Hey there! As some of you know, I’ve spent most of my career as a stage manager and right now, I’m diving into a PhD in drama. I’ve shared a few bits about my PhD journey, but I’ve been a bit quiet about my actual research. So here’s a little more insight into what I am studying.
In a nutshell, my focus is on risk and immersive theatre, specifically how production staff like stage and house managers gauge and control risks, especially psychological and social ones, for audiences in immersive settings.
Has anyone heard of Paul Slovic? He’s been studying how people understand risk since the ’60s. Risk is looked at in two ways: quantity (think the math behind risk management) and quality. Here’s a simple way to get the quantity or math part – to analyze risk, you just multiply the chance of something awful happening by how terrible that thing would be. This gets you a risk rating, which is classified as green (low risk), orange or yellow (medium risk), or red (high risk). It makes it easy to understand what risks are present.
However, immersive theatre works differently with audience members in a more hands-on way than traditional performances. There aren’t barriers between the audience and the performance. Immersive theatre often makes the audience part of the performance, adding some unique risks into the mix. I’m intrigued by these unique risks that deal more with the quality of risk assessment.
To clarify, this is not to say that immersive theatre is reckless with these risks, but how these risks are monitored and controlled varies widely. This brings me to my research interest – how stage and house managers are handling these types of risks, and how they are managing the audience in these new interactions. I wonder whether immersive production staff need extra training or skills.
As immersive theatre becomes less niche and more mainstream, we need to think about ways to prepare audiences for these unique performances. This includes teaching them the “rules of the game” so the experience is safe for both them and the performers.
My current research involves reading everything I can about the crossroads of immersive theatre and risk, and interviewing production staff in companies that are creating immersive theatre. I also survey audience members about any risks they feel they encountered and how well-prepared they felt.
That’s a brief snapshot of my current work. If you’re interested or have any thoughts, please share! I love to discuss these topics.