Interactive theatre removes the fourth wall so the audience is involved heavily in some performances. In many performances some parts are scripted while a lot may be improvised including bouncing ideas off one another and then with ideas the audience members. Interactive Theatre is also seen in many comedy shows such as “Whose line is it anyway?”
In many of the newer performances, the usual conventional setting in a theatre is discarded and the audience is involved in the performance itself. Often this is used to move the audience around a location to see a lot of small sections of a performance that would link together in the end. An example of this is a play called “Sleep No More” which is a fusion of Macbeth by William Shakespeare and Film Noir. This play takes place in a 5 story factory. Many of the locations are abandoned and empty factories and warehouses.
A majority of Interactive theatre disregards conventional theatre and changes everything it can to involve the audience as either someone suggesting an idea, holding props, becoming part of the performance as a character. They can determine the plot, complete the story and resolve issues in the play. This gives the actors a chance to make different endings and to be ready to improvise around the audiences suggestions.
This is not a new genre, the Athenian playwrights Aristophanes and Aeschylus often used the audience as the chorus or as a jury for the trials in some of their plays. An example of a Greek comedy that breaks the fourth wall is Aristophanes’ Peace. As the Hero Trygaeus is being lifted by a crane offstage, he tells the crane operator to be more careful.
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