Dramaturgical Interpretation

Wayfinding: Spotlights > Platforms > Dramaturgical Interpretation

Theatre makers diving into the online world in 2020 found platforms with several theatre-like affordances, . ‘Implications for artists. … it is striking that the majority of those producing theatre suddenly accept that their artistic performances get deployed on the web, received and evaluated alongside prosumer amateur content, and, more or less on the same conceptual and aesthetic basis’. Platforms offer impressive potential benefits for theatre makers, but they were built in response to specific types of content creators.

It might be worth viewing different platforms as non-stage theatre spaces, closer to site-specific theatre than traditional onstage in-person performance. I asked Michael Deacon, producer with Creation Theatre, about how he would compare site-specific work and digital work, both of which Creation is famous for; he told me he did not view them as similar, with digital having more flexibility than site-specific, but there were some considerations in our discussion which can be applied to both: ‘[site-specific theatre is] not designed to be a theatre space, so you have to work with it. So, there's definitely something about working with what you've got, and making the best out of it, which is integral to site specific work’. Similarly, online platforms from streaming to VR are not designed to be theatre spaces, but they can be used as performance sites. Some of the dramaturgical thinking that goes with site specific work could be useful in the digital theatre context – this is also mentioned in Spotlight-User Interface.

Andrew Hungerford, former artistic director of Know Theatre in Cincinnati, Ohio, suggested this: ‘I like to think of the different methods of delivery as not just different seats in the house – which it sometimes is – but there's also the possibility of the version that you're seeing in-person is proscenium, and the version that you're seeing from home is somehow in the round, because of the way that we are, not literally but metaphorically, in the round’. Finding ways to make the experience unique, or native to the digital environment for the online audience, not only involves direct eye-line audience perspective or editing tricks but involves working with the platform to integrate the show into the platform as a novel engagement that the in-person audience would not have.

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