Am i enough of me: the impact of multiple mediums and modes for storytelling on the emotion, imagination, and embodiment of theatrical show participants

Abstract

This study used an ethnotheatrically-influenced approach to explore how emotion, imagination, and embodiment can serve as indicators or measures of the impact on participants of multiple forms and media that are used within a single theatrical performance. This exploration occurred through the realization and analysis of my own multimedium theatrical production as an initial case study. The indicators, as expressed by participants, changed as the performance environment and technology used changed across the show’s narrative. Six different genres and forms of media, along with a handful of ways of acting or enacting the story, provided the variety of mediums and modes of enaction that were analyzed in the study. Experiences of show participants—the performers (including myself), production crew, and audience—were analyzed using arts-based qualitative methods. The core sensitizing concepts were imagination, embodiment, and emotion as expressed by participants in the study via written feedback and a post-show talkback session. These concepts indicate or measure the impacts of various mediums, modes, and the story on participants. The motivating background ideas for the story (narrative content) that allow expressions of sensitizing concepts to bubble to the surface are the shelving of dreams and passions for stability; lack of humanity and empathy in corporate environments; the struggle to maintain a sense of self and identity under corporate assault; and the idea of redemption at any point in life. I used an initially deductive approach to coding in assessing the narrative discourse. These codes included imagination, emotion, and embodiment as qualitative measures or indicators of narrative discourse. The project demonstrated that telling narratives across multiple interactive and presentational mediums was not only possible but added benefits to the experiences of all participants. These benefits included providing a natural connection between the experiential similarity of switching or flipping between technologies in existing lifestyle habits and the switching between narrative mediums during the show. Multiple mediums also provided multiple perspectives on narrative content. Emphasizing themes important and familiar to many participants, like career dreams or corporate life, also engaged viewers. Each scene offered a unique combination of medium and mode and produced distinct responses for the study indicators. I determined that the indicators were intertwined in participants’ experiences/responses—e.g., embodied emotion—but at the same time some indicators were more important to distinct participant groups or types of scenes. For example, actors engaged more strongly in propositional imagination and audiences responded empathetically or with an embodied remembrance to physical actions onstage. Key elements of this study include its use of many mediums and modes as diverse experiences within a single show to identify the flow of the human facets of emotion, imagination, and embodiment between theatrical participants; the identification of presentational versus interactive mediums for multimedium theatrical scenes; and the distinction of the theatrical performance of concrete poetry as concretized poetry. It was also noteworthy that the audience, while reacting strongly, and sometimes negatively, to unusual technological engagements, still found those scenes emotionally meaningful for the narrative, characters, and themselves. The AR scanning scene was met with both fascination for the technology and empathy for those audience members affected by it; the AI video’s perceived negative qualities (grotesqueness or questionable legitimacy as performance material, for example) did not dim the positive impact of the video for narrative pacing and emotional impact. Potential directions for creative exploration in future projects include growing the content material to create a longer show to deepen narrative connections and character nuance. Taking existing social circulatory models of emotion as a starting point, I could also use the multimedium theater model as a substrate on which to creatively implement theatrical performances that explicitly lean on the circulations of my other indicators, embodiment and imagination, in novel multimedium performance spaces or configurations.