Space

I suppose that you could put most any theatrical production in a found space.  Take for example McBeth in the article we read.  They were "performing" it in a building with several stories and each room was a different part of the story.    The same could hold true for performances like The 13th Gate in Baton Rouge.  It is performed in an old building which when it first started, was a found space.  Over time and many shows over the years, it has been become a transformed space. My son was is a production called put on by Bethany Church which was held in a found and then converted space.  They held it in the parking lot of the old Tinsel Town Theater (a found space) and set up several tents (converted space) for the performances.  The audience had to walk through each space and experience the "performance" and at the end they were invited to sit down with a person (one on one) discuss their experience.

Another time, I was  at the National Boy Scout Jamboree and our "exhibit"  was called "The Underground Mine."  It was held on an Army Base (the found space) and we had several huge shipping containers (like the kind you find on an 18-wheeler) and converted them into different areas of the "mine"  The participants walked through the experience including a simulated elevator down into the mine and  a simulated earthquake (in which the ground actually moved).  At the end, they experienced the feeling of a train coming at them (using very bright lights shining at them) as they "escaped" through another tunnel.   We had another shipping container with monitors in which other people could see watch the expressions of the participants faces (through infra-red cameras) as they stumbled through the dark.

I was thinking of a show that could be done is such a way as a "found" space. I think that the show Raisin could be a cool show.  It could be held in an old apartment building.  Each floor or each apartment could be part of each scene.  I think that the audience could get the feel of what it is like in the world of the play.  I think that this could be an instance in which I would agree with Kanter's view in which the audience would not necessarily expect what would happen next especially if the audience did not know what the original story is.  In the case of The Underground Mine,  The audience did not know what was going to happen since there was no real story or script that had been arranged in which the audience had previous knowledge of.  That made each part of the experience new to them.