Prof. Robin NelsonProfessor of Theatre and Intermedial Performance RCSSD (rtd Jan 2015)

Professor Emeritus Theatre and TV Drama MMU (on-going)

a provocative intervention Playing Identities

Performing HeritageSiena 2014-16

a theatre project with social and media dimensions

• engaging local communities,• actors/directors • explore a social issue locally• with implications for heritage and shifting identities across Europe

audience engagement

• mobilisers• to stimulate process of artistic creation• to develop local audience both digital

and on the ground• to set up a social media strategy• to animate the project web platform

Question:how to link a theatre project with

social and media strategies?

Provocation:• all contemporary theatre has digital and

intermedial aspects

‘mediality’: the condition of the digital age

• New ways of representing the world, new creative possibilities and new experiences (immersive virtual environments, screen-based interactive multimedia).

• New textual experiences: new kinds of genre and textual form, entertainment, pleasure and patterns of media consumption (computer games, simulations, special effects cinema).

…with regard to theatreKey elements of • the body, space, time • challenged by new media technologies

• consider: avatar body collision

http://www.avatarbodycollision.org/

The Colliders are four women (Helen Varley Jamieson, Karla Ptacek, Leena Saarinen, Vicki Smith) who met online in 2001 and formed Avatar Body Collision in 2002. We are a collaborative, globally distributed performance troupe who live (mostly) in London, Helsinki, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia and cyberspace. We devise and rehearse online using chat software that is cross-platform and free to download.

Avatar body collisiondistributed performance practices

Key features required of theatre by ‘audiences’ in a digital age

• active experience (rather than passive reception of a show)

• encounter• interactivity (co-constructions)

‘co-construction’

might include:• using documented testimony of others in ‘verbatim’ theatre• inviting others onstage to take part (Boal)• projecting video diary recordings in the live theatre piece• inviting feedback and incorporating suggestions

implicit recognition of difference of ‘the other’

co-constructive approaches to theatre-making:• recognise that there are different perspectives• recognise that reality is complex and single ‘truths’ hard to find• acknowledge situated-ness of viewpoint

think things together not apart:both-and not either/or

‘Intermedial’ theatre may be:• both physically based and on-screen;• experiences may be both actual and virtual; • spaces may be both public and private;• bodies may be both present and absent.’

(Nelson, 2010: 17)

Examples of strategies and tactics

1) Continuous City (Builders Association)2) No Man’s Land (Dries Verhoeven)3) Call Cutta (Rimini Protokoll)4) Dubplate Drama (Luke Hyama for C4

TV)

Continuous Cities (The Builders Association)

• a meditation on how contemporary experiences of location and dislocation stretch us to the maximum as our “networked selves” occupy multiple locations. • tells the story of a travelling father and his daughter at home tethered

and transformed by speed, hypermodernity, and failing cell phones.

• The characters they interact with pursue their own transnational business, from an internet mogul exploiting networking across the developing world to a nanny who blogs humorous stories about the people and places within her universe. • reaches directly into each city visited through a participatory website

and on-site filming to create a global and local production. • individuals could contribute their own ‘talking head’ video.

No Man’s Land(Dries Verhoeven)

a peripatetic performance / political act in the streets of a city. Twenty viewers and twenty economic immigrants / political refugees come together in a station. They’re, equipped with iPods to provide audio information, each ‘watcher’ listens to the biography of one of the immigrants, who could be their guide through the streets of their home city. The pairs of viewers and guides become neighbours of a unique kind as the latter show the former a side of the city they may never have seen before. The piece demands a moving, poetic and meaningful response to the question: “What can a multicultural environment mean?”

Call Cutta (Rimini Protokoll)Imagine you are buying a ticket at the box office for an individual show on a specific day, but are not led to the auditorium of the theatre. Instead, you get the key for a room and a sketch of how to get there. It might be a room in the theatre, an office, or an apartment somewhere close by. You open the door and you find a phone ringing. You pick up the phone and a person with a strange accent strikes up a conversation with you. The person seems to know the room you are sitting in, even though he is about 10.000 km away. The voice belongs to a call centre agent from Calcutta, India. He and his colleagues usually sell credit cards and insurance on the phone to people on the other side of the globe or provide navigational help in cities that they have never been to themselves. But this time you are not supposed to buy anything. On the notebook desktop in your room images and videos are opening up out of nowhere. A story is about to develop and you realize that the call centre agent and you and your city are the very first protagonists of the plot.

Dubplate Drama (Luke Hyam for C4 TV)

• British television series Nov 2005 - July 2009[

• premise - a group of young rap musicians attempt to secure a record deal. • show described as "the world's first interactive drama series“•allowed viewers to vote on the outcome of each episode.• first series contained twelve fifteen-minute episodes

‘Dramatic’ Theatre• theatron - a place for seeing (theasthai: to see; theomai: a spectacle)• spectators seated in rows (in the dark)• scripted plays representing actions (mimesis)• linear narrative leading to closure (catharsis)• critical distance of eye-mind cognition (though we may feel pity and fear)

postdramatic theatre

• takes place anywhere• divide between auditorium and stage broken down• postnarrative: an assemblage of fragments without sense-making frame• a ‘shift from work to event’ (Lehmann: 61); from meanings to experiences

the experiencer

•full sensorium engaged through immersion in a visceral experience (actual and/or virtual)• ‘spectator’ and ‘audience’ are inadequate terms