Original title: Why immersive drama has become popular
Stills of the ancient style immersive drama "Aolu Youming Aoki Chapter" Information picture
Stills of "That Year's August 1st" Information picture
"Six Notes of Floating Life" Garden Edition Stills Information Picture
"Light- lamp—" When visitors put on the work card of the intern researcher and shouted out the "start code" in unison, an immersive cultural relics restoration journey officially began.
This is the scene at the "Zhang Lantern Colorful - Palace Museum Collection of Palace Lamps and Treasures Exhibition" currently being held at the Beijing Municipal Museum of Optics and Technology. Hosting an exhibition of cultural relics in the form of an immersive performance is the reason why the exhibition has become popular on social media and has been extended repeatedly. Here, the audience is both a visitor and a participant, who can ask questions to the cultural relics docents, or they can have an air-to-air dialogue with the ancients through the screen.
In recent years, with the popularity of immersive formats, drama is "encountering" with museums, bars, restaurants and various new cultural spaces, resulting in rich chemical reactions, colliding with more new forms of theater viewing and interactive experience, becoming a new trend among young people, and also making the traditional stage art form of theater full of new vitality.
Engaging polyphonic narrative
What is immersive drama?
Immersive drama is also known as immersive drama. In a specific acting space, the audience can actively explore the plot, follow the actors to walk, pick up props to look through, and even lead the actors and other audiences to develop new plot clues.
In 2016, "Sleepless Nights" premiered in Shanghai and became a phenomenon product for a while. The main creator completed the setting of the venue through the transformation of a rotten building in downtown Shanghai. In the five-story theater, dozens of rooms stage different plots almost at the same time, and the audience is attracted by the plot and follows the footsteps of the actors upstairs and downstairs to explore around. To date, the immersive play, imported from New York and adapted from Macbeth, has been staged more than 1,000 times in a row, with an average attendance rate of 95%.
At the same time, from adaptation to originality, from imitation to innovation, more and more immersive dramas have sprung up, and more people have accepted and loved this new form of performance.
In recent years, many traditional formats have also felt the "magic" of immersive drama. During last year's National Day, a drama called "That Year's August 1st" was staged at the August 1st Uprising Memorial Hall in Nanchang. In the play, the audience can choose the roles of recruits, students, citizens, etc., change into corresponding costumes, and immerse themselves in the touching story of the revolutionary predecessors bidding farewell to their hometown, participating in the revolution, and strengthening their faith. After the first round of performances, many viewers and the people in the play empathized and spontaneously shared their post-viewing experiences online.
"At the moment, young people are not satisfied with the traditional 'explained' way of visiting, they prefer to participate in it themselves. When the exhibition takes the form of an immersive repertoire, a new interactive relationship is formed between the visitor and the actors. More open, multi-point scenes and performances allow young people to freely choose the perspective to understand and excavate that period of history, and generate the desire to visit many times. Zhan Wen, deputy director of the Propaganda Department of the Qingyunpu District Committee of Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province, and chairman of the Federation of Literary and Art Circles, said.
Traditional culture has also become a source of inspiration for original scripts. In a hutong in Beijing's Chaoyang District, on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, the theater here stages the ancient style immersive drama "Qinglu Youming Aoki Chapter". When the audience put on their veils and cross a long corridor, they enter a small village called Luyin Village, observing everything that happens here as villagers.
"The inspiration for this play is the Classic of Mountains and Seas." Ouyang Lingxiang, the production director of "Qinglu Youming", is a post-90s generation, because he watched "Sleepless Nights" in Shanghai, learned about the form of immersive drama, and came up with entrepreneurial ideas. "In fact, there are many elements in our traditional culture that are suitable for adaptation into immersive drama, and I am very interested in the genre of Zhiwei, so I chose the direction of ancient style and fantasy to let my ideas land, and finally had the play "Qinglu Youming"."
"Sink" into it, where is the difficulty
The "2020 White Paper on the Development of China's Immersive Industry" pointed out that the number of immersive experience projects in mainland China has increased from 1 in 2013 to 1100 in 2019, and the average annual growth rate since 2016 has been concentrated at 200% to 300%. Although the current development momentum of the entire immersive experience industry is positive, many people in the industry feel that it is still not easy to make a good immersive drama.
The first is the issue of cost and fares. In immersive drama, the audience often goes deep into the scene, and even picks up props to look through, so the "hardware" such as setting, props, and costumes need to be very sophisticated, which is bound to lead to the high production cost of an immersive drama.
