The route to immersion: a conceptual framework for cross-disciplinary immersive theatre and experiences

Immersive theatre gained currency in the early 21st century, flourishing in Europe and the USA before reaching Thailand around 2019–2021 with productions such as Unless, Save for Later, and Siam Supernatural Tour. In Thailand, the term often denotes site-specific, technology-light formats where audiences freely navigate physical spaces alongside actors. In contrast, immersive experiences outside theatre (e.g., exhibitions) commonly foreground technologies like VR, AR, and MR, with less emphasis on the physical venue. This divergence creates confusion about what counts as “immersive” and how to assess immersion. The literature across gaming, theatre, and digital culture shows varied definitions: from focused player engagement to technologically driven illusions of reality and presence. As immersive experiences expand across education, marketing, entertainment, and psychology, interpretations have fragmented. A recent multidisciplinary framework (Han, Melissen, and Haggis-Burridge, 2023) defines immersive experiences as multi-sensory, fluent, uninterrupted engagements capable of lasting mental and emotional effects, but it draws little from theatre and performance studies. This article seeks to reconcile and refine the concept across disciplines by integrating theatre/performance perspectives with design-through-technology approaches. It aims to clarify immersion, provide a cross-disciplinary framework and guidelines for creators, support participants in setting expectations, and offer academics criteria for evaluation. Grounded in developments in theatre and communications, the paper reviews the evolution of immersive performance and technologies, current viewpoints, and proposes a revised framework that aspires to realise a fuller potential of immersion.

The paper surveys several strands: (1) Immersive theatre’s evolution and audience centrality, tracing participatory and interactive roots to ritual, happenings, environmental and site-specific theatre, and experimental practices influenced by Artaud, Grotowski, Brook, and Boal. Scholars (Machon, Alston, Biggin, Frieze, White, Carlson) debate the novelty and limits of audience agency in immersive formats, noting the genre’s mainstreaming and commercialisation. (2) Immersive technologies in theatre: VR, AR, and MR have increasingly merged with live performance since the late 20th century, with early high-cost experiments (i.e.VR, Banff projects, Blast Theory) giving way to more accessible, audience-interactive projects post-2016 (National Theatre’s Immersive Storytelling Studio, Punchdrunk’s Believe Your Eyes, The Under Presents, and RSC’s Dream). The shared concern is immersion and presence, blending liveness with technologically mediated environments and avatars. (3) Immersive communication: Defined as lifelike, interactive experiences across physical/virtual realms (Apostolopoulos et al., Shen et al.), encompassing XR, haptics, and holography. This paradigm (Li) reframes boundaries of space/time/work/play and emphasises fluid movement between coexisting environments. (4) Theatre-specific conceptions of immersion: Machon distinguishes immersion as absorption, transportation, and total immersion (praesence), aligning with cognitive and sensory modes (Klich & Scheer). Jarvis critiques theatre-only definitions, arguing for immersion as mislocalized sensation/body transfer enabled by immersive tech (VR), positioning “bodily transference” as pivotal for genuine immersion. Together these strands reveal fragmented meanings of immersion and motivate a framework that integrates theatre phenomenology (praesence), technological affordances (VR body illusion), and design criteria from immersive experience research.

This is a conceptual and integrative review that synthesises perspectives from theatre and performance studies with design-through-technology research to revise an existing immersive experience framework. The authors: (1) review historical and contemporary literature on immersive theatre, immersive communications, and VR/AR/MR-mediated performance; (2) compare theatre-centric concepts (e.g., Machon’s absorption/transportation/total immersion and praesence; Jarvis’s mislocalized sensation and bodily transfer) with a multidisciplinary design framework derived via Delphi methods by Han, Melissen, and Haggis-Burridge (2023); (3) propose an augmented framework adding “bodily immersion” as a fifth facilitator alongside systems, spatial, social/empathic, and narrative/sequential components; and (4) illustrate applicability through cross-domain examples (video games, museums, theme parks, and theatre projects integrating VR). No new empirical data were collected; rather, the approach is analytical, comparative, and theory-building.

