By Ruth Mariner, recipient of a 2023 Early Development Fund award
‘Immersive’ is an ever-popular but diffuse term that’s often used to mean – at it’s most basic level – an experience that surrounds us. But in the context of storytelling, being surrounded by something doesn’t necessarily mean it becomes meaningful. Immersion, crucially, comes in different forms: spatial, interactive, emotional, and each of these need to interact with the core theme and story in order to create a meaningful experience.
The environment shouldn’t be treated as a backdrop, but as a narrative container – a living, breathing space where story is told through the interactions between character, audience and world. As a narrative designer and creative director my task is to ensure these elements serve to reinforce and give weight to the story we’re trying to tell.
In this article I’ll explore a series of questions that immersive creators can ask themselves in order to facilitate alignment between storytelling and environmental design. To do so, I’ll refer to my immersive project Shapeshifter…
Introducing Shapeshifter
Shapeshifter is an immersive experience I’ve been developing over the past two years with support from BFI NETWORK, Arts Council England, XR Stories, the University of Nottingham, and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Made in collaboration with Co-creative Director Maggie Bain, Technical Director David Gochfeld, Developer Lucy Wheeler, Art Director Freyja Sewell and Producer Toki Allison. It’s still a work-in-progress and our most recent stage has been user testing at Central School of Speech and Drama.
The piece explores queer identity through the figure of the Púca — a shapeshifting nature spirit from Celtic folklore. It interweaves the lived experience of non-binary actor Maggie Bain with extraordinary scientific insights into the fluid diversity of sex and gender in the natural world, questioning our assumptions around ‘what is natural.’ It’s a location-based experience for up to 10 players wearing virtual reality headsets, within the same space as a live actor. It includes elements of story, audience interaction, exploration and play.
Across plants, fungi and animals, shapeshifting is not just metaphorical but biological reality: fish that change sex during their lifetimes, fungi with thousands of mating types, or animals whose reproduction adapts to environmental conditions. The role of the environment within the piece is to invite us into more expansive ways of seeing both ourselves and the world around us.
What Do We Need to Represent?
In creating an immersive environment, the most successful aesthetics often start with the question: if it’s not providing interactive, symbolic, or contextual purpose, then do you really need it?
One of the traps of immersive media, particularly in commercially-driven XR, which serves mainly to showcase the tech, is the compulsion to render everything. But coming from a theatrical background, we asked a very different question: what do we need to represent — and equally, what can we leave to the imagination?
This principle shaped our design approach. We leaned into hand-drawn textures, suggestive forms and symbols. For example, hand-drawn outlines of leaves that, when approached, scuttle to the side. By providing less, the result is that the audience projects into the world, becoming co-creators of its meaning.
What Relationships Do We Need to Create?
What relationships are key to your experience, and how are these best facilitated by the space? Do you want to create 1:1 relationships, groups or a solo experience?
Immersive spaces aren’t just settings, they’re arenas for social interaction. In the case of Shapeshifter this interaction takes place between audience members, but the key dynamics in our project is the changing relationship between the audience and the performer. Our design created moments of closeness and distance: nooks where the actor could retreat, and opportunities where they could pass through digital surfaces in order to hide themselves and re-emerge. These nooks can hold intimate moments with one audience member at a time, pods can completely contain an audience member within their own space (separating them from others and leaving space for their own personal reflection), and paths will clearly invite audiences to move through the space in a particular direction.
How Do We Need to Experience Ourselves?
How can participants experience themselves within the space, in a way that helps bring home the message of the piece?
In Shapeshifter we invite audiences to explore their own capacity for change, and trying out and reflecting on new forms is a key part of the experience. To bring the audiences’ attention to this they being the experience with no avatar, and from there we gradually build their identity, letting them choose a symbol. Later, they inhabit a range of avatars as they accompany Púca on the lessons they learned from beings in the natural world. This ties to the central message of the piece; enabling them to experience shapeshifting first hand, rather than just witnessing it.
How Do We Need the World to Respond?
Why does it matter that the audience is there?
In immersive storytelling the world must respond to the audience, not necessarily in complex ways, but in ways that help the audience feel that their presence mattered. For example, a key theme within Shapeshifter is reverence for the natural world, and therefore this is embedded in the experience: bow to a flower and it opens; stroke a moss-like wall and its texture changes; press your hand to a mushroom and it blooms.
However, the main way in which the piece responds to the player is through the interactive dialogue, which takes place between the audience member and Púca. Through intimate conversations, the audience have the power to help Púca trust humans again, and help them return to the human world.
Hopefully, these questions will help you on your own journey of immersive storytelling and give you some food-for-thought.
The BFI NETWORK Early Development Fund opens once per year for writers of live action, animation or immersive projects, find out more here.