Area of Interest
While I enjoy participating in the tactile and colorful aspects of theatre production (acting, directing, scenic design), it is theatre's theory which I believe holds the key to unlocking its core. Theatre is the essential and original form of artistic synthesis. Within theatrical productions all the human arts and expressions are combined. Theatre holds an amazing ability to fuse visual arts, music, literary thought, sciences and dance into a synergistic experience. The force of theatre's potential energy once released kinetically on stage is tremendous. By knowing the core principles of theatre theory and the art of synthesis we can create exceptional productions.
The other mediums of popular synthesis -- film, television, and new media or multimedia, lack the immediacy of theater. As a participant/creator and as an audience/user I have found these mediums to be at some level cold, distanced, or incomplete. Perhaps because they are commercialized or two-dimensional, they can not offer the warmth of the living medium of theatre. However, these technology-based art forms offer accessibility to knowledge and entertainment to much larger audiences. I would like to investigate ways in which the theatrical experience could be extended to these larger, even global, audiences through developing technologies. After all, "all the world's a stage . . ."
Since ancient Greece, theater has been used to bring ideas to audiences and provide a community event. According to John Dewy, "people live in a community by virtue of the things they have in common; and communication is the way in which they come to possess things in common." This is why theatre has so much to offer the world today. Rather than providing additional conflicting information which contributes to the "information overload" which exists in our rapidly globalizing world, theater could help us recognize the human element (the actor) within a global context. My hope is that the medium could become significant in allowing moments of connection (unlike Brechtian moments of distancing). The theatrical medium could be used to disseminate any discovered "universal human values," shared experiences, or scientific/artistic commonalties.
I would like to know theater and the process of artistic synthesis intimately, and to interdisciplinary research into the areas of overlap in the arts/science/humanities studies. Ultimately, I hope to embark on a research project with grant potential - to research, theorize and eventually produce an experimental production. Through working in tandem with the university's technology/communications resources, I intend to work on the synthesis of live and digital mediums, and create a hybrid theatrical experience with a message of relevance to the largest audience possible.