Theatre aurality refers to emerging practices of sonic-led theatre and a critical field of theatre and
performance analysis. It explores sound in and as theatre; and it refers to the phenomenal and
discursive field of theatre sound and to the structures in which these occur; the socio-political and
philosophical, as well as the aesthetic. This paper will focus on the work of Extant, the UK’s leading
theatre company for the Blind and visually impaired, and its experiments with omnipresent,
directional and tactile sound in Flatland, a production of theatre-in-the-dark. The sound design for
this production generated the feeling of spaces in a number of ways, through near-ear and hand
held devices and via a sound design which explored the particular ambiguity of dimensions in
Flatland. Drawing on the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy I will explore how we can navigate spaces
through sound, through its feeling and hapticity, and how it can literally move its audience without
recourse to the visual
