When the Audience Takes Centre Stage

By Delima Shanti

Roll up your sleeves and dig into a new wave of interactive arts, designed especially for you to get your hands dirty.

Even if you’re lucky enough to get the best seat in the house for an arts performance, the audience member’s role is usually that of voyeur. The entertainers perform, while the audience are little more than onlookers or admirers of the work. But what would it be like to pull aside the imaginary curtain separating the spectator and the work of art? This is exactly what several events at the Melbourne Festival are doing this year, extending a hand and inviting the audience for a peek into their imaginative worlds.

The Border Project are presenting Half-Real, described by director Sam Haren as a “choose-your-own-adventure theatrical game”, where audiences are encouraged to solve a whodunit murder mystery by using a purpose-built remote control that will allow the audience to unfold different scenes and ‘solve’ the crime. “Depending on what you unlock in the game, will determine your perception of a particular character,” says Haren. “Your decision could incriminate the character, or it could prove that they are innocent.”

This high level of interactivity not only allows the audience to drive the narrative, but also become part of the play. And as no two audiences are alike, each performance of Half-Real is almost always the different. While this may seem the ultimate exercise in ad-libbing for the cast, there is only one core plotline and the identity of the murderer and circumstances of the crime do not change.

Shifting audience perception through direct interaction with a performance is also something that Site UnSeen aims to achieve. Site UnSeen is equal parts theatre, walking tour and multimedia art installation, where audiences quite literally share the ‘stage’ with actors as they walk through the streets of St Kilda for a darkly humorous and witty take on the experience of homelessness.

Co-creator Robyn Szechtman says the piece “is a simulation rather than just a performance”, with audiences being tested for their ability to survive on the streets as they interact with actors (some professional, others people who have experienced homelessness). This may not be light entertainment, but cast member Annie Standford says “audiences quite happily take up the challenge and involve themselves in the performance, when given the opportunity”.

A concern among artists and critics alike is that the concept of audience interaction will fall into the category of gimmickry, but Half-Real director Sam Haren says that it’s all in the execution. “We’re not trying to completely change the theatre experience,” he says. “We’re interested in how we can use technology to invigorate the core part of a live experience.

“It would be gimmicky if the technology wasn’t used to push the narrative and was just there to look cool.”

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