This diverse collection of essays and testimonies challenges critical orthodoxies about the
twenty-first century boom in immersive theatre and performance. A culturally and
institutionally eclectic range of producers and critics comprehensively reconsider the term
¿immersive¿ and the practices it has been used to describe. Applying ecological
phenomenological and political ideas to both renowned and lesser-known performances
contributing scholars and artists offers fresh ideas on the ethics and practicalities of
participatory performance. These ideas interrogate claims that have frequently been made by
producers and by critics that participatory performance extends engagement. These claims are
interrogated across nine dimensions of engagement: bodily technological spatial temporal
spiritual performative pedagogical textual social. Enquiry is focussed along the following
seams of analysis: the participant as co-designer the challenges facing the facilitator of
immersive participatory performance the challenges facing the critic of immersive
participatory performance how and why immersion troubles boundaries between the material and
the magical.
