Making Community in the Age of Migration: What Is the Role of Social Media in Contemporary Theatre (original) (raw)
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Theatre Dispositif and the Challenge of Covid-19: Mediatisation, Liveness and Audiences
Mediascapes Journal, 2020
The COVID-19 emergency has had a profound impact on the artistic and cultural sectors, and on performing arts in particular. The lockdown required the suspension of all live performances and rehearsals, including the cancellation of seasons and festivals. Because physical proximity is an essential component of live shows, this sector will be on pause longer than the others. Since the early stages of the lockdown, Italian theatre has developed several online initiatives to counterbalance the suspension of its activities. These efforts have aimed at maintaining contact with the remote theatre audiences, by extending the presence of artists, theatres and performances in the online context. However, they have also provided an opportunity to reflect at large on the digital transformations of performing arts. The following contribution reflects on how we are researching the online response of the theatrical sector from the perspective of sociology and media studies. The paper aims to contextualise the phenomenon within the processes of theatre mediatisation and digital transformation of liveness, and to present what we think are the most urgent research questions in this direction. The first part of the article introduces the theoretical premises of the investigation. We present the frame of theatre mediatisation by analysing three interrelated processes: the mediatisation of dramaturgy through the concept of transmedia; the mediatisation of theatrical presence, with the debate on digital liveness, and the mediatisation of the theatrical relationship through social media. The second part will analyse some of the main online initiatives of the theatre sector, observing how they fit into the previously introduced mediatisation processes. The third part will observe how users have responded to the initiatives presented on social media by some of the main Italian theatres. In the conclusions, we will discuss which research questions we consider crucial to connect the analysis of this critical moment to the main themes of sociological and media studies research on performing arts.
Pamiętnik Teatralny
The Covid-19 pandemic plunged many theaters around the world into a temporary crisis and favored the rise of digital theater forms. This article investigates how the reception of theater changes in the digital space and, above all, how audiences as a social dimension of theatrical performances must first be constituted separately there. Based on performance analysis of the digital theater productions Homecoming and Sterben from Germany, the significance of the digital infrastructure for the assembly, performance, and action repertoires of these theater audiences is discussed. The author examines how audiences can be formed into different temporal communities in the digital space. These temporal communities are characterized by hybridity and have the potential to enable intense theatrical encounters across spatial boundaries.
Theatre in the Digital Age: When Technology Meets the Arts
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...
The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance, 2021
Performing Shakespeare in modern times is an act of mediation between characters and actors, creating channels between geocultural spaces and time periods. The multiplicity of the plural term global Shakespeares helps us push back against deceivingly harmonious images of Shakespeare’s ubiquitous presence. Adaptations accrue nuanced meanings as they move through physical and digital spaces, gaining cultural significance by paying homage to or remediating previous interpretations. As a transhistorical and intermedial practice, global Shakespeares have been deployed to revitalize performance genres, resist colonial appendage, exemplify social reparation. This chapter investigates methodologies for transhistorical inquiry into culturally fluid, contemporary adaptations of early modern texts in relation to digital cultures. In juxtaposing the ways in which localities create site-specific meanings, and the ways in which cultural meanings are dispersed and reframed through ever-evolving forms of digital engagement, this chapter outlines the future challenges and opportunities for contemporary global performances.
Also due to the general crisis of printed press, the quasi totality of the critical writing moved to the free Internet. As a consequence, online theatre criticism is getting redefined in the light of the digital age and its role challenged in the context of the theatrical system. The interactions and contents on the Web are influenced and constrained by the structures of online publishing. At the same time, the strategies of sharing articles and comments online have to confront the presence of strong virtual communities, that act as a sum of individuals, able to interact directly with the critic and discuss his/her statements through a non regulated access to public social media platforms. This creates a sort of collective response to the voice raised by a single professional. These processes are only partly regulated by a coherent sum of human choices, and rather, primarily, by the inherent nature of the digital platforms. This paper aims at demonstrating how some of those methodologies and rhetorical principles that used to enforce a critic’s argument on contemporary theatre are rapidly being replaced by others deriving from digital systems and the mechanisms of online discourse, that strongly depend on the features of (often very specialized) virtual communities and the background of the individuals they gather together. As a case study, I present a theatre review which, using the “open letter” format, created controversial reactions in the readers and challenged the role of the critic as authoritative mediator, moving the focus of attention from critical analysis to a wider discussion about the current Italian theatrical system. This case study investigates the influence of virtual communities in how spectators and critics relate to contemporary performing arts.
Theatre and Technology: Battling with the Box
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.
Drama and the Digital Revolution
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
Live theatre in the age of digital technology: ‘Digital habitus’ and the youth live theatre audience
This article applies Bourdieu’s notion of habitus to the results of a two-year qualitative study of high school students’ responses to live theatre. ‘Digital habitus’ sheds light upon the ways in which teenagers more accustomed to ‘networked publics’ (boyd and Marwick 2011) respond to live performance and provides a way to understand students’ embodiment of digital culture during these ‘uncertain times for audience research’ (Couldry 2014 p. 226) . Through the voices of student theatregoers the article proposes three findings that point to how learning to recognize, understand and negotiate the digital habitus is an important task for audience researchers, educators and theatre administrators keen to ‘build bridges’ (Hosenfeld 1999) between the ‘dispositions’ (Bourdieu, 1990) of the smartphone-toting teenager and the stage.
On theatre mediatisation: exploring transmediality in Aldo Morto 54
This paper explores the process of theatre mediatisation by analysing the Italian case study of Aldo Morto 54 by Compagnia Frosini/Timpano. Through a review of the recent literature on the topic, we propose to show how the conceptual framework developed in mediatisation studies can provide a useful contribution to the field of theatre/performance studies. The paper will look at three areas of theatre mediatisation: the mediatisation of dramaturgy through the concept of transmedia; the mediatisation of theatrical presence, with the debate on digital liveness, and the mediatisation of the theatrical relationship through social media. In describing the transmedia project Aldo Morto 54, we will observe the mediatisation process in the field of theatre by looking at a digital extension of a theatre performance and at the way the online audience responded to the project.
The Changing Position of the Theatergoer in the Changing Space of Online Performances
Zeszyty Prasoznawcze
During the last year we all were banned to participate in our everyday life using online transmission, homework, homeschool and different digital tools. But with all this we also gained access to cultural or other practices that previously were not part in our everyday life. That resulted in a detailed spectrum of participation from the form of listening-observing to the different levels of giving feedback and taking control (for example putting questions to the other participants or to the crew, taking part in the discussion, pausing or leaving an event). This paper investigates the possibilities of agency given to the participants by the online theater. It starts from personal experiences, but ends in questions regarding the medial nature of this new transmission form: to what extent should digitally transmitted performances, shows be considered theater? And if they are not theater, what are they?