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Care is complex: something that must be thoughtfully evoked; that is not necessarily comfortable; that is humbling, vulnerable, and negotiated. Examining the stakes of care in participatory performance, this article traces lines of inquiry around care as labour, as duty, as risk, as choice, as participation, and as an exchange of power requiring consent. Reflecting on the precarity and interdependence of participatory performance, I argue this genre is not only uniquely positioned to foster reciprocal care—it requires it. I outline a model of reciprocal care, defining it as the act of all participants attending to something together—in this case the performance—and collectively creating the conditions of coexistence necessary for this tending. To make these ideas tangible, I refer to two participatory performances I directed. Trophy is a performance installation featuring local community members sharing personal stories of change, housed in glowing tents that transform over the course of the performance. The second, Remixed, is a hybrid deep listening experience, accessed via a progressive web app, that contemplates how we instigate change in our lives, communities, and world. Both productions are tentative experiments in reciprocal care, extending its duty beyond the artist and exploring the conditions through which it is sustained by all participants. I conclude by envisioning the possibilities of reciprocal care as a vital way to operate in the uneven precarity that is our standard collective condition and to be in the unknown together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mark Hopkins, Co-Artistic Director of Calgary’s Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre, reflects on the company’s attempts to create an immersive theatre production, Gargantuan, focused on individual and collective complicity in existential global challenges like climate change, social and economic inequities, resource depletion, etc. The article outlines Gargantuan’s development from 2015 to 2016, and the many difficulties that Swallow-a-Bicycle encountered in creating immersive theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single Thread Theatre Company continues to exploring how best to create participatory, site-specific theatre. This article briefly summarizes the evolution of their process since their inception fifteen years ago, using second person singular narrative to bookend the examination of their current artistic trajectory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Julie Tepperman and Mitchell Cushman, co-creators, playwrights, and directors of Brantwood, write about the process of creating the largest site-specific immersive musical in Canada. Originally commissioned by Associate Dean Michael Rubinoff and Sheridan College’s Musical Theatre Program, Brantwood was designed for and performed in a 90-year-old school in Oakville, Ontario that had been closed down due to low enrolment. The piece consisted of 40 original songs (composed by Anika Johnson, Britta Johnson, and Bram Gielen) imbedded in 11 one-hour scripted storylines, each set during a different decade in the history of this imaginary high school. The 15 hours of total material unfolded simultaneously over the course of each three-hour performance, and the audience had free rein to roam everywhere in the building and to follow whichever character they chose in the 42 person cast. Julie and Mitchell write about the challenges of creating theatre on such a large scale, and immersing the audience in an environment that gives them freedom to roam and explore, and engage with the show in both direct and indirect ways, and to push the boundaries of intimacy between performer and audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theatre SKAM’s Artistic Producer, Matthew Payne, describes the origin story of SKAMpede, the company’s unique site-specific festival, which features a mobile audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘The Making of Nightmare Dream’ reflects on the process of creating and producing a site-specific, immersive theatre experience within Toronto’s Historic Campbell House. In this conversation, director/creator Mumbi Tindyebwa and playwright Motion reflect on the origins of their collaboration, and key aspects of their immersive work—from concept to page to production. Before the creation of Nightmare Dream, the two theatre artists met while participants in artist development programs at Obsidian Theatre Company in Toronto. Discovering a mutual interest in multi-disciplinary arts, they set out to create an inter-disciplinary theatre production to be presented at Summerworks, which emerged into an exploration of the African’s experience with “the other.” Through this process, they explored themes such as immigration, Diaspora history, identity, race, colonialism, cultural legacy and reinvention, intergenerational conflicts, and the complex stories where these intersect. The site-specific nature of Nightmare Dream grew out of the concept of creating a story to counter the historical use of space within the Campbell House—one of the oldest remaining Upper Canada Georgian-era homes in Toronto. Inspired by an actual dream, the work developed into a series of haunting installations, which inhabited the whole house, requiring the audience to move with the narrative. From the workshop, rehearsal and production phases, the authors revisit the collaborative process of creating with a team to achieve the immersive experience. They discuss the functionality of sound, costume, performance, movement, and text, and the challenges of creating, performance, and producing within an existing space. They have continued to collaborate and develop new immersive theatre projects, including Motherland and Oraltorio: A Theatrical Mixtape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A personal account of the development of the place-based wilderness theatre aesthetic of The Only Animal, by artistic director, Kendra Fanconi. Based on the far west coast of Canada, in a ferry-isolated community of ten thousand in a town of three hundred, The Only Animal makes immersive, elemental theatre that seeks to connect the community to local treasures, like the Mt Elphinstone forest that is being incrementally logged. This driving effort to preserve the natural world extends to urban wilds in Vancouver, and also across to threatened wilderness across the country. The article contains an account of the 2016 production of Tinkers, based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel by Paul Harding, and a new theatrical experiment that will encompass the next cycle, Year of the typewriter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I will look at the immersive work that I’ve collaborated on, and attempt to articulate how sound plays into the construction and mechanics of each piece. I want to share the notions that I brought into each process, how they played out and fed into the next project, and the ways that sound supports and becomes integral to immersive, site-specific work. The two pieces that I will refer to most, Podplays and Landline, are locative works set in the city space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three Zuppa Theatre Co. collaborators consider the creation of the company’s recent work, The Archive of Missing Things. They discuss the creative process, the tenuous relationship between intention and accident, and the relationship of the performance to a previous work, Pop-Up Love Party. The discussion hinges on the notion of ‘ambient drama,’ which situates the performance event discreetly within an environment, functioning as it regularly does, in an attempt to facilitate interaction between the theatrical and the ordinary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented through a series of emails that discuss articles published in the issue of the journal on topics such as audiences for immersive theater productions, the relationship between audience members and performers, and collective memory.

The article reports on the final production of the theatrical group Rude Mechs in their current theater Off Center in Austin, Texas. It describes the set design and staging of the play "Not Every Mountain" produced by Thomas Graves, which will become part of a larger work, as well as mentioning the audience participation in the play.

The article discusses the application of theatre-in-the-round concept in the performing arts industry. It notes that such concept has always provided directors the chance to expand their staging imaginations in diverse new directions. It provides an overview about the theatre-in-the-round concept as well as information on how to transform a venue into a temporary theatre-in-the-round setup.

This article deals with the production of Itinerario-Corpo (Body-Itinerary), presented by the Teatro Autonomo di Roma from March through June 1979 on the two upper floors of a private apartment building in Via degli Scialoia, Rome, Italy. Via degli Scialoia is one of a group of streets located north of Piazza del Popolo between the Tiber and the Villa Borghese park. When all the people having reservations had arrived, the nurse took them to the floor below: the home of the director of the show, Silvio Benedetto. The apartment had been transformed into a sort of mental clinic, although it did not lose the characteristics of a private home. In this home-clinic, neuroses of Oedipal origins were displayed while Viennese Waltzes played in the background. It was the assumption of the presentation that alienation is formed inside the family, in the routines of everyday life. A different psychopathological manifestation was assigned to each room. While the spectators wandered about the apartment, they were free to participate if they wished in the actions in the different rooms. Inside the room the spectator was welcomed by the director and painter Benedetto, acting the part of a psychoanalyst.

The article focuses on the theatrical prodcution "An Oak Tree." "An Oak Tree" is the newest play written by British actor and writer Tim Crouch. Among the companies that are producing the show is Perry Street Theatre Co. The role of the hypnotist is played by Crouch himself. From the audience, he happens to pick the father of a girl he killed at some point. The play's title comes from a famous 1973 conceptual artwork by Michael Craig-Martin involving a glass of water placed on a shelf.