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.