Acting the Part
Audience Participation in Performance
Published on 14. October 2025
Book
Hardback
266 pages
978-0-472-07771-7 (ISBN)
Description
Acting the Part offers a paradigm for understanding how audiences participate in immersive theater, from physical spaces like the Globe in London to digital spaces like social virtual reality. Reading across twenty-first century productions of ancient Greek tragedies and William Shakespeare's plays, E. B. Hunter proposes the concept of "enactivity" to describe the positionality audiences inhabit when their participation is critical to the narrative but cannot alter its intended course. This positionality is that of the archetype, the enactment of which is shaped by four production conditions: a historically resonant site, a canonical source, an immersive space, and a production-specific economy that incentivizes some behaviors and discourages others. At the heart of Acting the Part is a framework for identifying how a production's management of these conditions gives rise to a range of archetypes, such as worshiper, sleuth, cinematographer, and others. Against the backdrop of an ever-increasing push for audience participation, Acting the Part sheds new light on the many ways in which productions shape that participation in real time.
Reviews / Votes
"This fantastic book, very well-written and deeply smart, offers a great deal to think about for performance makers, participants, and scholars alike. Alive with historical resonances and alert to contemporary iterations, the book offers not only critical resources regarding audience modes of mattering, but inspiration. Once more into the breach, indeed!" -- Rebecca Schneider, Brown University "Acting the Part is an outstanding book. Hunter makes an important contribution to theater and performance studies by offering a new paradigm for understanding how audiences participate in theater. For scholars and artists of digital performance and anyone interested in spatial computing, the book is essential reading." -- Gina Bloom, University of California, Davis "Acting the Part reveals the variety and nuance of participatory performance in the twenty-first century. Hunter's lively, readable cases-ranging from the new Globe theater to virtual and augmented reality-show that the meaning and stakes of audience participation crucially depend both on what archetypes audiences are invited to embody (worshipper, sleuth, crusader, etc.) and on the production's particular affordances." -- John H. Muse, University of Chicago "Notably, Acting the Part is a book informed not only by scholarship but also by creative practice...The result is a book that combines a scholarly habit of generalization with a practical attention to theatre's messy contingency." -- Christopher Grobe, Theatre SurveyMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Ann Arbor
United States
Illustrations
32 Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-472-07771-7 (9780472077717)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
E. B. Hunter is Assistant Professor of Drama at Washington University in St. Louis. She is coeditor of Enveloping Worlds: Toward a Discourse of Immersive Performance (2025).
Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Introduction
Chapter 1-Worshipper: The New Globe Theatre in London
Chapter 2-Sleuth: The Open-World Theater of Sleep No More
Chapter 3-Patron at the Vanguard: Theater in Social VR
Chapter 4-From Cinematographer to Protagonist: Theater and Augmented Reality
Coda
Glossary
Bitter Wind Walkthrough
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Introduction
Chapter 1-Worshipper: The New Globe Theatre in London
Chapter 2-Sleuth: The Open-World Theater of Sleep No More
Chapter 3-Patron at the Vanguard: Theater in Social VR
Chapter 4-From Cinematographer to Protagonist: Theater and Augmented Reality
Coda
Glossary
Bitter Wind Walkthrough
Notes
Bibliography
Index