Between 2020 and 2022, theatre had to adapt and, in doing so, challenged ideas of what was possible – and what was even 'theatre'.
Due to the global pandemic, an exceptional and wide range of works were made for, or adapted to, brand new conditions and limitations. While these works are defined by interpandemic conditions in the Anthropocene, they serve as portals to thinking about theatre-making in the future.
Gathered in this collection are pieces adapted or made for podcast theatre, a livestream illusionist interactive performance, an audience-uploaded hybrid performance, one-on-one online interaction, lip-synch opera-theatre, climate crisis activist manifesto film/theatre, spoken word and gaming installation art and multi-location broadcast plays, providing an accessible introduction to 'Transmedia' theatre.
Transmedia theatre has been a boundary-breaking and rich area of performance since the 1990s, but the (by necessity) explosion of works that were created during the early years of the pandemic signalled a new, exciting and accessible method by which theatre-makers could share their work and also challenge their own practices.
While these specific works are markers of a specific time in performance history, they also point ways forward, not only in terms of form and function, but in how educators, students and fellow practitioners could conceive of re-staging these works in person and/or on digital platforms.
For a generation that has grown up online, whose vocabularies of expression are as much digitally native as they are IRL, transmedia theatre, and the realm too of VR and AR story and audience design which it borders, holds a firm place in busting open the realm of the possible.
Arvustused
As a textual primer to the art of transmedia theatre, this is indispensable, and flies the flag for future exploration of what can be achieved by blurring the edges of what is theatre, what is film, and anything in-between Transmedia Theatre Plays offers a window into the creativity that exists within theatre as an art form. * LouReviews *
Muu info
Between 2020 and 2022, theatre had to adapt and, in doing so, challenged ideas of what was possible, and what was even 'theatre': this anthology collects together these multi-media scripts in an accessible collection.
Introduction
The Present by Helder Guimaraes (Portugal/US)
To Be a Machine by Dead Centre (Ireland)
Odds On by Dante or Die (UK)
T.M. by Ontroerend Goed (Netherlands)
Can I Live? By Fehinti Balogun (UK)
I Hate it Here by Ike Holter (US)
I am Sending You the Sacred Face by Heather Christian (US)
White Tuesday by Eve Leigh (UK/US)
Every Dollar is a Soldier/with money you're a dragon by Daniel York Loh (UK)
Caridad Svich is a playwright, associate editor of Contemporary Theatre Review and founder of NoPassport theatre alliance and press. She received a 2012 OBIE Award for Lifetime Achievement and the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize for The House of the Spirits. She has edited several books on theatre including Audience Revolution and Innovation in Five Acts (2016 and 2015), Out of Silence: Censorship in Theatre & Performance (2014), and Trans-Global Readings (2004).
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