Stories Incarnate: Designing Embodied, Interactive Storytelling Experiences For Live Audiences

Today’s audiences are no longer content to passively consume entertainment but are seeking interactive experiences where they have agency to participate more actively. While there has been substantial innovation in entertainment genres that utilize digital media, providing interactive experiences for live audiences remains an ongoing challenge. This project presents an informal evaluation of a proof-of-concept which seeks to engage a seated audience in an embodied, interactive storytelling experience during a live circus performance where the audience can experience agency and communion. Building off Beach Ball Games for Orchestra (Delapierre 2017), where the audience used a large beach ball to play a Pac-Man-style game on a screen at the front of a concert hall, we prototyped an interactive clown show where the audience’s ability to collaborate affected the ambient media, the performer, and, by extension, the outcome of the story.