Dramaturging from Within: The Dramaturg as First Experiencer in Immersive Audio

This article focuses on the role of the dramaturg in the process of creating performances in which immersive audio is at the heart of the meaning-making, arguing that in immersive audio the dramaturg takes up a position of first experiencer, rather than first spectator, and that this requires a changed approach from the early stages of conceptualization through to production. Drawing on, revising and augmenting existing ideas and tools in the field of dramaturgy rather than radically dispensing with them, the article theorises three shifts in the attention of the dramaturg in such work by contrast to pre-existing practices; namely: a shift in the positioning of the dramaturg, a shift in anticipated positioning of the audience and a shift in the potential structuring of the audience’s experience. The work presented here assembles its own toolbox for immersive dramaturgy by applying George Home-Cook’s notion of “aural attention” to the dramaturgical process, expanding Elinor Fuchs’ set of dramaturgical questions to ask of a stage play, and finally offering a tool for composing dramaturgically by considering how meaning functions across “layers of perception” when creating an immersive space for an audience to inhabit.