Tweetre: What role can technology play in contemporary theatre?

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.

There are many acknowledgements that I feel I should make, to my tutors, especially Meryl and Emma, for putting up with me, J.C. for not deciding that I was completely incapable and giving up on me, and to the rest of the Drama group, for working with me.

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.

2001

Abstract Since 1991, the Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre (GSRT) has been pursuing a unique research agenda, attempting to develop a theater style and theory based on digital technology. The approach has its aesthetic roots in Japanese Bunraku-style puppetry, Meyerhold's, biomechanics movement training, and Bharatta Natyam and other forms of Indian dance and performing arts.

Theatre Topics, 2001

In this paper I present the challenges of combining game design with theatre conventions in relation to the implementation of a hybrid form of pervasive game and interactive theatre, Chain Reaction (CR). I use game design as part of my research process in order to answer how games can be used to promote and develop theatre, more specifically how games can foster artistic creativity. My argument is that games´s competitiveness lure players into engaging in aesthetic activities e.i. Devising theatre and acting, while simultaneously allowing them to manipulate their engagement in the game and enjoy the thrilling experience of making theatre.

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.

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...

Acta Ludologica, 2023

Immersive theatre, a theatrical form emerging at the beginning of the 21st century, invites spectators to become immersed in interactive theatre performances. The use of the term immersive indicates a strong influence from digital media, particularly from virtual worlds (VWs). Immersive theatre and VWs appear to share characteristics. A systematic comparative approach tracing the presence of characteristics shared by immersive theatre and VWs (i.e., virtuality, worldliness, information intensity), among others, still unique to VWs (i.e., agency, ergodicity), reveals that immersive theatre has assimilated some VWs characteristics while still being in the process of negotiating others. The paradigm of pervasive games is brought into the conversation to claim immersive theatre as a partially successful case of theatre gamification, revising theatrical and dramatic conventions, towards what could be called a digitally and ludically inspired neo-dramatic. New intermedial forms of express...

Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare Association, 2016

This essay discusses the theoretical implications of a recent experiment with game-based social media to increase Shakespeare literacy in eleven to fifteen-year-olds. In collaboration with the Stratford Festival, we aimed to make the gameplay of our pilot, Staging Shakespeare, and the social space it generated, experientially theatrical in some way. While the pilot itself was not, in our view, successful, the design process helped us articulate a theory of theatricality grounded in the ontological complexity of theatrical things and the ontogenetic conditions of theatrical environments. Our conclusion is that literal simulations of Shakespeare's plays or of Shakespearean theater production may not be the richest way to teach Shakespeare through social games. Instead, we may need a design theory grounded in the adaptation of theatrical principles to electronic media, and perhaps a new aesthetic and even a rhetoric of gameplay only associatively related to Shakespeare.