The Banquet: Participatory Sound Theatre Narratives Driven by Social Ritual Gestures
Contemporary immersive theatre often limits audience agency to passive observation or spatial navigation, leaving social co-presence underdesigned. We present The Banquet, a co-located participatory sound theatre that turns culturally grounded ritual gestures—raising and clinking cups—into an interaction grammar for multi-user storytelling. Inspired by Dream of the Red Chamber, the system uses Interactive Audio Augmented Reality (IAAR) to embed narrative logic in embodied action, supported by high-precision tracking and a distributed Wi-Fi audio broadcast architecture. Layered spatial audio and subtle acoustic cues enable strangers to coordinate narrative progression without screens. We discuss how formalizing social rituals as tangible interfaces can support embodied negotiation and collective meaning-making in shared space.