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Odyssey Works: transformative experiences for an audience of one

I recently had the very good fortune to attend a two-hour workshop by Odyssey Works. And I fell in love. With their approach, with their work, with my partner who, 20 minutes prior to our interview, had been a total stranger.

About Odyssey Works

Odyssey Works started with the question “How could our art have the deepest possible impact on our audiences?” All artists want to move their audience, to have a lasting impact, but without knowing the audience—their struggles, their childhoods, their obsessions and bugbears—it is impossible to guarantee such an impact. Odyssey Works asks, “If our art could change just one life, wouldn’t it be worth it?” And from that resounding YES came a company devoted to designing immersive experiences for one person.

It starts with a long and detailed application—you know you’re signing up for the experience, and you know if you’re chosen. The survey digs into real personal meat: what’s your relationship with your mother? Where do you feel at home? What’s something you do every day that others don’t? What is your relationship with death? Once Odyssey Works chooses their participant, they interview you, family, friends, and enemies, read what you write, read your favorite books, listen to your favorite music, attend your houses of worship, doing everything they can to immerse themselves in your life. They call this “radical empathy.” Naturally, they fall a bit in love!

After studying the participant for months, Odyssey Works asks “What do I wish for this person?” They’re not talking wish-fulfillment, like a new job or a better house, but more along the lines of “I wish you felt a connection to your body” or “I wish you could experience beauty in new ways, seeing beauty even in your tiny apartment.” It’s usually a life-changing wish. With the wish the ultimate goal, they then map the emotional affects they want to achieve in the participant, and then design the experience to achieve those affects.

The Odyssey begins slowly, perhaps with a newly-discovered book by your favorite author that has an uncanny resemblance to some of your life experiences or with a dancer in red on your subway ride to work. Sometimes you’ll meet new people, and they will be part of the Odyssey you experience (note that they never play characters other than themselves; all of the actors stay true to who they really are, but they will tailor themselves to serve a purpose in the experience). The experience then culminates in a single weekend of events—often you’re kidnapped and whisked away someplace else. And you emerge on the other side deeply moved and fundamentally transformed. Guaranteed.

A scene from The Map Is Not the Territory where the participant was blindfolded and tied to a stake. (Odyssey Works)

Like so many worthwhile artistic projects, Odyssey Works relies on grants and commissions to keep going, and their many collaborators (from medievalists to chefs) work on a volunteer basis. Odyssey Works does not categorize themselves as “immersive theatre,” although they do use the entire world as their “set,” and an even more profound blurring between what is the real world and what is the artistic world occurs for the participant. So while we may not be completely overlapping in our projects, Odyssey Works has a lot to teach Strange Bird Immersive and other immersive theatre companies.

Six proposals

In their book, Odyssey Works outlines six proposals for artists looking to achieve a similar impact with their audiences…

  1. Begin with Empathy
  2. Involve Your Audience Completely
  3. Stop Pretending
  4. Design Experiences, Not Things
  5. Experiment with Form
  6. Produce, Don’t Reproduce

I highly recommend reading their book from cover to cover. While I must warn that it does sometimes stray from practical language into something more kin to academic art-lingo talk, it’ll undoubtedly inspire any experiential artist to re-examine their work. I sure did!

Take-Away: Personalize it

I was particularly struck with the call to radically personalize the experience. The lack of personalization is a big part of what makes traditional auditorium-stage theatre so static. Everyone is asked to receive the same story and to stay completely anonymous in the dark. In immersive theatre, you exist in the story, you matter to the characters, and you may even affect what happens. Eye contact alone is AMAZING. This is a great beginning. Can we go even deeper than that?

A little personalization goes a long way. In The Man From Beyond, we like to surprise guests with a personalized gift as well as with an intimate tarot reading. Madame Daphne also has the opportunity to learn her guests’ names without much trouble. Odyssey Works reminded me how powerful someone calling you by name can be, and now my character may call out to you for help by name. I’m already noticing that deeper relationships are now possible the moment you introduce a name.

I’m also imagining a show structured around a survey: your answers could set you on a particular story/character track in the show that either appeals to your personality or specifically challenges you to face what you’re uncomfortable with. The Hex Room, created by Cross Roads Escape Games in Anaheim, CA, makes guests take a brief survey to find out what stereotypical horror character they are, and then promptly locks you in a room themed to fit that character. (I am proud to report I’m the detective).

