Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 05:40:18 JST CJ Bellwether

   people really getting in deep in the willy wonka experience thing and really i have been part of so many bad commercial immersive events where, as the performer, you're the one that is trying to make a concrete convention hall magical either for children or drunk adults.

   All the story did was give me shivers of so many memories. Immersive experiences are hard as hell to do right, require huge budgets (Punchdrunk always got away with it by using hundreds of unpaid volunteers from art/design schools) and it draws in so many chancers with money who will completely forgo that and just heap an impossible task onto actors backs.

   • Embed this notice
     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 05:47:09 JST CJ Bellwether

     in reply to

     when i go back and look at photos of how the set was for Masque of the Red Death with Punchdrunk at the BAC, its 90% just velvet drapes and a beautiful venue and by todays standards it looks hilariously cheap. But it wasnt, it was all expensive, it just wasnt being perfectly curated to the Nth degree with an eye to modern cameras.

     People were still using MYSPACE then. We had flip phones. We didnt have high definition smart cameras, no autotune. It has become harder and harder to curate an immersive experience that transports people to another world because people now expect to be in the world that the visible shots in a movie suggest exists.

   • Embed this notice
     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 05:49:46 JST CJ Bellwether

     in reply to

     • Another Angry Woman

     @stavvers yeah like you have to have a crypt, a ww2 bunker, some secret tunnels under a mountain, a giant church, or other magical space. Otherwise you're going to need to hire the people who make modern streaming level film sets to build what you want.

   • Embed this notice
     Another Angry Woman (stavvers@masto.ai)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 05:49:47 JST Another Angry Woman

     in reply to

     @siege a couple of years ago, we had a trustee who was really pushing for doing immersive events while we didn't have a space, and it was for this exact reason we were like NOPE

   • Embed this notice
     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 05:59:05 JST CJ Bellwether

     in reply to

     • Another Angry Woman

     @stavvers yeah, like they needed a lighting rig setup, they needed to not be using daylight, they needed a much smaller and older venue space possibly like a townhall or theatre.

   • Embed this notice
     Another Angry Woman (stavvers@masto.ai)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 05:59:06 JST Another Angry Woman

     in reply to

     @siege yeah, the space is kind of everything, unless you have TONS of money. They probably could have just about made it work (at least, on a keeping the kids happy level) if they used less of the warehouse, ordered enough jellybeans and didn't write the script with chatgpt

   • Embed this notice
     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 06:09:38 JST CJ Bellwether

     in reply to

     You Me Bum Bum Train literally got away with using like 90% unpaid actors like it was a privilege for you to come and work for them.

     Immersive has always had this potential for a huge scammy scummy underside. It was the last commercial bastion for the dead medium of theatre when youtube was suddenly providing people with immediate access to content of millions of things they hadnt been able to see before.

   • Embed this notice
     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 06:15:30 JST CJ Bellwether

     in reply to

     20 years ago, theatre had become something that only people who work in theatre go to. I think the figure was 80% of theatre audiences worked in theatre.

     And immersive offered something else, but the trouble is when you really dig into it the line immersive cuts as an artform is very much the line of, what is an actor, but a body you are paying to do whatever you want with, or for your audience to do whatever they want with.

   • Embed this notice
     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 06:21:41 JST CJ Bellwether

     in reply to

     • Pria

     @theseliminaldays yeah its a huge issue trying to get directors to accept that they're at fault for not planning/building things with access as consideration from the beginning.

   • Embed this notice
     Pria (theseliminaldays@musician.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 06:21:43 JST Pria

     in reply to

     @siege I've really enjoyed some of the immersive theatre I have experienced, but one of the things that has always bothered me is the way companies like Punchdrunk or Third Rail or Speakeasy Dollhouse just make absolutely zero effort to make their works accessible to anyone with mobility issues.

   • Embed this notice
     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 06:27:18 JST CJ Bellwether

     in reply to

     • Pria

     @theseliminaldays oh its hugely engaging which is why it can work really well.

   • Embed this notice
     Pria (theseliminaldays@musician.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 06:27:19 JST Pria

     in reply to

     @siege I do have to say that in my theatre appreciation class, many non-theatre students do get excited by and interested in the unit on immersive theatre and it really intrigues them. Which I quite like.

   • Embed this notice
     Pria (theseliminaldays@musician.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 06:27:21 JST Pria

     in reply to

     @siege before the start of Covid, I was going to bring one of Sylvia Mercuriali's pieces to my campus and I'd started designing two immersive pieces that were meant to be designed with accessibility addressed as a central concern at every step of writing and staging. I never followed through after 2020 though.

   • Embed this notice
     CJ Bellwether (siege@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 02-Mar-2024 06:59:15 JST CJ Bellwether

     in reply to

     anyway all the good immersive shows are the ones where the entire creative team understand that its a piece of erotica. you're creating a play session for your audience and you need to come at it with the same level of professionalism and consideration as a pro-domme would to their sessions.