Immersive Theatre and the Reception Process.

Immersive theatre, a performance style introduced by the company Punchdrunk first to London and subsequently to New York, has been one of the most popular new approaches to theatre staging in both cities in the new century. Although individual productions differ, immersive theatre in general encourages the audience to intermingle with the actors in a common space. This freedom of mobility has encouraged some theorists to hail this type of theatre as one that makes possible an actively engaged spectator, like that proposed by Ranciére, but this essay argues that such emancipation is basically an illusion, and that the control of the dramatic world remains almost totally in the hands of the producing organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]