Reconstructing The Other: Otherness, Estrangement and Social Narratives in Playable Performance

Participatory or playable performance is ingrained in a process of developing and understanding its own social context. In ‘Beyond Immersive Theatre’ (2016: 222), Adam Alston argues that ‘all cultural production’ is ‘embedded in material conditions of production and reception’. Through this issue I would like to propose a series of provocative questions around the playable performance audience. What is it to be estranged by both your fellow audience members, and by your own experience of a performance?  In performances where game structure or ‘playable’ narrative from the basis of audience experience, what purpose does estrangement serve within the social narrative of such works? How do audience members resist or reinforce the pre-constructed social narratives provided by the authorship of both the author of the text, and the performer of the work itself.
The aims of this paper will be achieved through a close analysis of my practice ‘The Othering’, through the pre-constructed social narratives that occur within any play environment (such as competition or deception) and the ways in which audiences uniquely use their social tools in playable performance. The analysis will be uncovered
Within ‘The Othering’ an alien race known as The Others are presented as a ‘dangerous’ alien force. As a narrative tool they can be interpreted by the audience player in many ways – and can enforce an estrangement that audiences are not accustomed to in live performance. The dramaturgical function of not knowing, and the revelation of knowledge as the performance progresses all serve to justify the social narratives at play within the performance. Such incidents support the discussion and further critique of the variety of estrangements that occur and what this could mean for further playable performance research.
References
Alston, A. (2016) Beyond Immersive Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Biographical Note
John Whitney is a PhD Candidate and Sessional Lecturer in Theatre at the University of Reading. His Practice as Research PhD aims to redefine a subsection of participatory performance which he labels as ‘playable performance’ in the context of the issues that inevitably emerge from the agencies, feedback and social narratives at play within these forms of work.