CoMEDIA electrONica: Performing Intermediality in Contemporary Theatre

Abstract

Although the concept of ‘intermediality’ recently has gained prominence within the discourse of Theatre Studies, still various contradictory definitions of that term circulate, none of which applies insight from the field of Media Theory to theatre. Rather than clinging to the banal formula ‘theatre + media = intermedial theatre’ and thus perpetuating the idea of medial specificity, an approach to intermediality informed by Media Theory stresses underlying strategies of processing all kinds of information, including the aesthetic, within a certain period. Consequently, theatre's genuine ‘mediality’ already implies its ‘intermediality’, which in fact can be traced back all the way to classical Greek drama. Within the present transformation from McLuhan's ‘Gutenberg Galaxy’ into an ‘electrONic culture’, theatre now trains its spectators in cognitive strategies of that emerging cultural paradigm. The performance Circulation Module by the Japanese group NEST reflects these significant repercussions of electrONic culture on theatrical performance at the turn of the twenty-first century.