Rosie Klich and Pablo Arenillas-Pakula
Summary
Using as case studies the work of Pablo Pakula’s company Accidental Collective, a Kent-based participatory performance company, and Richard Schechner’s Imagining ‘O’, a this paper explores valences of the term interactivity in relation to our own performance practice and identifies specific modes of interactivity manifesting across the field of participatory theatre.
Abstract
This paper explores various valences of the term interactivity in relation to our own performance practice and identifies specific modes and means of interactivity manifesting across the field of participatory theatre. Interactivity offers the audience the power not only to interpret the artwork but, individually or collectively, to change, navigate, negotiate and shape the work. Using as case studies the work of Pablo Pakula’s company Accidental Collective, a Kent-based participatory performance company, and Richard Schechner’s Imagining ‘O’, a site-specific ‘dispersed’ performance created with staff and students at the University of Kent, we will determine how different manifestations of interactivity, such as navigation, response-based interactivity, and complex interactivity, each set up a different relationship between the ‘user’ and the ‘medium’ and pose different ethical considerations.
Complex interaction requires the real-time and mutual activity of two or more agents. Within the relationship, both parties have agency and the ability to assert creative intelligence. This connection, between participant, performer and the performance, raises certain ethical and practical complications that require negotiation. Where do the boundaries lie between the performer’s and the audience’s responsibilities for the success of the performance? This paper will draw ideas from game theory and systems theory, and current discourse regarding interactive storytelling and play, to assist in delineating the relationship between participant and performance in interactive work. We will also suggest that such works compose a complex system, a system composed of interconnected parts that, when working together, exhibit properties that are more than the sum of its parts. Pablo will present examples of interactive practice from his work with Accidental Collective and explain the process of facilitating audience participation in his work. Finally, we will discuss the ethical dimensions of structuring audience interaction drawing from current discourse in theatre studies and education, and will reflect on our own experience of negotiating the ethics of audience participation.