Digitally Enhanced Theatre Performance
- Submitting institution
-
University of the West of England, Bristol
- Unit of assessment
- 34 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
- Output identifier
- 6873635
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
-
-
- Location
- Queen's House, London
- Brief description of type
- Royal Museums Greenwich
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- October
- Year
- 2014
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This output consists of three performance projects and two peer-reviewed articles, which all explore ‘digital performance’ as a transformed and enhanced form of contemporary theatre.
Our argument for double weighting is the duration, range and scope of this extended body of innovative practice and academic reflection over a six year period, 2014-20, which included research and development sessions, rehearsals, and presentations of theatre projects and performance events. The output demonstrates sustained research effort in a multi-layered process of creative critical investigation that has resulted in a substantial body of work that combines innovative practice and traditional scholarship
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This output consists of three performance projects and two peer-reviewed articles, which all explore ‘digital performance’ as a transformed and enhanced form of contemporary theatre.
Research Process
This research focused on two overarching questions:
(1)How can the accelerating development of computer technology best be used to enhance theatrical experience?
(2)How do present-day theatre practices respond (both thematically and formally) to the broader digital shift unfolding in contemporary society?
This twofold focus required a methodological approach that involved both practice-led research and scholarly enquiry. The practice-led research involved R&D sessions, rehearsals and presentations of theatre projects and performance events.
Research Insights
Although the use of digital media in contemporary theatre has become commonplace, this research explored digital technology’s ability to transcend its conventionally supporting role and become one of the theatre’s core features – the dramatis personae. Approached in this way digital technology becomes a powerful metaphor capable of revealing fresh meanings in existing works, making them newly urgent and relevant for contemporary audience by inducing reflection on current issues.
WE mixed traditional dramaturgy with audience’s use of digital devices to interact with the performance to promote an engagement with Zamyatin’s central question: how essential is imagination to humans and how can it be preserved in the face of our increasingly sinister, authoritarian hyper-reality? In Prisoner (a re-imagining of the Medea myth), iPads were used as ‘live’ masks. These functioned as a dramaturgical tool that enabled the characters not physically present on stage to participate in the dramatic action and evoked both ancient Greek theatrical masks and our modern screen-centred modes of communication, to emphasise Medea’s universal otherness in both historical and contemporary contexts. Similarly, Bayadère illuminates the West’s old fascination with the myth of the Orient and examines how the story relates to modern fantasies of East and West.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
