Engaging Theatrical Audiences in Digital Sites: Embracing Experiential Onboarding Tactics

Abstract

In traditional theatrical productions, audiences are ushered to seats, house lights dim, and curtains rise. When this experience moves into digital space, these audience engagement techniques shift. This poster outlines the onboarding tactics theatre-makers deploy in digital sites (i.e., social media platforms, video games), claiming that, as the first point of entry for digital audiences, onboarding is necessary for effective audience engagement. Through the lens of live productions made for and staged in digital sites – a new genre of performance we call “digitally site-specific theatre” – we explore a representative sample of eight theatrical productions and outline four major audience onboarding tactics. These theatre-makers bring creative insights to onboarding processes that help technologists incorporate world-building and quickly cement “rules of engagement” within a variety of digital sites, which can inform HCI approaches to onboarding workflows beyond performance contexts.