ResearchWorks: Interactive Immersive Opera: building worlds and agency through music

Photo credit: Claire Shovelton

Since 2019, Leo Doulton has been developing interactive immersive operas, where the audience enter as people who have agency within the world of the show. Most notably in Come Bargain With Uncanny Things, the shows combine adaptive narratives that place the audience as a collective protagonist in a world where music is used both as a method of communicating worldbuilding and granting the audience a sense of agency.In this talk, Leo will discuss the process and ideas behind Come Bargain With Uncanny Things and subsequent work, with a particular focus on ideas around building communities, commercialism, and collaborative processes. Or maybe just run some game theatre. Or both.

Speaker

Leo Doulton is a writer and director working in opera and interactive theatre. Leo studied at University College London (BA History) and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama (MA Opera Making). As a director, Leo has been a 2022 JMK Award Finalist, a 2022 Opera Awards Foundation Bursary recipient, and was longlisted for the 2019 Offie Award for Best Opera. In 2023, Leo was appointed Associate Creative Director of Lemon Difficult.As a writer-director, highlights include contributions to Voidspace Festival (Theatre Deli, 2024), Paradise Craved (Theatre Deli, 2023), Come Bargain With Uncanny Things (Virtually Opera, 2022; Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival 2021), and a decade-long relationship with University College London academics leading creative outreach projects.Other directing highlights include Miryeml (JW3, 2023), A Scary Place To Exist (Grimfest, 2023), Macbeth (York Shakespeare Project, 2021), and assisting Amy Lane on Die Walküre and Max Hoehn on L’elisir d’amore (Longborough Festival Opera, 2024 and 2023).Leo’s writing has been supported by a 2023 Theatre Deli Classic Residency and a 2021 Britten Pears Foundation Creative Retreat. Highlights include libretti and translations for the Royal Opera House, Scottish Opera, and Grimeborn. The interactive novel Rites of Angels will be published by Voidspace Press in late 2024.

Guildhall School’s ResearchWorks is a programme of events centred around the School’s research activity, bringing together staff, students and guests of international standing. We run regular events throughout the term intended to share the innovative research findings of the School and its guests with students, staff and the public.