A Different Way of Storytelling
By Mia Date: 11/10/2020
After reading the article of Narrative Structures for New Media: Towards a New Definition from Pamela Jennings, I came up with a new kind of form to have storytelling called the immersive theater, which has been popular among people in recent years, such as the works like Punchdrunk and Third Rail.
The most important thing for immersive drama is to create an environment similar to the real world. The so-called “real” here is not relative to “virtual”, but relative to a place that exists only for performance. Artists use the “sense of loss” created by this tangible and perceptible environment to encourage viewers to believe that they are part of the drama itself.
Also, the immersive dramas are flexible and diversified to mobilize the audience’s five senses, including smell, taste, and touch, in addition to general vision and hearing, so that the performance can surround the audience in a real three-dimensional way.
In my opinion, this new way to tell the story is quite similar to the African oral literature mentioned by Jennings. Both of them have the advantages of interactions with the audience and even can adjust some plot to suit different occasions, which still can deliver the original thought that the author wanted. Immersive drama allows each audience to have a uniquely personal experience.
Furthermore, the immersive drama also has an advantage that most forms of storytelling do not possess that the audience of the immersive theater is in charge of the way and degree of experience of the work, and the decision of how to perceive and piece together the story is in the hands of the audience, not the same content as everyone else sees. So in that situation, even if the audience participates in the same performance repeatedly, they can get completely different feelings.
All in all, as far as I’m concerned, the form of immersive theatre is a new kind of way to tell the story, which has a lot of potentials waiting for us to explore.