Enveloping Worlds: Toward a Discourse of Immersive Performance

by E.B. Hunter (Editor), Scott Magelssen (Editor)

Overview

Enveloping Worlds is a collection of essays that analyzes the phenomenon of immersive, participatory performance as it has developed in the US. As this collection demonstrates, immersive performance offers three-dimensional multisensory experiences, inviting audience members to be participants in the unfolding of the story, and challenging pre-existing ideas about the function of performance and entertainment. Enveloping Worlds questions audience agency and choice, the space and boundaries of performance, modes of immersion, empathy and engagement, and ethical considerations through fifteen essays. 

Case studies in the volume include the Choctaw Cultural Center in Oklahoma and Choctaw sovereignty; a Black artist’s autoethnographic performance challenging White audiences’ entitlement to full inclusion; Immersive Van Gogh experiences and their scenographers; telephone performance during the COVID-19 lockdowns; Diane Paulus’s The Donkey Show; the Battle of Atlanta panorama; an antebellum-themed department store display from the 1920s; escape rooms at Disney Parks; remotely staged plays about aging and dementia; tiki bars; anachronistic costuming at Renaissance Festivals; the technologies that shape the boundaries of immersive worlds; and tabletop role-playing games. Taken together, these essays contribute a rich discussion of immersive performance across radically different contexts, offering analytical models and terminology with which to clarify and advance this emergent discourse.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472905003
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	04/29/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

E. B. Hunter is Assistant Professor of Drama at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of Acting the Part: Audience Participation in Performance. 
Scott Magelssen is Professor of Theatre History and Performance Studies at the University of Washington. He is the author of Performing Flight: From The Barnstormers to Space Tourism, Simming: Participatory Performance and the Making of Meaning, and co-editor of Theater Historiography: Critical Interventions. 
 

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgements                                 
Introduction: The Ascendance of the Immersive                                          
Part I: Life                                                 
1.    Building Nʋnih Waiya: Creating an Immersive Chahta World
Bethany Hughes
2.    The Other Side of the Plexiglass Wall: Fear, Terror, and Defining the Rules of Engagement in a Solo Autoethnographic Performance Tragedy             
Michelle Cowin Gibbs
3.    Immersive Van Gogh: A Scenographic Analysis                    
Christin Essin
4.    “The Telelibrary is Here for You”: A Theatre of Service During a Time of Crisis                                        
Lauren R. Beck
5.    Farewell, Fond Pageant: Remount and Representational Space in The Donkey Show                                    
E.B. Hunter
Part II: Liberty                                            
6.    The Immersive Archive: Restoring the All-Embracing View of Nineteenth-Century Painted Panoramas in Museum Display             
Susan Tenneriello
7.    Encountering the Old South in “Atlanta’s Most Modern Department Store”                                    
Laura Ferdinand
8.    Playing Attention in an Escape Room: Strange Bird Immersive’s The Man From Beyond                                
James R. Ball III
9.    Why Be a Bad Guy? Immersive Performance and Transgression at the Disney Theme Park                                    
Jennifer A. Kokai and Tom Robson
10.    Remembrance Revisited: Insider/Outsider Perspectives on Immersivity                                        
Cindy Rosenthal
Part III: The Pursuit of Happiness                                
11.    Stepping Back into Your Own Timeline: Meaning, Yearning, and Immersive Simulations of The Recent Past                              
Scott Magelssen
12.    The Immersivity of American Tiki Bars                        
Chloë Rae Edmonson
13.    Time Traveler Day at the Renaissance Festival                    
Michelle Liu Carriger
14.    Introduction, Invitation, and Integration in Immersive Performance                 
Sean Bartley
15.    Turgin’ the Dragon!: Dramaturgical Immersivity and the Tabletop Roleplaying Game                                         
Michael M. Chemers and Mike Sell
Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

Natalie Alvarez

"Through a vibrant and diverse complement of case studies, Enveloping Worlds tracks the “ascendence of the immersive” in a US context, revealing how immersive performance uniquely illuminates the socio-political dynamics of American democracy and capitalism. By analyzing the ways immersive experiences invite audiences to “play attention” as active participant-collaborators, navigating flows of power, agency, and access, the collection reveals how these performances can serve as both critiques of systemic inequities and as spaces for reimagining collective political engagement. Enveloping Worlds makes a vital contribution to transnational conversations on immersivity within and beyond the theatre proper, equipping scholars and students with an expanded critical vocabulary and set of methodological approaches to examine the political potential of immersive performance."

Jill Stevenson

“Hunter and Magelssen bring the conversation of immersive theater state-side with a compelling collection of essays analyzing the ways in which we interact with and become part of the performance. Enveloping Worlds is an engaging piece of scholarship that is bound to make a strong contribution to American theater and media studies.” 

Joseph Roach

“Ironically organized into three sections—Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—Enveloping Worlds documents fifteen compelling offers of the American experience that audiences can't refuse: immerse yourself.”