OVER its two-week run, Transform hosted groups from all over the world to provide their perspectives on some big global themes.

One is a perceived “crisis of masculinity” and different notions of it are touched upon in bYOB, a new piece from Britain’s 70/30 Split. It starts chillingly, with a man in black combat gear silently outstaring the audience.

But before long matters turns increasingly absurd. The cast of four variously go on to reference the Milk Tray Man, the rose petals in American Beauty and the giant teddy bears of Jeff Koons while reappropriating morris dancing, military training and slumber parties in what’s a humorous yet pointed piece exploring the need to belong and the dangers of this being misdirected.

Pop culture also permeates another British production, Jamal Gerald’s multi-sensory one-man show Idol.

An exploration of religion and black identity, it combines live music with video footage, storytelling and incense-burning on an altar dedicated to two of Gerald's favourite celebrities, Prince and Beyonce.

Conversational in tone, his personal story as “a black queer version of Madonna” takes on issues of colourism, as he touches on the marriage potential of white gay men and ownership of record labels.

Despite occasionally stumbling over the script, and one too many pauses to adjust the set or his costume, it’s a powerfully immersive piece.

MDLSX from Italy’s Motus explores gender and identity through personal narratives. Blurring the truth of home video footage with the fiction of Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel Middlesex, Silvia Calderoni sheds layers of clothing to reveal new identities.

Set to a thumping soundtrack of ‘80s and ‘90s alt-rock, there are times when it’s genuinely moving but the device of speaking to a live-feed camera rather than directly to the audience creates an intentional barrier.

That’s much like the artificial border within which the piece is performed, a large fabric triangle that both encloses and fragments, according to the degree of social acceptance for the identity Calderoni assumes.

Music also soundtracks mood in When It Breaks It Burns from Brazil’s coletivA ocupacao, which tells the story of the high-school occupations of 2015 and 2016 in the Latin American state.

The cast dance and share photographs with the audience and those participatory acts are punctuated by heightening tensions, with aggressive rap underscoring the students’ clashes with the military police.

But the spirit of participation between cast and audience also captures the optimism of living inside a political movement and that eventually spills out onto the streets as audience members get caught up in the notion that they can make a difference.

That production’s optimism contrasts with Rewire Leeds by machina eX from Germany, another participatory show that looks at the power of surveillance.

A hybrid between an interactive installation and Choose Your Own Adventure computer game, it uses smartphone technology and automated voice messaging to guide participants around the city and complete tasks.

An intriguing idea, it’s nonetheless hindered by the limitations of technology and the lack of any momentum or conclusion.

As an early proponent of such immersive city gaming, it will be interesting to see how the the show develops in a couple of years, when the digital world is more able to realise its intrinsic possibilities.