Combining alternate reality gaming, haunted house techniques, and a two-hour immersive theater show, Tension experience is a persistent, fictional universe where the participant’s choices determined what happened next, and the line between reality and fantasy became so blurred it barely even existed at all.
All of Bousman’s work results in experiences that end up tailored to the individual. Within Tension you were to fill in very long questions and even upon arriving in the world, all these characters would want to know more about you. Your personal information, your darkest secrets become part of the content of the show. It is in a way scary because you have know idea what they will do with that and you are not sure what will come next, yet it makes you feel special and excited. I haven’t found immersive works yet that are narratively this complex because it uses so much input from the audience. The biggest difference is that the audience becomes co creators of the show. The show can’t exist without the audience and its input. It is not a choice of whether to go in room A or room B, the actors and writers behind the scenes have no clue what is going to happen too and the story is being created in real time. Producers like Parabolic Theatre have used similar ways of agency, in which they give prompts to the audience and the audience can be as creative as they would like with finding a solution. For example saying you are an army general and you need to decide what to do with your men out on the field. Do you go left or do you go right? Yet in immersive theatre we do involve and invite the audience, but Bousman really makes it all about the audience. They are the story.