Interactive and Immersive performance is facing unique challenges during the current Covid-19 Crisis. As a form that thrives on close contact with audience members and adventures in unique spaces, generating meaningful experiences and performative interactive content on digital platforms can be confusing and time consuming.

As part of a grant from Arts Council England, THE LAB COLLECTIVE have developed two new online workshops for theatre makers who are interested in creating interactive and immersive performance in both physical and digital contexts.

The sessions will be booked on a pay-what-you-can basis.

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Playable SPACES: THE DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL
23 June: 10am – 1.30pm via zoom

A hallmark of immersive theatre is the way the audience can free roam through a world and discover the story; those routes are carefully designed to ensure the audience find satisfying and intriguing journeys. This workshop will allow you to understand the complexities routes can take, and how those routes can connect together, to create a web for your audience to play within. Examining both physical space and digital realms, we will explore the resources available to you with a space or software to facilitate online experiences.

This session will:

• Enable you to create and design satisfying, complex journey routes for audiences
• Help you to plan and execute different audience routes through multiple spaces in live and digital spaces.
• See software features as a jumping off point for creative ideas
• Explore the possibilities of online experiences away from just a zoom meeting.

Key information:

• This workshop session is aimed at performance makers, directors and practitioners looking to develop skills in the mechanics of space in an interactive and immersive context
• The workshop will be split between seminar and group tasks

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Intimacy in digital performance
30 June: 10am – 1.30pm via zoom

Interactive and immersive performance relies upon the creation of intimate and interpersonal connections between performers and audience members. However due to the current global pandemic we have entered an era of interactive digital performance where new questions and challenges have arisen about how we can achieve intimacy in this new medium.

This session will:

• Explore the technology and how its tools can be used to create intimate connections
• Investigate the transition between reality and fiction; how we transition from our living room to an immersive world
• Explore the importance of pre-engagement and how this can be facilitated to feel more personal
• Help you develop the tools to read and connect with an audience online
• Help you develop tools to establish online boundaries with an audience
• Discuss the ethics and mechanics of risk taking digital work

Key information

• This workshop session is aimed at performers, performance makers and directors
• In this workshop we will be primarily exploring one digital platform (ie zoom); however we will be looking at tools and practices that can be applied to other platforms
• The workshop will be mostly theoretical, however you will be exploring practical applications and there will be opportunities to undertake exercises and tasks which will require elements of performance
• You will be tackling the difficult situations that sit around risky work and as such, they will create a safe space to explore this in

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​https://www.thelabcollective.co.uk/workshop