Haven’t played it yet, but when I do, that’ll be my coat. (The Hex Room)

Then She Fell achieves personalization by asking personal-history questions of the audience: “When did you first fall in love?” “Have you ever done something you weren’t supposed to?” Answering these questions unlocks new meaning for the audience.

Each person is an endlessly complex individual, and everyone fundamentally wants “to be seen.” Immersive theatre gives artists the opportunity to give that gift of “being seen” to their audience. There’s a lot of fertile ground to explore here.

Take Away: Design Experiences

I am also moved by the idea that we are designing experiences here, and we should approach our work in those terms. We’re turning flat stories into four-dimensional, fully lived experiences. The experience of the audience is primary.

Actors never want to think in terms of emotions and moods (MOOD is DOOM spelled backwards, as my Meisner acting coach says). But that’s not a rule designers should follow.  The best immersive theatre experiences will be carefully crafted with the emotional impacts in mind. Next time I am working on a new immersive experience, I intend to begin with a concrete wish for the audience, and then map out the emotional journey we want the audience to undergo.

We should also be thinking about experiences in more sensory terms as well. In one show, Odyssey Works added mulch to the participant’s secret room, with the explicit goal of triggering the feelings aroused in that room in the participant for years to come whenever he smelled mulch again. YES. Immersive theatre introduces a new design category (and my favorite credit in my own show): scent design.

Life Take-Aways

In the workshop I attended, I asked a stranger five questions, but these questions weren’t about where she works or lives or her opinions of movies or politics. They were meaty questions that established intimacy in a flash. The question “What’s been on your mind lately?” unlocked a staggering amount of emotion and detail. I left wondering if I knew my closest friends in this way. I now want to go ask them all of these questions, and so personalize our relationship more.

Human beings are always designing experiences for each other, from hosting a friend’s birthday party to choosing how to split up the family into separate cars. Odyssey Works calls us to be conscious about these choices, and to design them with an eye to the participant. This is how we can transform experience into a gift.

So get out there, ask the real questions, and design experiences!

For more on Odyssey Works, visit their website.

And buy their book. Seriously, wow.

 

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Why not “Interactive Theatre”?

If the activity of the audience is key to a true immersive theatre experience, why don’t we call the genre “interactive theatre”? Isn’t that a better description?

Because I wince when I hear “interactive theatre,” and so do you. The phrase conjures up images of campy murder-mystery dinner-theatres, children’s shows, and theatre that entertains the audience by dragging an audience member on stage and picking on them for the amusement of others.

This is not immersive theatre.

Why does interactive theatre suck? When you pluck out an audience member from the safety of their seat and invite them to participate, it makes that person ferociously self-conscious. Once content in their passivity, now they’re suddenly under the spotlight, while the cast is seemingly chanting “Dance, monkey, dance!” It’s embarrassing. Nobody likes that.

Killing self-consciousness

Self-consciousness is the enemy of the actor, and in immersive theatre, self-consciousness also becomes the enemy of the audience. Building a world around the audience as only immersive theatre does makes it possible for the audience to act naturally in a way they never could in a traditional theatre. In sophisticated works of immersive theatre, you never feel like you’re under the spotlight because…

  1. The world is richly detailed, thus making make-believe for an adult less embarrassing.
  2. The world lacks the seat-stage divide (one zone is safe, the other is scary) so you never have that awkward transition from passive to active-mode.
  3. The rest of the audience is well-dispersed, so a bunch of people aren’t there just to watch you.
  4. You’re so busy doing the thing you need to do in the world that there’s no time to feel self-conscious.
    (More on Meisner theory in immersive theatre to come.)

When I speak of The Man From Beyond to someone who hasn’t played yet, I often have to assuage their fears of embarrassment. No one will be watching, judging, and calling you stupid, I promise. Besides, you’ll be too busy doing things to even think of that!

I regret that we cannot reclaim “interactive theatre,” but most people don’t think of “interactivity” in the context of theatre as a good thing. Get them through your doors under any other terms, and then they’ll know that interacting in theatre is FREAKING AMAZING.

 

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What is Immersive Theatre?

