The Promise of Experience: Immersive Theatre in the Experience Economy

摘要

This chapter reflects on the centralisation of immersive experiences in contemporary cultural production, broadly conceived, comparatively analysing a range of examples including Lucien Bourjeily’s 66 Minutes in Damascus (2012), Punchdrunk’s The Crash of the Elysium (2011-12) and …and darkness descended (2011), Hilary Westlake’s Dining with Alice (1999), Florida’s Walt Disney World Resort, and US, UK and Japanese horror house culture. It situates immersive theatre within a (now) pervasive ‘experience economy’ identified by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, and addresses a ‘gap’ between lived experiences and idealised and especially marketable experiences within this economy. Alston suggests that the entry of ethically-engaged immersive theatre into the experience economy, especially, raises a number of concerning issues once participation and immersion are aligned with one of the experience economy’s most important goals: ‘authenticity’. The chapter proposes a critique of authenticity in immersive theatre that focuses on the performance of confinement in a Syrian detention centre in Bourjeily’s 66 Minutes in Damascus, and the director’s claim that the performance offers the chance ‘to experience first-hand’ what it must be like to be detained. In conclusion, Alston explores how the assignation of authenticity to the promise of Experience merges an ethics of encounter with a consumable product for an audience’s delectation, suggesting that the ethical space left for audiences ultimately amounts to sabotage.