Affectual Dramaturgy for Augmented Reality Immersive Heritage Performance

This paper introduces the concept of Affectual Dramaturgy as a lens for creating digitally mediated immersive performances in the context of cultural heritage. In doing so we bring together two disciplines, smartglass Augmented Reality design (AR) and immersive heritage performance, with the aim to innovate experiences built for heritage sites. For both disciplines, immersive experience building uses interactive methods to engage the public with the tangible and intangible heritage of a site. Immersive heritage performance incorporates narrative-led, affective, and ludic techniques found in virtual and live immersive and participatory theatre practice. Smartglass AR experiences communicate to the viewer how a place was in the past by means of superimposing on the physical space virtual material accompanied with audio. However, often, the orchestration of the virtual material does not take the context into account and the superimposition of digital information misses an opportunity to connect into the existing narrative of the site tapping into its rich dramatic potential. This article explores how AR design and live performance can blend together through embodied storytelling techniques designed to draw the public’s attention to their sensorial experience of the site, and offer them a deeper understanding of the place’s history, which we refer to as affectual dramaturgy. By fusing embodied, affectual, and sensorial experience into the public’s engagement with the site, this article explores how interdisciplinary collaborations between theatre and AR design may create innovative tools and methods to tell stories of the past for the 21st century museums.