Audience Participation and Neoliberal Value: Risk, agency and responsibility in immersive theatre

TLDR

Immersive theatre centers on participatory audiences, with hedonistic and narcissistic experiences that render it vulnerable to absorption by the experience industry and marketing co‑optation. The study examines how immersive theatre promotes entrepreneurial participation—a mode that valorises risk‑taking, self‑made opportunity, and personal responsibility—and argues that this participatory style is often expected of audiences. The author illustrates this by analysing Punchdrunk’s *The Masque of the Red Death*, drawing on risk‑perception research to show how entrepreneurial participation is framed as a neoliberal value. The article finds that immersive theatre shares neoliberal values—risk‑taking, individual freedom, and personal responsibility—with its audience participation practices.

Abstract

Abstract This article identifies a value set shared between the neoliberal ethos and modes of audience participation frequently promoted in immersive theatre: values such as risk-taking, individual freedoms and personal responsibility. The promotion of self-made opportunity, premised either on opportunistic risk-taking, or the savvy attitude that comes with experience and familiarity with immersive theatre participation, will be addressed as valorising another shared value: entrepreneurialism. A participatory mode will be introduced that I call ‘entrepreneurial participation’: a kind of audience participation privileged in much immersive theatre performance identifying the enactment of neoliberal value. While entrepreneurial participation may be deliberately deployed by audiences as a participatory tactic, it will be argued that this particular participatory mode is frequently expected of audiences, or at least privileged as a means of engaging with performance. Work by the British immersive theatre company Punchdrunk will be taken as a means of illustrating this suggestion, particularly The Masque of the Red Death (2007). The article begins with a definition of immersive theatre that focuses on the figuring of participating audiences, paying particular attention to the relativity of participatory freedoms and the centrality of experience production. Hedonistic and narcissistic experiences will pull focus and will be approached as a possible reason behind immersive theatre's susceptibility to absorption within the experience industry and co-optation by innovative marketers. The article then establishes a set of shared values between the neoliberal ethos and audience participation in The Masque of the Red Death. Risk perception research, especially that arising from the Oregon Group and Stephen Lyng, will be touched on as a means of introducing some political considerations arising from the notion of entrepreneurial participation. A more optimistic, but ultimately sobering set of responses will be offered in conclusion.