Theatre Technology Research Articles

Theater and the crisis of the modern world. Pro Universitaria Publishing House, Bucharest, 2023. Daniel Nițoi

In The Theatre and the Crisis of the Modern World, Daniel Nițoi critically examines the dynamic relationship between theatre and contemporary socio-cultural changes. The book highlights theatre's role in reflecting societal transformations and discusses its significance in contemplating morality and collective identity. Nițoi links theatre with human experiences such as happiness and ethics, and critiques the detrimental effects of modern society's materialism on theatrical art. Additionally, the book evaluates the ethical aspects of technology in theatre, advocating for the revitalization of values to counterbalance the prevailing materialistic culture.

THEATRE AND TECHNOLOGY

This article discusses the place of technology in theatre, as a potential tool to address some of the questionable ecological practices inherent in traditional theatre making. With a focus on augmented and/or virtual reality (AR/VR), the article posits some potentials and pitfalls of embracing technologies as integral components of the narrative development and presentation of performance. The tensions between art and technology in their incorporation into creative theatrical practices are discussed, particularly in light of the tendency for technology to favor pre-recording in contrast to the necessary liveness of the theatrical, dramatic event.

Art Decoration in Theatrical Productions as a Means of Scenographic Formation of Space

The purpose of the research is to find out the role of scenery in theatrical productions, their types and features of their creation by a production designer. The research methodology is based on the complex use of methods of modern art history, which are aimed at the theoretical and artistic-practical understanding of scenery in theatrical productions; the method of art-historical analysis is used, which makes it possible to investigate the trends of the cultural development of theatre technologies; empirical material is studied in a combination of art studies, theatre studies, cultural studies, and historical approaches; the method of formal and stylistic analysis allows revealing the artistic features of scenographic solutions. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the article is one of the first analytical works in which the author tries to reveal the multifaceted role of scenery in theatrical productions by analysing the definitions of "scenery”, “theatrical and decorative art”, “scenography” that describe the artistic design of theatrical productions. Conclusions. In the process of analysing the role of scenery in theatrical productions, a completely objective impression was formed that scenery is a type of fine art related to the artistic design of a theatrical performance, the elements of which were rooted in antiquity and with minor changes have reached our days and consist of decorations, noise design, lighting, and props, actors' costumes and make-up. Each element has its own function in achieving theatrical expressiveness, which as a whole creates a single artistic whole, the purpose of which is to create the illusion of a place for a theatrical performance. Scenery in theatrical productions is created by a production designer according to the director's idea, which are closely related to the theatre itself, its development and general trends in modern art and modern theatre, the arrangement of theatre premises and the stage, lighting techniques, equipment and many other conditions. The analysis of the definitions of “scenery”, “theatrical and decorative art”, “scenography”, which are used to describe the artistic design of the stage and space in different ways in the scientific and artistic literature, makes it possible to conclude that the scenery is an important part of almost any theatrical performance, and many theatre artists are recognised as independent creators.
 Key words: scenery; decorative arts; scenography; theatre and decorative arts; theatre artist.

Audio mediation technology and liveness in modern musical theatre performance

The widespread use of audio technology in musical theatre – and, in particular, how the use of this audio technology interfaces with the presence of live musicians – complicates the sonic notion of liveness in the theatrical setting. This article will delve into the more complex details of what we call liveness in mainstream musical theatre, with special attention paid to live musicians in this highly mediated environment. The first half of the article explores the roots of contemporary audio technology norms for musical theatre and argues that they have developed in part to maximize the sonic similarity of the live performance to its mediatized forms (primarily cast recordings). The second section explores the impact of audio mediation norms on pit musicians and features comments drawn from interviews with a number of Broadway musicians. The use of audio technology in contemporary musical theatre performance, while perhaps making it easier to align mediatized and live performance forms for audience consumption, results in complex notions of quasi-liveness with respect to the live musicians.

Virtual Dream Reality Check: A Case of Interactive Digital Theatre from the Royal Shakespeare Company

The proliferation of digital theatre signals a new era of theatrical experiences. The Royal Shakespeare Company's (RSC) Dream is a recent example of how theatre companies are integrating cutting-edge technology to revolutionise their performances. Emerging from the Audience of the Future (AF) program, Dream combined gaming and theatre technology to create a virtual world for audiences to inhabit and explore digitally. The production incorporated motion-capture technology and Virtual Reality (VR) headsets, allowing seven actors to perform live from a purpose-built studio while audiences simultaneously accessed their performance from a compatible device via a bespoke website (https://dream.online). The resulting experience combined live and virtual performance elements to connect global audiences.This venture into technologically enhanced theatre, however, raises questions about the potential implications of audience engagement with digital productions. In this paper, we question how RSC's Dream combined both live and virtual theatre experiences to offer a more interactive viewing experience. We argue that while Dream signalled an exciting step in the development of digital theatre, the interactive features revealed some discrepancies between RSC's goals and the degree of involvement delivered. We thus contend that for theatre organisations to incorporate digital technologies, they must tend to the nuances of technological interventions and weave them seamlessly with theatrical elements to retain the fidelity of the theatre experience.

