Digital Tools in Contemporary Theatre Practice

2014

The evolution of new technologies and media in the knowledge era has had a huge impact on the field of the arts and culture. In particular, two areas should be highlighted: the way how the arts are created and the way how the arts are delivered to their audiences. In the first case, the new technologies and media enabled the creation of completely new forms of arts, mainly within digital culture. In the second case, the wide spread of internet, development of new personal devices and social media emergence caused radical changes in the distribution channels of cultural products based on their digitalization and dematerialization. However, these technological advances inspired not only the creation of new art forms but influenced also the presentation of traditional arts (theatre, opera ballet, etc.), especially by enabling multimedia experiences and interactivity. The aim of this paper is to discuss technological advances of the digital age and their impact on the performing arts, i...

AMFITEATER, 2021

In this article I intend to provide a brief overview of the relationship between theatre and media, starting from the period of the "Theatre of Images" up to the present day, with a particular focus on video theatre in Italy during the 80's: the rise of the alleged "second wave" of the experimental theatre and its protagonists (Barberio Corsetti/Studio Azzurro, Mario Martone). I will explore the implementation of projected moving images in theatre from the film-theatre of Josef Svoboda to the recent experiments with video mapping and techno-immersion on stage. I will continue with the examination of the role of technology and communication via computers, in reference to their influence in society and their effects on social interactions through important political examples given by The Builders Associations: what is interesting in their works is the extraordinary capacity to dramatise some concepts that until now have been dealt with in essays on the sociology of media: the New Public Space, the Panoptic, the New Connective Subjectivity, the Culture of "Real Virtuality". Key concepts like dislocation and deterritorialisation, presence and ubiquity, take in fact, the shape of a powerful "mediaturgy". The ancient style scene, inhabited by back-drop videos projected on a mechanical stage with mobile platforms, is the characteristic of the theatre of Robert Lepage, director, actor and film maker from Canada to whom a paragraph as the undisputed protagonist of the multimedia theatre is dedicated. His concept of a flexible, mechanized performance space is similar to the Gordon Craig's idea of using neutral, mobile, nonrepresentational screens as a staging device.

This study "Theatre and digital, technological development" aim at advocating the development of theatre across the ages, and it's impact on its society. As the technology is becoming more viral and necessary in our society, every sector and discipline have adopted this technological advancement into their discipline to enjoy its advantage and to make thier own work more easier, beautiful, and accessible. However, theatre as one of this sector has also developed from the ritual practises to the public stage and into a digital media that has paved ways into a different branches of presentations. Theatre which was once a Egyptian ritual practise became public stage performance in Greece and today has developed into different branches and types with it's own role and uniqueness. Thus, this study would identity the development and defines the impact of theatre technology in contemporary digital society through the use of media tools and outlet called "multimedia" .

Digital Creativity, 1999

The computer has already become an essential tool both in the professional theatre and in the academic world. This paper gives an overview of the ways in which technology can influence theatre and theatre research practices, dealing both with those technologies which are currently in use and those which the future might hold. The fundamental conclusion is that any move towards reducing the spontaneity of what takes place on stage and the sense of community which takes place in the theatre, thereby creating a more rigid, universalised or solitary experience, seriously threatens the integrity, and also the point, of the live theatre experience.

The term 'Digital' has become a very generic word; any tool or application using data in the form of numerical digits or a chip can be called digital while the term 'performance' can be used in various fields to refer to different meanings. (Dixon, 2004).  Performance should be construed as a 'broad spectrum' or 'continuum' of human activities including ritual, plays, sports, popular entertainments, the performing arts, everyday life performances, popular entertainments, enactment of social, professional, gender, class roles, healing, the media, etc. (Schechner , Performance Studies: An Introduction, 2002,2).  Digital Performance: The Online Magazine for Artists Embracing Technology', created by The Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre (New York) 2002.  Theatre makers can always explore new artistic forms with the help of technology and bring new paradigms to the field of performing arts (Rutsky, 1999).

Skenè. Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies, 2021

As digital design increasingly inscribes its own narrative from the outset of the rehearsal process, twenty-first century theatre artists and audiences are becoming more and more accustomed to porous dramaturgies, influenced by information technologies and digital articulations. This article explores the use of technology in contemporary performance by interrogating the diverse functions of the multimedia element by touching on a number of theoretical and practice-related issues: How has technology affected performance both in terms of creative strategies and audience experience? What are some of the pleasures and dangers involved in the omni-presence of the media in today’s theatre landscape? How has digital articulation enhanced, ironized or redefined structure and characterization? Under what conditions can the encounter of corporeal presence with an electronically interceded image provide meaningful experiences for the audience? Bringing in examples from different multimedia productions, I will try to illustrate a work method of compositional dramaturgy, where the philosophy that structures the mise-en-scène draws from the visual as well as ontological collision between the live and the mediated.

