole show with a talker. She kept asking our actors questions, engaging with them with tongue firmly in cheek, and making jokes—essentially making the show about her. It was a power play. She was clearly uncomfortable and refused to let the actors have any power over her whatsoever. Talking was her defense mechanism.

I was miserable. Magic wasn’t possible. I’ve never been made so wildly self-conscious, even as an actor, as “the talker” made me feel.

If only I could have drowned her in that tank (The Grand Paradise)

I partly blame the performers of The Grand Paradise for not enforcing their own rule on this unruly participant when the behavior presented itself and continued to present itself. It wouldn’t have taken that much effort to correct, and instead, it broke my show.

rules on rules

Audiences: know the rules of the particular show, and stick to them. Rules for one immersive are not the rules for another. More than just the quality of your personal experience is at stake here; everyone’s show is at risk. When in doubt, resort to passive-audience mode.

Producers, designers, actors: enforce your rules in real-time. Always err on the side of too much direction than too little. You’re doing incredible work, and you should stand ready to defend it.

May 4, 2017February 1, 2019

Breaking the Rules: Sleep No More

99.9% of audiences don’t want to break the rules. But sometimes people go rogue, or more commonly, someone makes a mistake, and when a rule gets violated, the entire experience can break.

(See my post on the importance of rules in immersive theatre here.)

RULES FOR PUNCHDRUNK’S SLEEP NO MORE (NYC)

No talking
No cellphone use
Follow the guidance of the black masks
Wear your mask the entire time

Simple. Right? And yet I will hear people talking to their friends, flipping their masks up, or fiddling on their phones in the stairwell (which despite appearances is the highest trafficked area in the entire McKittrick). I WILL SHUSH YOU. If more than 1% of the audience committed these behaviors, I’d stop going. It’s no longer the experience it was designed to be.

I know it’s uncomfortable and sweaty. DEAL WITH IT.

No mask? No Mask!

The most unusual rule on this list is “to wear your mask the entire time.” While Punchdrunk’s custom-made bautas do wonderful artistic work (empowering the audience with anonymity, making the otherwise dopey-looking audience look spooky), their primary purpose is practical. Given the show’s large real estate and free-roam structure, audiences need to tell at a glance who’s a performer worth pursuing and who’s an audience member just screwing around.

At one memorable performance, my close friend earned the Malcolm one-on-one. He removed her mask, as in all SNM one-on-ones, to facilitate a more intimate connection. But he had gotten behind in the scene, and when the bell tolled Duncan’s death (Malcolm’s cue to run), he bolted out of there even faster than usual.

He forgot to return her mask.

She bolted out of there, too, tailing Malcolm down to the mezzanine. She arrived but didn’t realize she had no mask, and there was no way for her to get it back behind the locked door set on the fourth floor. Luckily a black mask pulled her aside, pointed out the problem, and asked her to wait. She sat on the couch and waited for her new mask.

Now I advise all of my friends to dress distinctively for immersives. Bold, dressy clothing tends to get the actor’s attention. Plus the performers can quickly confirm that it’s you that’s still following them.

Sporting my SNM uniform (center): no one can resist the red dress paired with running boots.

As my interestingly-attired friend sat on that couch without her mask, the audience started noticing her, and a small crowd formed. Unsurprisingly, she felt very self-conscious and did her best to look uninteresting. Which only made her more interesting. For some guests that night, she was a performer. What story of loss or acceptance did they see in her profound stillness?

The mistake wasn’t her fault, and it didn’t take long to correct. But within five minutes, the show broke because of a missing mask. Keep your mask on, please.

At New Year’s Eve 2014, the McKittrick spray-painted their typically white masks gold. A nice aesthetic touch, but practically it was a disaster. The gold didn’t contrast well enough in the dark for me to tell who matters at a distance. And when you’re on the actor-hunt, every second counts. Good designers know these details matter.

I am uncertain that a free-roam immersive can function smoothly without a means to distinguish audience from performers. I could be wrong. Maybe it’s not that hard to tell: audiences tend to be pretty boring. I hear that Speakeasy in San Francisco doesn’t make any distinction, and they even encourage the audience to dress in the time period. I look forward to a trip out there where I’ll wear my white beaded flapper dress, style my hair in bobbish curls, and fool the hell out of everyone.

No talking?

After (only) seven visits, I am still uncertain if Sleep No More wants me to hew religiously to the no-talking rule. It’s definitely a clear requirement out in the open world of the hotel. But what about in the locked door one-on-ones?

Most of the one-on-ones scripts don’t invite any response from you, but a few of them do present the possibility for you to talk.

Light spoilers ahead. I am often near Malcolm at the right time (or perhaps I’m subconsciously addicted to his wall slams), so I’ve won his one-on-one four times. Malcolm asks “Who are you?” Seems like he’s asking a question, right? I’ve offered four different actors different responses: Donalbain (my favorite), the Raven Queen, “never more.” In all of these Malcolm fails to acknowledge my response, and he never plays back in turn. In fact, I think he just slams me harder. Once I even filled out his line “Me thought I heard a voice cry” with “Sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder sleep!” (Okay, that was just pure cheek). From none of the actors, did I get a clear behavioral signal that he wanted me to answer his question.

But then why ask the question? This rule has me very confused! I’ve recently stopped answering Malcolm and focused on enjoying the ride instead. I think he prefers it that way. I think, even with the door locked and your mask off, Punchdrunk wants you to stay silent. The performer is the one showing you incredible things, after all, and (as witnessed above) he’s got a schedule to keep.

While we may like exceptions to rules in life, designing for a little exception in an immersive experience will only sow audience confusion and lead to behaviors you didn’t intend.

(See: Breaking the Rules: Third Rail Projects for more).