Future Audiences – Theatre Experiences in the Time of Immersive Technologies

This dissertation was submitted as part of an MSc in Design Innovation at Maynooth University, Ireland, in September 2023. Dissertation Supervisor: Dr Iain Macdonald. 

This project addresses the experience of audiences using immersive technologies, such as Virtual Reality (VR), to attend and participate in live theatre performances in their homes. While prior work considers various means of facilitating audience immersion once they put on a VR headset, the focus of this project considers how to enable and deepen the theatre experience before and after the VR theatre performance. Through in-depth user research, involving both theatre maker and audience perspectives, the project develops a design challenge, and responds to it with the creation of Theatre Box. This physical product, which is delivered to an audience member’s home, and the connected web-based platform, seek to build a theatre experience that connects the real and virtual worlds. The physical box contains a curated selection of items, chosen in collaboration with the theatre maker, which connect to the theme of the performance. The digital component facilitates opportunities for live interaction and engagement beyond the theatre performance. This combination of approaches provides a richer experience for the user. In doing so, the service draws upon the rituals and conventions present for users when they consider what it means to have “an evening at the theatre”.  The final phase of the project presents the validation of the proposed solution. This relies upon the creation of a number of physical and digital prototypes used to elicit user feedback. A synthesis of this feedback is presented using a novel prioritisation framework. Based on this, refinements to the designs are presented, before a discussion of the issues related to deployment of the Theatre Box service to the market. Unexpectedly, for me, the most engaging and challenging questions that emerged from this research were related to the non-technical elements of the VR theatre experience. It signals directions for future research with theatre makers (and potentially producers of other types of live events) to explore how immersive technologies can be embedded within live performance, while ensuring that the audience experience is considered beyond only the enabling technologies.