This paper studies the role of location-based technology in interactive audio drama. The drama, Maryam, was recorded and produced as a smartphone application and then used in the study. This drama tells the story of a female scientist, Maryam Al-Ijliya, who lived in Aleppo, Syria in the tenth century. Each scene in the drama is triggered by audience members walking close to certain global positioning system (GPS) coordinates. The study analyzes the observations made on 45 people walking around to experience the drama, and interviews with 12 of them after the drama.

The paper’s findings show that mobile technology plays a positive role in the sense-making of the audio drama. The participants in the study use the mobile app primarily to listen to the story and check the progress of the drama, instead of using it to support navigation. This means “that the audience ... could walk, listen to, and be immersed in the story at the same time,” without having to stop and use the app to find out how to get to the next scene. The “immersion in the narration enabled by the mobile technology contributes to a particular sense of place (being at the theater, or not currently being in this world).” During the study, it was also observed “that bystanders avoided walking through the audience groups, or moved away when a group approached an area.” This could be due to the special sociotechnical setup: the audience wore headsets that helped isolate them from external noises. This allowed the audience to be better immersed in the audio drama. In other words, adopting location-based technology in audio drama contributes “to the separation of two different, but co-existing, areas for engagement: the audience[’s] theatrical one, and the bystanders’ everyday one.”

Another interesting finding made by the paper is that the “loose coupling of story and place” created an ambiguity that facilitates the audience’s open interpretation of the drama. To be more specific, the design of drama was characterized by the lack of correspondence between various scenes and the places where the audience experienced them. This was done on purpose “by the director of the play and ... the production team. Only occasionally the [audio drama] offered more literal connections.” The paper mentions that the audience used imagination to look for the “causal relationships between scenes and places. Making up these connections was central in relating mobile scenes to the surrounding environment, and in seeking to make sense of a story that was not enacted on a traditional stage.” Therefore, loose coupling fosters the audience’s role as active sense makers. Finally, the paper suggests including this type of loose coupling in future location-based services.