Stepping into Ibsen:
Accessible Interactive Adaptation as a Model for Renewing Theatrical Audiences
This research reflected on the development of an interactive adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and argued that such participatory forms offer a sustainable and audience-expanding model for contemporary theatre. Using my adaptation as a case study, I examined how reworking a canonical drama through non-linear pathways, audience choice, and site-responsive staging reshapes both the dramaturgy and the spectator’s relationship to the work. Rather than treating immersion as novelty, the project positions interactivity as an interpretive tool: allowing audiences to navigate conflicting perspectives within the play, the adaptation foregrounds the thematic tensions between truth, community, and power that animate Ibsen’s original text.
Emphasizing process as a form of research. Experimenting with lightweight, low-cost techniques—QR-code media fragments, non-theatre spaces, and performer-guided choice points—revealed how immersive design can be achieved without the high financial barriers that often limit innovation. These methods not only reduce material waste and production costs but also create flexible formats that smaller companies and educational institutions can adapt. A key outcome of the project was its appeal to younger and first-time theatre goers, many of whom responded to the agency, immediacy, and informality of the experience. Their engagement suggests that interactive structures may serve as a sustainable strategy for revitalizing theatre’s audience base, inviting participation from communities who feel disconnected from traditional modes of spectatorship.
This research argues that immersive adaptation—rooted in process, accessibility, and experimentation—offers a viable pathway for theatres seeking artistic renewal, financial sustainability, and broader audience reach.
*Presented at the 2026 Comparative Drama Conference
Referenced production: An Investment of the People
Through the creation of a new adaptation now called An Investment of the People, Audience members became a central character of the piece, not only observers of ongoing civic debates between Dr. Stockmann and his brother, the Mayor, Peter Stockmann, but also stakeholders whose economic interests, ethical responsibilities, and interpretive choices became part of the theatrical experience, even dictating how the play resolves.
The project emerges from growing scholarly interest in immersive and participatory performance. Scholars of contemporary theatre have increasingly argued that immersive forms challenge conventional distinctions between performers and spectators, transforming audience members into active participants in theatrical worlds. As Josephine Machon suggests in her article “Immersive Theatre,” in The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance, immersive performance privileges embodied experience and sensory engagement over detached observation, encouraging audiences to encounter performance through direct participation rather than passive reception. Similarly, Gareth White, in his book Audience Participation in Theatre: Aesthetics of the Invitation, argues that audience participation fundamentally alters the dynamics of theatrical meaning-making by distributing responsibility across performers and spectators alike.
Using this new adaptation as a case study, participatory adaptation functions as a form of dramaturgical interpretation. Rather than merely updating setting, language, or context, interactive adaptation redistributes dramatic conflict from fictional characters to audience participants. The central question is no longer simply whether Dr. Stockmann is correct, but how spectators respond when they are positioned within the very systems of economic, political, and social pressure that the play critiques.
In this sense, participation becomes an interpretive methodology. Audience members do not encounter Ibsen's themes through observation alone; they experience them through decision-making, uncertainty, and competing obligations. The adaptation, therefore, reveals dimensions of the source text that remain latent within conventional spectatorship. Rather than asking what An Enemy of the People means, the performance asks: What happens when audiences are required to act upon its ethical dilemmas themselves?
