We live in a time of constant distraction. We scroll, skim, consume, and move on. But then another pin, another quick video grabs our attention and pulls us elsewhere. Once again. How can we remain present when we have trained ourselves to seek stimulation elsewhere, to scroll, skim, and move on? We have become accustomed to experiencing life through these patterns of consumption, shaping how we learn, pay attention, connect to each other and make meaning.

Theatre, however, asks us to stay. It asks us to remain in a room, with other people, sharing the same moment.

What interests me about immersive practice is that it goes a step further. It does not simply ask us to stay. It invites us to inhabit a world.

“What I love the most about Vinicius’ workshops is that from the very first moment you step in you are immersed in another world, a world in which your mind is set free to explore both the dark and the bright corners and go to places where it’s never gone before!” (Miruna Mogo)

I believe immersive practices have the potential to create a kind of “call to action” button, not one that propels us elsewhere, but one that invites us to land. To land inside a narrative, inside an environment, inside a relationship with the people and things around us.

If that is the case, then what makes that possible? What is it that allows a person to stop looking elsewhere and begin responding to where they are? Is it the performer? The narrative? The atmosphere? Or is it the space itself?

Perhaps presence does not emerge from a single element, but from the meeting of space, bodies, objects, atmosphere, narrative, and encounter.

“I think what stood out the most to me about the workshop was the opening of the latent potential within the simple relationship between body and space. I found that there was complexity in simplicity. And that we as immersive audience goers/humans crave that complex simplicity. The power of a look or a stare.” (Ronnie Griffin)

This is what I want to investigate through this residency. Not simply presence itself, but how immersive experiences can create the conditions for presence to emerge. How can we create environments that ask something different of us? Environments that invite us to remain, to attend, and to inhabit a shared world together?

This is where my current residency begins. The Poetic of Space is not just investigating presence. It is investigating how space, bodies, atmosphere, narrative, and encounter might produce presence.

Perhaps the question is not how we capture attention, but how we create spaces where attention can settle.