The (st)age of participation: Audience involvement in interactive performances

In today’s Age of Participation, co-creation, user-generated content and social networking have become part of a mass-appeal digital lifestyle. This paper discusses potential implications for contemporary and future media art in the context of the stage. It reflects on why and how interactive performances could give consideration to this Zeitgeist of empowered spectatorship and, moreover, proposes principles for participatory stage pieces that incorporate practice-based experience as well as findings from (Social) Flow theory, a psychological framework for optimal creative experience that we found to be valuable for fostering audience engagement in interactive dramaturgies.