Elizabeth Hunter, assistant professor of performing arts in WashU Arts & Sciences, has won the 2026 Edited Works Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) for Enveloping Worlds: Toward a Discourse of Immersive Performance.

 

Edited by Hunter and Scott Magelssen (University of Washington), Enveloping Worlds brings together essays that examine the phenomenon of immersive, participatory performance as it has developed in the United States. The volume explores how immersive performance offers three-dimensional multisensory experiences, inviting audience members to be participants in the unfolding of the story, and challenging pre-existing ideas about the function of performance and entertainment. The award rationale praised Enveloping Worlds for "provid[ing] a vibrant, comprehensive, and creative intervention in the field's consideration of immersive performance while also demonstrating an innovative approach to the project of editing." The Edited Works Award recognizes multi-authored edited projects in the fields of theatre and performance that demonstrate complex and critical engagement with dramatic texts, performances, histories, theories, practices, and/or pedagogies.

 

Founded in 1986, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education is a comprehensive non-profit professional membership organization that serves the interests of its diverse individual and organizational members, including college and university theatre departments and administrators, educators, graduate students, and theatre practitioners.