Yesterday we held the first of the Theatre Sandbox workshops in Bristol. The response to the scheme has been amazing and we had 55 people in place a good half an hour before the event started – are theatre people more punctual than media types? It crossed my mind.

The event was high-energy and designed for people to share and shape potential ideas. Participants were incredibly open and generous which bodes well, as a few emails from people worried about their ideas being stolen had given me the jitters. Some feedback from the Bristol workshop as we went round the circle at the end:

Invigorated, optimistic, challenged, confused, excited, ready to go somewhere risky, brilliant to have this many people to bounce ideas off, learnt a lot, inspired, overwhelmed by generosity, ready to play, fired up, intrigued but lost, white and middle class, hectic, enjoyable, nice to be part of the cutting edge.

What we also learnt from yesterday is that semantics and definitions really to matter people as they enter this complicated territory. As much as we tried to focus on the importance of the idea rather than the technology, people were hungry for definitions and in some cases what we were giving them sometimes didn’t suffice.

The thing that excites me about working in pervasive media is that the understanding of what it is and what it could be is constantly evolving and shifting. We are at the beginning – like cinema was 100 years ago, before Avatar could have ever been conceived. Theatre Sandbox invites artists to help shape, push and inform its development. But with this comes uncertainty – something I take for granted but which isn’t really good enough when you are asking people to dabble in something new.

So today, we come to Soho Theatre armed with a fuller explanation of the scheme and a more definite explanation of pervasive media. I will still try and avoid the ‘what is theatre’ question still though. As Katie said, we are not seeking to be the gatekeepers of a genre.