Performance culture is changing. The turn towards playful invitations to intense and intimate encounters, is becoming immensely popular with both artists and audiences.

Audiences are being drawn into rich and sometimes risky experiences in the middle of performance, rather than at a safe spectatorial distance, often through structured games or playful provocations. The diverse work that is going on in theatre, live art, dance, gaming and applied arts can be seen as a dynamic but diffuse project of research and development into interaction, involvement and encounter, and into what play and performance can become in contemporary culture.

This project, led by Gareth White and Bruce Barton with an international group of practitioners, academics and practitioner-academics, strengthens connections between these disciplines, to enhance shared understanding in the sub-disciplines of participatory performance, and to stimulate new directions of enquiry in practice and theory.

The project began in May 2019 with a performance Lab, attended by network members from across the world, at Jackson’s Lane in London. A second Lab takes place in November, along with a one-day open symposium, sharing the experiences of the network and inviting other experts (producers, critics, audiences, as well as practitioners and scholars) to share their perspectives.

Funded by the AHRC’s Research Networking Scheme, this project shares ideas and working methods of playfully inviting audiences to engage in challenging activity in the midst of performances.