What Just Happened?
Technology, Play, and Redefining Theater
My thesis for Harvard Extension School’s ALM (Master of Liberal Arts) in Dramatic Arts.
I examine ways in which new, cheap technology has enabled theater practitioners to create performances that redefine what theater is, blur the boundaries of areas not traditionally considered theater, and usher in a period of what Pier Luigi Sacco calls “Culture 3.0,” a society of artists that:
is characterized by the explosion of the pool of producers, so that it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between cultural producers and users: Simply, they become interchanging roles that each individual assumes.
Pier Luigi Sacco
Chat section of the Smilebox, a portable web portal that asks visitors the question, What made you smile today?
In other words, one person creates something that inspires someone else, so then that person makes something which inspires a third person, who then makes something, and the process continues.
Accessing cultural experiences increasingly challenges individuals to develop their own capabilities to assimilate and manipulate in personal ways the cultural contents they are being exposed to.
Pier Luigi Sacco
Drawing off the works of Paolo Friere, Friedrich Schiller, John Dewey, Augusto Boal, Jacques Ranciere, and others, I make a case for why taking theater out of “The Theater” not only makes it more accessible to both creators and consumers, but can also lead to new definitions of what theater even is. While interviewing artists who had made interactive art with theatrical elements, I became inspired to create my own, thereby demonstrating Culture 3.0 in action. One of the projects I created during this process went on to become Do You Hear What I Hear?
A still from a video of Viviane Schwarz’s Restless Spirit Projector
This also marks the beginning of my explorations of play as a means of engaging the public, as well as methods of using using art and shared experiences to bring people together in a positive way. (This eventually led me to Fink’s Taxonomy, particularly The Human Dimension and Caring taxons, which I incorporated into Do You Hear What I Hear?.)
Performance brings people together in a very intimate, shared experience, which at best can remind you of the powerful shared bond that you can have with other people, and at the same time can remind you of the fragility of social and political relations between people.
Tim Etchells, as interviwed by Hannah Clugston
Part of my origin story.
I began to connect the dots.
Works Cited
Clugston, Hannah. “How To Start A Truly Innovative Theatre Company.” Huck,
www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/theatre-art-and-culture/how-to-start-a-truly-innovative-theatre-company/. Accessed 6 Oct 2018.
Sacco, Pier Luigi. “Culture 3.0: A new perspective for the EU 2014-2020 structural funds programming.” OMC Working Group on Cultural and Creative Industries, April 2011. European Expert Network on Culture. 2016. Print.