As someone who really and I mean really hates being goaded into audience participation of any kind, immersive theater sounds like a nightmare to me. Which also has me wondering who is most likely to be a fan of such a spectacle - my guess is, adult theater kids?
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the libertarian guy who bought the L.A. Times from the Chicago Tribune company, was caught furthering misinformation about the fires himself on Twitter. I kept seeing the "deboonked" claim about Karen Bass defunding the fire department to fund the police (which Politico noted allegedly wasn't true - she actually increased the fire dept's annual budget by $50m more while they were still in deliberations about it) - a claim a lot of my friends repeated, and which I think a lot of my L.A. friends have simply decided to believe because narrative simplicity is seductive, complicated truths aren't, and blaming institutions as unpopular as the police or their enablers is part of a larger pattern a lot of people have become used to. I also then saw the L.A. Times attempting damage control by releasing a little 30 second viral video about misinformation itself with one of its editors - but one that suspiciously didn't address the false claims of its own owner. All this being said, what struck me was - after Soon-Shiong was called out (albeit on a blog without the kind of reach or readership of a larger paper or the multiple political influencers who repeated his claims across social media - spreading rapidly and outside of containment much like the wildfires themselves), I realized his position was not wholly dissimilar from the historical position the L.A. Times has taken with regards to real estate and development interests in Los Angeles for most of its history - blaming more labor-friendly mayors for other endemic problems, enabling the water oligarchs & developers to escape blame, backing up Los Angeles's large network of boosters. I think we have all heard about how casually Soon-Shiong breaks the barrier an owner is supposed to maintain with editorial of an outlet he owns, but I kept thinking that he's still maintaining an old ideological line with that paper in particular.
I don't think it's theater kids who like immersive theater as much as it is video game nerds. And maybe board game polyamorists.
I will say that I like some immersive theater, but there are basically two threads -- one comes out of 1970s avant garde dance and the other comes out of video game culture. I do think Sleep No More's wild success has had an unfortunate influence on immersive theater, though. And I've talked to some immersive theater folk who will say the same thing, that weird experiments in narrative and audience/performer boundaries have been tossed out in favor of these cruise ship-like shows with a lot of booze and no real attempt at coherent storytelling.
But I think it was two years ago that I saw an "immersive" show created by the filmmaker Josephine Decker, and the show was frustrating but also had moments of real brilliance. Dave Malloy's Ghost Quartet is semi-immersive and honestly one of the better things I've seen in the last decade. But now when I see something advertised as immersive, it's always something like SNM and less coming out of these weirder spaces.
I think a lot of what is called "immersive theater" now could maybe more accurately be called "augmented theater". I went to one kind of experimental immersive theater experience in my life - some people had put on a production in the swampy & underdeveloped parts of our city park, at night, and we had to wander from set piece to set piece with flashlights and such. I respected the concept but did not respect the mosquito bites. This sounds far more commercial than that.
ha, oh yeah, I have been invited out to immersive theater held in, like, cemeteries at midnight etc, and I am absolutely not doing that. the idea of it is nice, I hope the kids enjoy it, but no thank you.
and going back to your comment about the LA Times, how many times has that paper specifically been on the side of a corrupt police force or corrupt developers or whatever? A lot! Meanwhile every day I get like half a dozen pleas from various publications with the whole "democracy is on the line!" pitch.
As someone who really and I mean really hates being goaded into audience participation of any kind, immersive theater sounds like a nightmare to me. Which also has me wondering who is most likely to be a fan of such a spectacle - my guess is, adult theater kids?
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the libertarian guy who bought the L.A. Times from the Chicago Tribune company, was caught furthering misinformation about the fires himself on Twitter. I kept seeing the "deboonked" claim about Karen Bass defunding the fire department to fund the police (which Politico noted allegedly wasn't true - she actually increased the fire dept's annual budget by $50m more while they were still in deliberations about it) - a claim a lot of my friends repeated, and which I think a lot of my L.A. friends have simply decided to believe because narrative simplicity is seductive, complicated truths aren't, and blaming institutions as unpopular as the police or their enablers is part of a larger pattern a lot of people have become used to. I also then saw the L.A. Times attempting damage control by releasing a little 30 second viral video about misinformation itself with one of its editors - but one that suspiciously didn't address the false claims of its own owner. All this being said, what struck me was - after Soon-Shiong was called out (albeit on a blog without the kind of reach or readership of a larger paper or the multiple political influencers who repeated his claims across social media - spreading rapidly and outside of containment much like the wildfires themselves), I realized his position was not wholly dissimilar from the historical position the L.A. Times has taken with regards to real estate and development interests in Los Angeles for most of its history - blaming more labor-friendly mayors for other endemic problems, enabling the water oligarchs & developers to escape blame, backing up Los Angeles's large network of boosters. I think we have all heard about how casually Soon-Shiong breaks the barrier an owner is supposed to maintain with editorial of an outlet he owns, but I kept thinking that he's still maintaining an old ideological line with that paper in particular.
I don't think it's theater kids who like immersive theater as much as it is video game nerds. And maybe board game polyamorists.
I will say that I like some immersive theater, but there are basically two threads -- one comes out of 1970s avant garde dance and the other comes out of video game culture. I do think Sleep No More's wild success has had an unfortunate influence on immersive theater, though. And I've talked to some immersive theater folk who will say the same thing, that weird experiments in narrative and audience/performer boundaries have been tossed out in favor of these cruise ship-like shows with a lot of booze and no real attempt at coherent storytelling.
But I think it was two years ago that I saw an "immersive" show created by the filmmaker Josephine Decker, and the show was frustrating but also had moments of real brilliance. Dave Malloy's Ghost Quartet is semi-immersive and honestly one of the better things I've seen in the last decade. But now when I see something advertised as immersive, it's always something like SNM and less coming out of these weirder spaces.
I think a lot of what is called "immersive theater" now could maybe more accurately be called "augmented theater". I went to one kind of experimental immersive theater experience in my life - some people had put on a production in the swampy & underdeveloped parts of our city park, at night, and we had to wander from set piece to set piece with flashlights and such. I respected the concept but did not respect the mosquito bites. This sounds far more commercial than that.
ha, oh yeah, I have been invited out to immersive theater held in, like, cemeteries at midnight etc, and I am absolutely not doing that. the idea of it is nice, I hope the kids enjoy it, but no thank you.
and going back to your comment about the LA Times, how many times has that paper specifically been on the side of a corrupt police force or corrupt developers or whatever? A lot! Meanwhile every day I get like half a dozen pleas from various publications with the whole "democracy is on the line!" pitch.