Main description:

In this book, Chloe Rae Edmonson analyzes performance sites from throughout U.S. history to reveal the material ways that drinking culture is performative, immersive performance is intoxicating, and how alcohol shapes performance space.

Combining archival research with first-hand accounts of immersive spaces, this study demonstrates how social drinking and performance in themed spaces often collude to reify power dynamics latent to mainstream American culture, such as patriarchal values, racial and wealth inequality, and labor exploitation. Yet there are also examples of how performers, designers, and consumers creatively subvert such dominant attitudes in pursuit of their own creative expression and fulfilment.Part one examines historic bars and clubs that are immersive by design, while part two explores immersive theatre productions from the 1980s to today. At the heart of all these American examples, of course, is alcohol, its associated cultures of immersive consumption, and the wide range of influence it can have on the bodies and minds of participants.

In addition to its pop cultural appeal, this study will be relevant to scholars and university students interested in immersive theatre and performance, drinking culture, and American Studies.

Contents:

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I: Immersive Hospitality

Introduction, Part I: Immersive Hospitality

Chapter 1 - The Concert Saloon: Waiter Girls and Hetero-masculine Drinking Culture

Chapter 2 - Slumming: Racialized Intoxication and Black Performance in Prohibition-Era Harlem

Chapter 3 - The Tiki Bar: Exoticized Cocktails and American Fantasies of Escape

Part II: Hospitable Immersion

Introduction, Part II: Hospitable Immersion

Chapter 4: 1980s Immersive Theatre: Champagne and Distinction in Tamara and Tony n' Tina's Wedding

Chapter 5: The Cult of Contemporary Immersive Theatre: Ritual Drinking in Sleep No More and The Illuminati Ball

Conclusion: Drinking, Culture, and Immersion from a Distance

Index