Theatre And The Virtual

Theatre and the Virtual lays out a set of conceptual instruments for the articulation and engendering of the forces of theatrical potentiality. Creating a passage toward a reconstitution of the given, a theatre of the virtual opens bodies in motion to a region of an ongoing genesis of forces. The outcome: regimes of constraint are abandoned through a radical practice of ecological attunement. Violence is eschewed through an onto-ecology of touch. Closed systems are repotentialised to become co-constitutive of their environments. A logic of spectrality settles in—not so much entities as atmospheres, not so much a being as a style of being, not so much a body as multitudinous milieus of response. This is the task of a theatre of the virtual—to safeguard the possibility of the extra-epistemological and uphold one’s right to offer accounts of oneself from outside of being, all the while creating a fractured record of the wondrous mutations of a moving, gesturing body. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre, philosophy, new materialisms, environmental humanities, gesture, and the ontology of response.

Giannachi offers an investigation of the interface between theatre performance & digital arts, investigating the aesthetic concerns of current computer arts practices & showing how they radically question our conventional uses & definitions of time, space, place, character, identity & realness.

THE STORY: It's the opening night of The Golden Egg on Broadway, and the wealthy producer (Julia Budder) is throwing a lavish party in her lavish Manhattan townhouse. Downstairs the celebrities are pouring in, but the real action is upstairs

Play Readings: A Complete Guide for Theatre Practitioners demystifies the standards and protocols of a play reading, demonstrating how to create effective and evocative readings for those new to or inexperienced with the genre. It examines all of the essential considerations involved in readings, including the use of the venue, pre-reading preparations, playwright/director communication, editing/adapting stage directions, casting, using the limited rehearsal time effectively, simple "staging" suggestions, working with actors, handling complex stage directions, talkbacks, and limiting the use of props, costumes, and music. A variety of readings are covered, including readings of musicals, operas, and period plays, for comprehensive coverage of this increasingly prevalent production form.

This collection interrogates the interaction between new technologies and performance practice, linking the sensuous contact that must exist between the physical and virtual, together with the resultant corporeal transformation. It features writings from international contributors who specialize in digital art and performance practices.

Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture examines the recent history of advanced technologies, including new media, virtual environments, weapons systems and medical innovation, and considers how theatre, performance and culture at large have evolved within those systems. The book examines the two Iraq wars, 9/11 and the War on Terror through the lens of performance studies, and, drawing on the writings of Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou and Martin Heidegger, alongside the dramas of Beckett, Genet and Shakespeare, and the theatre of the Kantor, Foreman, Socíetas Raffaello Sanzio and the Wooster Group, the book positions theatre and performance in technoculture and articulates the processes of aesthetics, metaphysics and politics. This wide-ranging study reflects on how the theatre and performance have been challenged and extended within these new cultural phenomena.

Playwrights have always demonstrated an incredible adaptability, able to nimbly adjust to new circumstances and media. This was never in greater evidence than during the coronavirus pandemic, when—with venues shuttered and stages darkened—writers and performers across the world scrambled to sustain the art of theater via remote video. Even today, it is clear that the experiences of 2020–21 have dramatically altered the landscape of theatermaking, as artists continually refine and deploy the lessons learned during a period of seat-of-the-pants experimentation. This groundbreaking anthology brings together new works from both emerging and established playwrights to explore the rich opportunities afforded by streaming theater. They reveal a range of styles and approaches to storytelling; encompass both traditional and experimental plays, from solo pieces to large-cast dramas; and take place within single settings, multiple settings, or even in a utopian “nowhere.” Throughout, these selections all help to bring playwriting fully into our new era, embodying the sense of magic that comes from simple moments of human connection, even when we cannot be together. Includes plays by the following: Audrey Cefaly Joyce Miller J. Merrill Motz Arlene Hutton Greg Lam Vince Gatton Lindsay Adams Sharece M. Sellem Mrinalini Kamath Brendan Powers and Rachel Burttram Dana Hall Aly Kantor Kitt Lavoie Jenny Lyn Bader Ivam Cabral and Rodolfo García Vázquez Michael Hagins Trey Tatum with Jordan Trovillion Colette Mazunik Tory Parker Eric Eidson and Lauren Lynch-Eidson