Revue d’Historiographie du Théâtre 4. Special Issue: Études théâtrales et humanités numériques, 2017

After a critical presentation of the state of the art in scholarly activities at the intersection of theatre and digital humanities, in Canada and elsewhere, this paper suggests how the two disciplines might work together to articulate and facilitate new modalities of knowledge production emerging in each individually. Its aim is to make explicit the values of the inventive knowledge production characteristic of design and performance, and to propose that theatre and digital humanities might best acknowledge and enable inventive knowledge by shifting their emphasis away from production-oriented prototyping and towards experimental prototyping, provotyping, and experience design. Du développement des outils au design expérimental Jusqu'à présent, les chercheurs travaillant à l'intersection des études théâtrales et des humanités numériques ont eu tendance à se lancer dans le développement d'outils électroniques, conçus pour faciliter deux grands modes de création de savoirs: à travers des recherches sur l'histoire du théâtre (y compris la numérisation et l'archivage de textes ou de traces de représentations), ou à travers l'aide à la création théâtrale (à savoir la facilitation et la documentation des processus de création). Dans les deux branches d'activité, l'accent a été mis sur le développement d'outils prêts à l'emploi, ou de prototypes prêts pour la mise en production, susceptibles d'être disséminés largement et appliqués à des contextes variés par toute sorte d'utilisateurs, avec leurs objectifs spécifiques. Dans d'autres mots, la recherche à l'intersection du théâtre et des humanités numériques a été orientée par la création de produits et de plateformes ; nous avons imité les entreprises commerciales de production de software avec notre ambition de créer des objets numériques qui puissent aider d'autres chercheurs à générer ou à transmettre des savoirs. Quoique les outils qui en ont résulté, ainsi que notre engagement critique avec leurs épistémologiques, ont été une réussite (au Canada, ils se comptent parmi les plus notables dans le champ des humanités numériques), les objectifs et les méthodes qui ont porté ce travail ont eu relativement peu d'impact sur les buts et les méthodes, établis ou émergents, soit des humanités numériques, soit des études théâtrales comme disciplines indépendantes. En me fondant sur les projets que je connais le mieux – principalement des projets canadiens dans les humanités numériques et mon propre Simulated Environment for Theatre (SET)-, je souhaite soutenir ici que les humanités numériques ont à offrir plus aux études théâtrales, et réciproquement. L'idée principale de cet article est que les réussites du projet SET, qui a su répondre aux tendances dominantes dans son domaine, sont moins intéressantes que les possibilités suggérées par ses échecs et ses à côtés, surtout dans le champ de la construction du savoir et des objets d'étude. Le théâtre et les humanités numériques pourraient aller plus loin et tirer plus de profit en mettant moins l'accent sur le prototypage orienté vers la production, et en se consacrant plus à un prototypage expérimental ou au « provotypage », pour faire plus de place, dans un champ dominé par des méthodes de recherche issues des sciences sociales ou des sciences exactes, à des méthodes plus propres aux sciences humaines et susceptibles créer, sans exclusive, des savoirs

This thesis establishes groundwork for producing an aesthetic language for theatre technology by creating and testing a model for looking at theatre technologies in a critical manner. This model has several functions: Firstly it identifies theatre technology as something which can have a specific or a psycho-plastic scenographic effect. Through processes of re-invigoration and diversification the model allows a device to be regarded in its own context while historiologically allowing for precedent technologies to be acknowledged and compared. Lastly, because the model is ouroboric, self-consuming, it accounts for theatre technologies to be able to interpolate (and be interpolated by) other technologies whilst maintaining its own aesthetic integrity. This allows a critic to treat technology as a text rather than as a medium, and therefore enables it to be closely "read" as a text of the stage affording the technology a content of its own. Through problematising this model against theories of media and remediation, the thesis observes that the common critical position in theatre and performance studies is to treat theatre technology merely as a theatrical technē -- a tool or craft of the art. The arguments presented in the thesis reposition theatre technology from the position of craft to a position of art -- as alētheia, an artistic truth revealed through poiētic means. In the repositioning of attitudes towards technology, and by identifying theatre technologies as separate alētheuein, this thesis is then able to investigate theatre technologies aesthetically. Examining the contexts of technologies through the ouroboric model, and then critically studying their content, usage and meaning textually, this thesis is able to take a theatrical technological effect and begin to identify its affect. It posits that technology as an art in its own right can be aesthetically criticised and awarded meaning of equal weight to other elements of performance and theatre art.

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, 2015

In many representative, literary, cinematic, or artistic products of modern civilization, the problem of world's reality and the relationship of the subject with it, are seen from different viewpoints, such as the dimension of the utopian perception of a dreamlike or imaginary composition, subconscious creation, but also more complex versions such as computer mediated complete illusion, artificial intelligence, and control of the brain, intrusion, and influence exerted on the thought of the other using modern technology or any combination of all the above. It is thus understood that the issue at hand can be approached from a variety of viewpoints and aspects, such as the philosophical, psychological, psychoanalytical, technological, neurophysiological, sociological, literary and so on. Our viewpoint is strictly limited to the theatrical dimension and our analysis will progress based on data comprising the theatrical phenomenon, that is, the illusion, as opposed to virtual reality of modern technology.

2017

This article is a brief, individual review which illustrates some advances that digital technology can foster for theatre. Whether this can be seen as an encroachment or augmentation in this field, there are clear examples of significant opportunities for practitioners who follow the digital route as a means to increase theatrical participation. Concurrent to this, this article will demonstrate the validity of using the principles of game design to consider the potentials offered by digital theatre and indicate possible avenues for future research.