• The paper proposes a revised five-part framework for immersive experiences by integrating theatre/performance insights with a multidisciplinary design framework: (1) Systems immersion: physical and mental engagement in mechanics and activity of the experience; (2) Spatial immersion: transportation into a different environment creating a sense of presence; (3) Social/empathic immersion: emotional connection with actors/participants and relevance to users’ social context; (4) Narrative/sequential immersion: compulsion to continue along a coherent, engaging storyline or sequence with logical yet unexpected events; (5) Bodily immersion (new): sensation of bodily transference, generating illusory ownership over virtual bodies and activating praesence. • Bodily immersion is argued to be essential for achieving a complete sense of immersion (total immersion/praesence), currently most feasibly enabled by immersive technologies (particularly VR) via VR body illusion. • The addition of bodily immersion clarifies discrepancies between technology-light, site-specific theatre labelled “immersive” and technology-enabled experiences that achieve body transfer illusions, presence, and heightened proprioceptive engagement. • The framework offers design guidance: systems (influence, clarity of tasks, increasing complexity), spatial (coherent, explorable environments, smooth interactivity), social/empathic (rich backstories, meaningful interactions, relatability), narrative/sequential (participant involvement in arcs with logical surprise), and bodily immersion (engaging imagination and proprioception to produce body transfer/praesence, typically via VR/MR). • Cross-domain exemplars illustrate all five elements in practice (e.g., Punchdrunk’s Believe Your Eyes; Jane Gauntlett’s In My Shoes; Layered Reality’s The Gunpowder Plot).

The revised framework addresses the core question of what constitutes immersion across theatre and non-theatre contexts by unifying phenomenological and technological dimensions. It resolves definitional fragmentation by distinguishing experiences that rely on environment, interactivity, and narrative from those that additionally produce bodily transference and praesence. This distinction explains divergent audience expectations across site-specific theatre and tech-forward installations. The model’s significance is threefold: (1) it provides creators with a concrete set of facilitators and design levers to achieve deeper engagement and guide production choices, especially around when and how to use immersive technologies; (2) it equips participants with clearer expectations of what “immersive” entails, potentially improving satisfaction and matching modalities to goals; and (3) it offers evaluative criteria for scholars and students to analyse immersive works across disciplines. By foregrounding bodily immersion, the framework engages debates (White, Carlson) about the limits of audience agency and “true” immersion, arguing that body transfer via VR currently best realises total immersion/praesence. The implications extend beyond entertainment to education, healthcare, culture, and tourism, aligning with immersive communication’s vision of fluid boundaries between physical and virtual domains.

By integrating the viewpoints on immersion offered by Jarvis (2019) Machon (2016b, 2013), and Li (2020) with the framework by Han, Melissen, and Haggis-Burridge (2023), this paper proposes a revised conceptual framework for the creation of an immersive experience across many contexts, with a particular focus on the domain of theatre, where a precise definition of immersion has yet to be established. The fifth element added is 'bodily immersion,' which is defined by the experience of bodily transference, creating illusory ownership over virtual bodies, and activating praesence, can be activated by the use of immersive technologies, particularly VR. This article traces the evolution of immersive theatre and immersive technologies as a continuation of the path to realising the fullest potential of immersion. Our society is getting closer to achieving that, owing to current trends in immersive experiences that incorporate theatre and immersive technologies. Increased possibilities are seen, not only in the entertainment domain, but across a variety of fields, that collectively open a new chapter in human communication. These represent what Qin Li (2020) describes as 'a profound media revolution' (158) that integrates the virtual world and the physical world. It 'extends, in an all-around way, humans' vision, hearing, touch, and smell. It is not only an indispensable tool for people's wisdom but is also bound to boost the transformation of human beings into biological media' (158).

The authors acknowledge that emphasising VR-enabled bodily immersion as essential for a complete sense of immersion narrows the definition and may exclude many self-described immersive, site-specific, and technology-light performances. The framework is conceptual and theory-driven without new empirical validation; thus, generalisability and applicability across diverse contexts may require further testing and iteration. The argument relies on current technological affordances (VR/MR) and may evolve as new modalities for bodily transference emerge.