On the of November, 2023, I attended the Paper Birds theatre company’s new show, ‘Feel Me’ at the Gulbenkian Arts Centre, Canterbury.
‘Feel Me’ is a piece of devised theatre with a surprising interactive element; audience members were urged to get their phones out during the performance!
During Most, if not all, theatre productions you will be instructed to put your phone on silent and put it away. If you were in the audience for ‘Feel Me’ you would have been asked to participate in the show by using your phone to take part in polls which influenced the performance. For example, one poll asked what footwear the actors would wear during the performance. I believe this helped immensely with keeping the audience engaged throughout the performance.
Paper Birds’ ‘Feel Me’ is all about empathy. The show combined live performance, film, projection, dance and music to tell the story of the experience of a teenager, after becoming a victim to forced displacement. There are no defined characters and the stories merge into one another. This leaves the character up to the viewer’s interpretation, which also shows that forced displacement can happen to anyone. The characters are vague to allow the audience to sympathise with them and imagine themselves in their place. The use of phones contributes to this effect, allowing the audience share their thoughts and make choices which impact what is happening in front of them.
I think the use of phones to allow audiences to interact with and impact the art that is happening in front of them will be an exciting new way to experience live theatre. I highly doubt this will be the height of new additions to theatre trips, as technology is quickly evolving all around us, we can expect to see more ways it will be utilised within performances.
