Virtual Theater for Beginners

The Harold Pinter Review, 2018

in 1996, director Anne Bogart told a room of MFA acting and directing students that theater exists in the tension between what you see and what you hear on stage. In order for a moment to land, she said, the audience member's senses must be off kilter, or nudged slightly out of step. She had an actor demonstrate this basic principle by saying, "I love you," while gazing soulfully at another student, and then say the same words while looking at her watch. This is a very old, even foundational idea in theater, of course, but for some reason it registered with me on that day for the first time. Twenty years later, in April 2016, Joris Weijdom, senior lecturer and researcher at HKU Utrecht University of the Arts, gave the keynote address at the annual conference for IETM, an international network for contemporary performing arts, entitled "Mixed Reality and the Theatre of the Future." The address, which you can view on Howlround.com, is an explanation of mixed reality, the many ways in which physical and digital objects can and will coexist and interact in real time, and an impassioned plea for theater-makers to take their place in the mixed reality revolution. At one point, he notes that after

Theatre Topics, 2001

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.

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.

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...

As Steve Dixon has observed in his influential book Digital Performance, 1 which is cited frequently in this issue of Theatre Journal, the 1990s represented a high-water mark in digital performance. That decade saw an explosion of innovation and euphoria surrounding the use of digital technologies-video projections, MIDI-triggered images and audio, sensors, telematics-in live performance events and performative installation art.

2018

Papernumber: 3386-11628-1-SM.docx Killing the Modern Theatre: A New Medium to Augment Stage Performances Richard Buckner 1214 Calle Violeta, Thousand Oaks, CA, USA, [email protected] ABSTRACT Paul Simon, in " The Dangling Conversation ," asked "Is the theatre really dead?" Yes, traditional theatre of the literary, mechanistic age is. Consequently, the play script and its format are dead because we have moved to the electrical, electronic, digital (EED) age and theatre is no longer just humans on a stage delivering dialogue, action and possibly song with realistic or even impressionistic sets. This paper shows how Electronic Digital Displayed Script With Embedded Multi-Media (EDDSWEMM), in a way, acts as a " Bridge Over Troubled Water " from the new EED age to the old literary age. In fact, the whole of society has changed, and theatre needs to follow. Marshall McLuhan, the Toronto philosopher, stated that the societal impact of a new medium is f...

2021

This report describes the purpose, process and reflections of a Forum Theatre video project, titled Unmuted, created to investigate the increased online harassment faced by women during the pandemic. Led by an arts and community education based initiative in New Delhi, India - Rang Karwan - and supported by the 25 x 25 Initiative by India Foundation for the Arts grant, Unmuted included a series of surveys and Forum scenes that were screen-recorded and distributed among 100+ digital spect-actors across the country. This report by Akhila, one of the facilitators of the project, will evaluate the 9-month-long rehearsal and research process. With insights from the Rang Karwan team and the spect-actors, the report will outline several ways in which a collective practice of Forum Theatre was modified for the digital stage

2009

Is an actor performing live if that actor is out of sight in the wings and appears on stage as a computer-mediated representation? Is co-presence with such a mediated embodiment problematic for the performer? This project seeks to explore the use of digital media elements, from the perspective of the actor, in the collaborative process of devising, designing, rehearsing and performing a Shakespearian theatre production. It raises issues of the creative possibilities that applications of new technologies afford and of a changing perception of the nature of liveness. Can digital media techniques usefully enhance the liveness of performance and extend the audience’s experience of the production? Specifically, can it augment their perception of themselves, mirrored on stage? Exploring the usefulness of digital media techniques takes a theatre practitioner into the intermedial, liminal spaces where the two fields converge. These are spaces of possibility where new ways of working might emerge. This thesis is presented primarily as an experimental performance and is contextualised by this exegesis with its written and DVD components.

Studies in Media and Communication

The relevance of this study is due to the expansion of various concepts of cyber-theater in the contemporary performing arts. The examples of the stage embodiment of cyber-drama and digital-performances prove that each stage work raises extraordinary artistic issues, and each technological innovation is accompanied by the emergence of the new audience opportunities and competencies. However, due to the fact that communication between the creators of the super-modern stage content and the ordinary viewers currently isn’t sufficiently arranged, there are gaps in the perception of the artistic messages, difficulties with the audience’s empathy for the events and actors of cyber-drama and digital-performance. The authors aimed to explore the communication barriers associated with cyber-theater performances and to present ways to solve problems in this context. The following methods were used: complex analysis and synthesis, comparative and descriptive methods, technique of communicative...