The immersive archive

Abstract

During the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions of 2020–2021, Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre created an immersive theatre performance called ‘Because the Night’, comprising six unique storylines within intricately designed spaces. Unfortunately, the production was interrupted and eventually curtailed prematurely due to further lockdown restrictions closing theatres to the public in 2021. The Malthouse Theatre collaborated with Deakin Motion Lab to document and create an archive of the production. This paper considers the team's approach to creating an immersive archive using cutting-edge 360-degree filming technologies that provide a resource for understanding the particularities of immersive performance praxis. As the audience's embodied and emergent experience of Because the Night was essential to the work’s dramatic form as an immersive theatre production, simulating these qualities within the resulting platform was critical. The resulting archive contributes to the ongoing efforts to create new embodied research methods that allow for a wider audience to understand and experience the unique characteristics of immersive theatre using emerging immersive digital technologies.