
Encyclopedia search
If you’ve ever played a video game using a wonky controller, you know how frustrating it is to lack a sense of agency. The game doesn’t respond to your input, no matter how hard you mash the buttons. To feel a sense of agency, things need to be responsive to your input.
Whoopee cushions are great. It’s fun to see people change when they sit down and the sound of a big juicy fart cuts loose. There’s something enjoyable about seeing people be altered. That’s also true in interactive performance. When spects realize that they can make you change, it makes them happy.
Empowerment is an overused word. It’s also an accurate one when describing the goal of interactive performance.
It’s easy to assume that you know where the story should go. When spects take things in different directions, assume they’re right. Go along with them. Remember, the goal of interactive performance is to play the spect’s story.
If you instruct a spect to do something, they may do it, but only because you told them to. To have a sense of agency, spects need to feel like they’re doing things because it’s what they choose to do. This is why it’s better to imply than instruct. You imply by establishing a context within which spects can connect the dots for themselves, which leads them to an action that you have in mind.
In interactive performance, you need to get spects doing things. An easy (but counter-productive) way to accomplish this is by telling them what to do. In other words, instructing them. Unfortunately, this approach also makes things more difficult. If you instruct spects, they may do as they’re told, but they’re unlikely to do anything more. Instead of generating their own ideas, they’ll wait for further instructions. To keep them active you have to keep giving them instructions. It’s a lot of work, and frankly, it’s not much fun. Part of the fun of interactive play is being surprised by the unexpected things that spects bring to the table.