You’ve heard of it, maybe even done it, but what does it mean? To flourish, immersive theatre needs a hard definition—what it is and what it isn’t. When my friends says, “I bought tickets to this new immersive theatre piece, want to join me?” I need to be able to imagine the experience I’m signing up for. Imagine buying musical theatre tickets only to discover upon arrival that the production involves no singing because someone in PR was confused about what defines a musical. That’s not okay.

“Immersive” is a buzz word right now in video games and entertainment, and journalists are bandying about “immersive theatre” as if the phrase means a cool set. NO. A favorite twitter account of mine, @isitimmersive does an excellent job of policing the term “immersive theatre,” documenting when it is used appropriately and when it is misunderstood, and I wholly agree with the author.

I propose the following rules to serve as a definition…

1. Immersive theatre surrounds the audience with the world of the story.

This characteristic is what “immersive” primarily denotes. It is as if the audience is drowning in the world. The story-world may be a custom-built set or the streets of a city. Either way, the story exists in a fully-realized world that doesn’t require audience imagination to fill out the edges. We don’t need to believe, because we’re there. And that’s seriously powerful. And often leads to dreaming.

Proper “immersion in the world” also means eliminating the divide between audience and performer. Both exist inside the same world; there should be no “safe spaces” in immersive theatre, where the audience should be and where the performer should be. It’s not so much “breaking the fourth wall” as it is refusing to build the wall in the first place.

I am certain at some point, some audience member has climbed into that bathtub. What I really want to know is if that happens once a week. (Sleep No More)

If there’s a stage where the performance happens, and you’re not invited near it, it’s just an elaborately decorated theatre. Site-specific theatre is not necessarily immersive theatre. And prosceniums are right out.

And don’t get me started if there’s an assigned seat on your ticket.

This is the most basic criterion for immersive theatre, and a lot of people think this is enough to qualify. It’s NOT.

2. The audience is active.

This is where immersive theatre truly gets interesting. The audience is not passive in the traditional sense; they do not just “receive” the story. Instead they become something more kin to a player or participant.

Immersive theatre isn’t something you SEE; it’s something you DO. One of my favorite taglines for Strange Bird Immersive is “Don’t just see what happens. Be what happens.” This difference is what makes a generation who doesn’t see theatre suddenly buy tickets.

Immersive theatre is to traditional theatre what a video game is to movies. Sometimes you’re tired and want to sit passively while a story gets told to you. But if you’re feeling a little more energetic…

There are many ways to make the audience active, and documenting the wide-range of possible structures for activity is what Immersology is all about. Sometimes the audience exists to the performers; they may answer questions and form relationships with the characters. Or the audience can choose what they see. Or the audience may make a choice or perform an activity that alters the story.

The activity does not necessarily have to have an impact. While it’s most rewarding for an audience to see that what they do has ramifications, it’s enough for them to be spinning cogs in the well-oiled machine. In a Third Rail Projects show, the audience will never alter what happens to them, but a proper run of the show cannot take place without their participation.

“Why yes, I do take dictation!” But in all seriousness, what happens if I say no? My best guess is she’ll respond, “Well, learn on the job!” (Then She Fell)

Most shows that get mistakenly classified as immersive theatre fail this rule. I am also supremely frustrated that many critics fail to explain HOW the audience is active in an immersive theatre piece. Sometimes I can’t even tell from a review if a show fulfills this rule or not! It’s not rule #1 that’s shaking things up, guys! It’s the promise of participating in the story, the gamification of theatre, that’s, well, the game-changer.

Companies must write and generate their own work, because the notion of an active audience isn’t something playwrights have worked with in the past. Maybe someday you can license an immersive, but for now, if you’re paying royalties to Samuel French and selling it as “immersive theatre,” please stop.

3. It needs to be theatre: live performers telling a story.

This is perhaps the easiest criterion to meet. But I have participated in work that is truly immersive, yet does not qualify as being theatre, so it doesn’t go without saying!

When I call something “theatre,” that means at least one living, breathing performer was there with me. It also means that that performer devoted herself to a coherent whole, something more than a medley of impressions—a story. The end goal of the piece is to communicate something particular with a beginning, middle, and end.

In so many ways, the reward for your activity is the story you unravel and the intimacy you can earn with a performer.

Where are you taking me? (The Man From Beyond)

And that’s the genre. Immersive theatre is at its core experiential entertainment. You’ll want to wear comfortable shoes, because you’re very likely about to do something extraordinary.