Immersive Theatre Brings 1950s Conspiracy to Caine Home

LOGAN, Utah — Students in the Department of Theatre Arts at Utah State University recently transformed the historic Caine Home into the setting for an immersive threatre production under the direction of visiting artist Stefanie Batten Bland.

The performance, titled “The Party,” invited audience members to step inside a fictional 1950s gathering hosted by Cleopatra and Julius Caesar in honor of Cicero’s retirement. As guests moved freely throughout the house, scenes unfolded around them with hints of a possible murder.

Grace Lynn Owen, a second-year theatre arts student who played Cicera, said the immersive format creates a unique experience for both performers and audiences.

“Everyone’s allowed to go wherever they would like, and the actors will be walking around the space,” Owen said. “It really is just like coming to a house party. Except that there is a storyline.”

Batten Bland worked with students to develop the immersive production and explore new approaches to performance. Although the creative team had spent the past year discussing ideas and meeting with designers over web conferences to prepare, the full production was devised in just four days of rehearsals.

“I love the form because I love how closeness tells stories and how we actually react inside of them in terms of being a performer and a spectator,” Batten Bland said. “When we're close to someone, we're rubbing up against our fight-flight systems and our nervous systems that cue us in ways that make us avoid or go toward people in real life. This is the form that allows you to do that inside of fiction while you're still dealing with your reality.”

“The Party” provided hands-on experience in a form of theatre that is becoming increasingly popular in the performing arts industry both for actors and production team. Jackie Porter, stage manager and first-year student in the theatre arts program said the format added a level of depth to set design.

“With it being immersive, the audience can see and touch everything in the house,” Porter said. “Everything has to be period-accurate, so it has to be pretty spot on.”

Batten Bland said experiences like this help students expand how they think about performance and collaboration.

“The goal here is to understand that we're all hybrid, and that all the modalities are active at the same time,” Batten Bland said. “If a student can exit a silo and realize that there is a fusion of different disciplines all at the same time under this beautiful umbrella called performance, then it's going to widen their ability to perform and widen their entry points into different types of performative opportunities.”

For more information about theatre arts at USU, visit the website.