In addition to production costs, there are also operating costs. "There is a relatively crude criterion for the audience experience of immersive theater, that is, how many audiences an actor needs to serve on average." Immersive theater producer Qian Zijun introduced that in order to ensure a better sense of interaction and immersion, the audience ratio of an immersive drama actor must be higher, of course, you can also use technical means to enhance and balance the sense of experience, but it is absolutely not possible to enter the open space endlessly. This means that there is a cap on the flow of a single ticket for immersive projects, and the price per ticket cannot be too low. The reporter found in the investigation that the current popular immersive drama, the ticket price is mainly concentrated in the range of 400 to 1000 yuan, which undoubtedly limits the further "out of the circle" of immersive drama.
There are also questions of scripts and talent. Compared with traditional drama, immersive drama often has multiple story lines, and there will be overlapping parts between the story lines. How do you get the audience to separate when they should be apart and merge when they should merge? What kind of stories will the audience on each storyline encounter in every minute? "There's a lot of logic behind that, so when it comes to making immersive theatrical scripts, I personally prefer to do it in tabular form rather than through traditional document form." Qian Zijun believes that the plot effect in the traditional sense determines the upper limit that an immersive drama can achieve, but whether the script logic and the audience movement line are reasonable determine the lower limit of a play, which puts forward higher requirements for traditional screenwriting talents.
Actors face more trials. "The every move of the immersive theatrical actor, every smile, is completely exposed to the audience, without the slightest opportunity to hide, it must be done with extreme detail." As a result, immersive plays tend to have longer rehearsal cycles than regular plays. Ouyang Lingxiang introduced that the rehearsal time of "Qinglu Youming" is as long as 3 to 4 months, in this process, it is also necessary to constantly simulate the various reactions of the audience, so that the actors can adapt to this form in advance, and guide the audience into the play and empathy in a short period of time.
Where the future holds
"Whether it's a script kill or an escape room, the common goal of an immersive experience is to build an infinitely realistic virtual world and explore the limits of human experience." Ouyang Lingxiang said the ultimate ideal and pursuit of many people in the industry. But many people in the industry also admit that as a new thing, immersive experiences, including script killing, will still take time to grow in China. Judging from the feedback from channels such as the Internet, there are also many immersive experiences with gorgeous forms, empty content, and deliberate interactions, and the industry needs to be regulated.
As a segment of the immersive industry, in what direction will immersive theater develop in the future?
Doing series products will be a trend that cannot be avoided. "Immersive theatre is the most time-consuming and money-intensive of all genres, and it may not be cost-effective in terms of short-term investment, but when a work has stood the test of time and becomes a classic, its value is immeasurable." Ouyang Lingxiang introduced that "Qinglu Youming Aoki Chapter" has been staged more than 150 times, accumulating a good reputation and a stable audience group, and three chapters are already in preparation. "We don't want to do 'FMCG', we want to make it a classic."
In addition, "collision" with different formats has also become a choice for immersive drama to go out of the small circle and enter the public. It is understood that even for a large-scale immersive performance such as "Sleepless Night", its single audience will not exceed 400 people, while the number of small and medium-sized immersive performances such as "Qinglu Youming Aoki Chapter" will have a single audience of about 100 people. But when immersive theater is combined with exhibitions, scenic spots, bars and other formats, its flow of people can be greatly increased.
"It's actually a trick." Qian Zijun explained that taking the immersive experience exhibition as an example, its control of the flow of people is not so strict, one is because the exhibition is not limited by a fixed performance time, and the other is because the dramatic interpretation interspersed in the exhibition is often relatively simple and simple. For the audience of the exhibition, their psychological expectation is only to see a solo exhibition, and they did not expect to see the play, which is an upgrade of the experience.
For scenic spots, bars and other formats, their scenes are natural immersive performance venues, and the business model has become more mature. It is understood that during the performance of the immersive classic Kunqu opera "Six Memories of Floating Life" in Shanghai Yu Garden, Suzhou Canglang Pavilion and other scenic spots, in addition to ticket revenue, it also played a great role in driving the consumption of catering and shopping in scenic spots.
"The integration of performing arts space and public space breaks through the venue restrictions of traditional theater, reduces the cost of performance venues, and also realizes the guidance and shaping of urban culture." In Qian Zijun's view, this form of immersive, interactive and participatory drama in public space will be a new consumption in the future.
(Reporter Fang Quyun)
(Guangming Daily)