de(Coding) the Sensorium

How can the audience’s senses and affect be intentionally harnessed in order to conjure particular reactions? Why do Western audiences privilege sight and sound, and if those senses are disturbed, will audience members interpret content differently? In order to engage with these concepts, I take both an analytical and practical approach, by both creating an devised, immersive theater experiment, entitled (de)Coding the Sensorium, and engaging with the nexus of affect, the senses, and immersive theater in a more analytic sense. Most broadly, the devised performance replicated the same scene four times in succession for an audience, each scene highlighting or depriving a particular sense; the first version was staged with attention to audiovisual stimuli, like Western theater often is, the second highlighted just sound, the third featured just sight, and the final version focused on agency. This performance has a companion essay, which touches upon the theoretical undergirding for sound and sight in immersive theater and my piece, puts my agency variation in conversation with theoretical discussions of agency and affect, as highlighted by practitioners, anthropologists, and performance theorists, discusses the overlap and tensions that arise between the two. Largely, I conclude that immersive theater experiences, through their relationship to the senses, conjure affect. Click here for some videos and photos of the production!!