SCA Research Seminar - Spectator-Participation-as-Research for archiving the creation and experience of Punchdrunk’s The Burnt City

Photo credit: theburntcity.com

Spectator-Participation-as-Research for archiving the creation and experience of Punchdrunk’s The Burnt City

Presented by: Dr Emma Cole

Date: Friday 17 May 2024
Time: 12:00-1:00pm
Location: Online via Zoom and in-person at the SCA Writer's Studio (Level 6, Michie Building)

Abstract

Large-scale immersive theatre presents unusual challenges for scholars wishing to document rehearsals and archive performance. Punchdrunk’s The Burnt City(2022-23), for example, was rehearsed in situ, across two warehouses in London encompassing over 100,000 square feet of performance space. In Scene One, action took place across sixteen separate areas of the set, all of which was rehearsed simultaneously. During Scene One of the performance, audiences could choose not only between searching for and observing 1/16th of the action but could treat the performance as installation and explore the scenography as well.

In this paper I draw upon my role as a dramaturg and embedded researcher on The Burnt City and discuss how the methodology of Spectator-Participation-as-Research (SPaR) can be used for rehearsal studies of immersive performance, and to archive spectatorial experience within participatory artforms. SPaR combines first-person, phenomenological-based accounts with more traditional scholarly analysis, which replicates the author’s ‘multifarious role within, and in relation to, the performance – as participants inside the work, spectators to their own experience, and analysts reflecting on it in the “aftermath” of participation’ (Aragay and Monforte 7). I argue that SPaR offers a solution to the methodological challenges surrounding documenting rehearsals and performances that can only ever be experienced incompletely. The approach’s focus on simultaneous participation and spectatorship means it is also ripe for application when scholars do not just observe but also collaborate on theatrical outputs, as it facilitates connections between making theatre and the analysis of audience experience.

Presenter

Emma Cole is Senior Lecturer in Drama at the University of Queensland and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; previously, she was Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Classics at the University of Bristol (2015-2023) and a UKRI Innovation Fellow (2019-2022). She is a classist and a theatre historian and is an expert on Greek tragedy in contemporary theatre. Her prior publications include Punchdrunk on the Classics: Experiencing Immersion in The Burnt City and Beyond (Palgrave, 2023), Postdramatic Tragedies (Oxford University Press, 2019), and Adapting Translation for the Stage (co-edited with Geraldine Brodie, Routledge, 2017). Alongside her research, she works as a dramaturg and academic consultant on new writing and classical adaptation projects.