Seeing Alone Yet Together: Modern-day Tiresias in VR theatre

This article examines the use of Virtual Reality (VR) technology in theatre and the new notions of performance, stage, theatrical apparatus and spectatorship that it entails. As witnessed over decades of multimedia theatre, today’s theatre no longer solely depends on the bodies of live performers, and it increasingly draws on technological devices and digitally mediated networks to hint at potential posthuman alternatives to our age-old theatrical institution of live performers and spectators. In VR theatre, the prospect of posthuman spectators looms as the human body is aided by goggles or head-mounted displays (HMD) that function as prosthetic eyes. Digitally mediated images in theatre were previously considered to act as a Derridean supplement to the weak presence or complete absence of human bodies on stage, thus highlighting the prerequisite essentiality of live bodies. However, new technologies and media introduced in theatre emphasize the perception and bodily senses of spectators and how they, and not necessarily the live actors on stage, constitute the essence of performance. By reading A Theater for an Individualist (2020) as metatheatre on VR theatre, this article argues that such a format - which is often employed in VR performances - addresses how the act of watching has evolved in theatre, from a singular and linear experience to an alinear and plural one. The article concludes that the application of VR in theatre actually could support and even extend the agency of spectators, drawing on Jacques Rancière’s discussion of oppositions - activity and passivity; individuality and community; ignorance and knowledge - in The Emancipated Spectator (2008).

Secret Gardens, Ritualistic Renovations and Modernist Failures: On the out loud building of scenographies by Decoratelier

Surveying four projects by DECORATELIER, All Problems Can Never Be Solved (2012), INFINI 1-15 (2015-16), Underneath Which Rivers Flow (2019) and The Soft Layer (2019), this text explores how Belgian scenographer Jozef Wouters revisits, with his scenographic practice, the aesthetics and poetics of stage machinery and theatre technology in order to explore the potentiality of intervening by means of scenography in abandoned and forgotten urban sites.

Fear and Technology in the Theatre: Staging McLuhan

Fear and Technology in the Theatre: Staging McLuhan

Conceptualising digital technology integration in participatory theatre from a sociomaterialist perspective: ways forward for research

ABSTRACTExisting research on the use of technology in participatory theatre in education has paid little attention to the moment-to-moment unfolding that characterises the liveliness at the heart of such practice. In this conceptual article, we show how a sociomaterialist perspective can illuminate the contingent co-emergence of people, things and technologies that produces this liveliness of events. Perspectives drawn from actor-network theory are used to illuminate one example of the integration of technology in participatory theatre in an educational context. The concepts of mutability, disruption, maintenance, potentialities and multiplicities are developed as an explanatory framework for future research and practice in these and similar forms of educational activity.

The intersection of live and digital: new technical classifications for digital scenography in opera

ABSTRACTOver the past decade, there has been a substantive increase in the number of theatrical productions that utilise digital scenography. Whether in dance, theatre or opera, these works encounter a number of artistic and technical challenges, as well as scrutiny from those who consider digital effects as interfering with live performers in the context of legacy art forms. While the use of digital technology in theatre has been the subject of study by scholars such as Auslander, Baugh and Salter, the use of digital enhancement in opera production has received far less attention, particularly in terms of the scenographic conventions that have emerged as a result of advancing technologies. Because opera is largely defined and constrained by highly traditional production conventions, including a seated orchestra and unamplified singers, the genre provides a unique framework for considering the use of new technologies in the performative space. This article will propose a method for classifying and quantifying digitally enhanced theatrical productions and explore the resulting dramaturgical implications through a close study of three productions of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

'Visibility brings with it responsibility': Using a Pragmatic Performance Approach to Explore a Political Philosophy of Technology

With the emergence, suspicion and social acceptance of ubiquitous communications technology thoroughly plumbed and the digital age already wondering what it is going to rename itself in light of ever more fluid and complex technologies, this paper asks: what can theatre and performance provide to the production of a political philosophy of technology?� Using the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault and an analysis of a recent inter-cultural adaptation of Jean Genet's The Maids, this study examines the politics of visible theatre technologies in performance and offers a pragmatic, or instrumentalist, approach to developing a political philosophy of technology.

DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONAL SKILL OF THE TEACHERMEANS THEATRE ART IN TERMS OF CONTINUOUSPEDAGOGICAL EDUCATION

The article analyzes the importance of the elements of the theatrical art in the process of development the professional skills of the teacher in terms of continuous pedagogical education; the problem of teacher training teachers by means of theater pedagogy; measure the effectiveness of the influence of рerforming аrts at the development of the creative person of the teacher; the role of expressive рerforming аrts in speech communication teacher with students;substantiates the importance of theater arts as a means of improving the professional skills of teachers, including his speech and artistic activities, communication, gnostic, organizational abilities.Analyzing the specific features of theatrical art in a teacher’s pedagogical practice, the author notes that theatrical art is a certain part of a pedagogue’s creative activity and it influences efficiently the teacher’s professional excellence in terms of a continuous pedagogical education. It is important to introduce innovative theatre technologies which are used in the educational process of contemporary secondary schools.

Event Reviews

Abstract Costume before and beyond the production: The SpaceLab costume workshops at Prague Quadrennial, 18–28 June 2015 The 56th annual United States Institute for Theatre Technology Conference and Stage Expo (USITT 2016) Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, 16–19 March 2016 International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR) 2016 Conference Stockholm University, Stockholm, 13–17 June 2016

Theatre, Performance and Analogue Technology: Historical Interfaces and Intermedialities. Edited by Kara Reilly. Studies in Performance and Technology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013; pp. xvii + 269, 46 illustrations. $95 cloth, $95 e-book.

Theatre, Performance and Analogue Technology: Historical Interfaces and Intermedialities. Edited by Kara Reilly. Studies in Performance and Technology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013; pp. xvii + 269, 46 illustrations. $95 cloth, $95 e-book.

Theatre, performance and analogue technology: historical interfaces and intermedialities

Theatre, performance and analogue technology: historical interfaces and intermedialities

Design of a Smart Green Energy Management System Based on DMX512 Protocol

In this paper, a smart green energy management system based on DMX512 protocol that is established by United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) is proposed. The end user can monitor and control the LED lamps and electric powers according to the information received from the sensors by means of the channels of DMX512. In addition, the different color lights including red, green, and blue lights can be achieved by means of the color-mixing methods of red, green, and blue LEDs based on photometry theory. As a matter of fact, there have been attracted much attention on the mobile devices in recent years. In the study, a mobile device with an Android platform is used to control the electric power and LED lamps according to the information received from the ZigBee module immediately. However, the smart green energy management system based on DMX512 protocol has some merits, such as in real-time control, easy operation, low cost, etc.

Modal Analysis of Mechanical System Containing Nonlinear Joint

The paper describes modal analysis of lifting platform usually used in theatre technologies. The platform itself consists of several components mutually connected by joints. The behavior of particular joints can be linear or nonlinear. The connection of two main parts - tables and pillars of lifting platform-must be considered as nonlinear because the force transfer between these parts can occur only in one direction. Since standard modal analysis is in principle linear, the method of linear description of nonlinear behavior has to be proposed. The contribution presents such method using application of three different boundary conditions which allow describing the nonlinear behavior of system by tools of linear analysis. Consequently, the modal analysis of the entire system is performed for all three types of boundary conditions. On the base of mode shapes visualization the proper mode shapes are extracted which satisfy the real behavior of the lifting platform.

‘Seeding a Lead’: Exploring the Live Theatre Industry’s Reception of a Pre-Market Canadian Display Technology

This article shares the results of a research project conducted by a multidisciplinary group formed from theatre studies, digital media, and business and technology in 2009. The research story is an unusual one for the theatre. It features access to pre-market digital display technologies for play-making, a combination of industry and federal research funding support, and a combination of artistic and business interrogation of primary stakeholders in the live theatre, its culturally-networked industries, and theatre education communities.

Light fantastic: the art and design of stage lighting

A virtuoso in the field, Max Keller has set new standards of technical and artistic excellence. In this book, he divulges his extensive knowledge of every aspect of stage lighting, from natural phenomena and the history of light in the theater, to Goethe and Runge's theories of color, to the fundamentals of optics and projection. This revised edition of Light Fantastic includes new images from Keller's most recent productions as well as completely updated information on optics, lamps, lanterns, projection and lighting consoles. In more than 600 stunning photographs and illustrations, the power of Keller's expertise shines through, making this a visually exciting and highly informative work for those involved in theatre technology. An accompanying DVD features Keller's lecture held at institutions worldwide.

Sensory Jam

Sensory Jam