Immersive Arts Experiences for Teachers

Audience-Immersive Arts Experiences

“Deep Love”: A Personal Reflection

I first saw Deep Love about seven or eight years ago. Described as a “ghostly rock opera,” audience members are asked to dress in funeral attire, encouraged to scream and cheer during the performance like a rock show, and are even invited to participate in a death chant near the end. The experience stuck with me in a way I couldn’t have predicted.

It wasn’t until Oct. 30, 2023, that I was able to go again. With a new cast, I wasn’t sure if my experience would be quite as mind-blowing as it was the first time...but it was! What made it so engaging for me and the entire audience? What made it so different from a standard rock show that makes followers come back year after year for the same performance? It is more than a rock show, not quite an opera, and definitely not a musical.

Unique Aspects of Immersive Arts Experiences 

Deep Love is so much more! Like an opera, Deep Love has a few set characters, in costume, that come up to sing their parts with the audience in seats. Like a rock show, the band is on the stage with solos and riffs while the crowd screams and cheers. But what really sets this experience apart is that the audience is dressed up alongside the performers. With skull masks made of lace and all audience members donning variations of black-on-black throughout the theatre, one becomes a part of the performance, transforming the experience from spectatorial to completely immersive. 

How Teachers Create Immersive Arts Experiences in their Classrooms

What’s so great about an art immersive experience for teachers? Art immersion opportunities can give teachers inspiration on how to create learning immersive experiences for their students. Teachers can mix and match a variety of full immersion techniques to create something totally new for their classrooms.

Let’s use my experience at Deep Love, and another immersive experience at the Witchfest in Gardner Village. What do these experiences have in common? Both ask for participants to dress up. Both provide opportunities for participants to actively take part in the experience instead of only observing or spectating. Both create a variety of experiences beyond adorning costumes. Both are spontaneously changed by the participants' involvement. How do we bring this to the classroom? We’ve seen classes have students dress up as someone in history and give a report in first person. We’ve also seen classes create neighborhoods where everybody has a job and students get to see firsthand how a community comes together. Those are great examples. 

Immersive Experiences in Science, Math, and Literacy

But could a similar experience be created in other subject areas such as math, reading, and science? Most definitely! Reading gives an amazing opportunity for students to become storytellers: practicing reading a story with pauses, high and low volume, and a variety of voices and sounds. Or the whole class could put on a play about the story as they practice lines and working together as a team.

Science is full of amazing opportunities to learn the art of hypothesis and research, using an experiment to prove theories right or wrong. One of my favorite lessons (that I still remember 20+ years later) was having to solve a murder using forensics and DNA samples to prove who-done-it. How much more immersive could it have been if we had “actual” suspects come in, or if we had to dust for fingerprints at the murder scene?

A truly immersive experience with math could turn a student from numerically challenged into numerically inclined. Students could become illuminators, creating geometric patterns from a series of equations. Better yet, they could create a geometric design themselves, figure out the equations, then hand those over to another student to try and recreate their work through the math.

Could you take it a step further? Have students become researchers and create data visualization that helps their classmates understand and connect with their research. Giorgia Lupi and Nathalie Miebach are two data artists that you could draw inspiration from.

“Deep Love” Cast Perspectives on the Power of Immersive Experiences

Chase

“As a performer, I love being in a room with everybody feeling the same thing: it’s a great human connection.”

Andrew

“Since COVID, we see how important a collective experience is. Dressing up gets the audience invested in the show, and first-time participants already like it before we’ve even played a note because they are ready to receive.”

Liz

“Great performance art invites you to experience whatever the characters are experiencing[...] It removes another layer of separation and allows the audience to really dig in [allowing them] to work through their own experiences.”

Take Yourself on an Immersive Arts Date

As teachers it is easy to get caught up in our students and classrooms and we forget about ourselves. Our personal experiences matter! Taking time to immerse ourselves in something like Deep Love, Witchfest, or the Utah Renaissance Faire gives us a chance to lose ourselves, be inspired, and expand our creativity. This holiday season, go experience the art for yourself in something wonderfully immersive.

To Be CreARTive

Writers read to become better writers. Researchers collaborate. Scientists observe. Musicians listen. Good teachers participate. The world is so different than it was just a few years ago. Students struggle in a way adults never had to. They need support to help them learn innovation and creativity that constant screen time has impeded.

So take yourself on an immersive art date to Gardner Village or Thanksgiving Point. Allow yourself the luxury of time away from responsibilities. Experience something new that sparks your creative potential, fills your head with ideas, and leaves you wanting to share the excitement with others.

Some other places and events to check out are: 

Evermore Park 

Dreamscapes 

Get Out Games