Launched in September 2023 with a residency by Irish mega-band U2, entertainment venue Sphere in Las Vegas has established a new technological standard in cinematic-grade hyperstimulating immersive live performance – creating a wonder-inducing communal cultural experience. The appetite for live music is on the up: ticket sales for real-life music events are up 65% from 2022 (Statista, 2023).

Free Your Mind, the inaugural production at Aviva Studios, a new arts venue in Manchester, UK, that opened in October 2023, used the building’s uber-flexible modular design to redefine spatial storytelling. Primed for warehouse-scale music gigs, mega-multimedia exhibitions and immersive theatre, the destination features moving acoustic walls, flexible stages and sound and lighting rigs that can traverse the entire 13,350 sq m space.

Globally, 26% of adults are “extremely” interested in attending a virtual reality (VR) theatre production (Statista, 2023), indicating an audience ripe for nurturing, especially as awareness of what VR can add to traditional theatre increases.

More than half of global consumers are nervous about the impacts of AI, while 66% say they expect AI-powered products to significantly change their daily lives in the next three to five years (Ipsos, 2023). This growing tension was the basis for To Be Continued, a (Netherlands-wide) touring theatre production hinging on audience interactions with AI chatbots, by Dutch contemporary theatre collective Nineties. 

With a pared-down approach demonstrating how a focus on tech can amplify entertainment experiences to generate both physical and mental immersion, British entertainment company Swamp Motel’s production Saint Jude (London, January to July 2023), offered an hour-long site-specific concentrated dose of interactive AI, making individual audience members pivotal to the story in their own isolated experience.