Explication of Digital Theatre

A Paper for Journalism 767
New Media Technology

 for Professor John Newhagen
at the University of Maryland

 by

 Nadja Masura

12/20/02

 

Disclaimer: This paper is a work in progress. 

Introduction:

 

This paper will explicate the term digital theatre as a performance event which includes both traditional theatre and features elements of new technology. It excludes theatre that does not utilize computer technology, or other technology arts which are not theatre. digital theatre describes theatre events which feature digital technology as an aspect of production, are at least partially performed by live human actors before a live human audience, has limited interactivity and blurring of traditional theatrical roles, and includes both the spoken word and visual or musical information.  The key to digital theatre is that it can be anything as long as it is composed of these elements in at least the minimum - but it must contain all elements, otherwise it strays into another field such as art, technology, dance, or community participation.

The words “digital” and “theatre” may be debated at great length, however for the investigation of the proposed term, they shall be understood as follows. The word “digital” taken the phrase digital technology, is any technology related to or mediated by computers which transforms analog or “live” information such as sound waves, visual images, into digital or binary information and can be manipulated and reproduced non-linearly.[1] [2]  The implied distinction between digitally mediated and raw theatrical elements (the actor’s voice and physical gestures or scenic or other audio/visual elements), is that the process of mediation further removes the human actor from the “liveness” of the theatrical event. 

Today theatre is an ambiguous word, and since the inception of performance studies (if not before), a common definition of theater has been difficult to reach. There is no one authority to strictly limit the use or scope this term.  Theatre is constantly remolded by experiments that defy rules as part of artistic prerogative. But with this bold boundary-testing comes uncertainty as to the exact coordinates of Theatre’s meaning.  Though theorists and artists (such as Robert Wilson, Phillip Auslander, Jerzy Grotowski, Laurie Anderson) individually cross boundaries between audience and actors, verbal narrative and visuals, or live and recorded, there must still be something joining theatrical events, for it still exists as a recognized field of study. For the explication of the joint term digital theatre, “theatre” will stand for events which feature predetermined actions performed by human actors before a present human audience. These include spoken words as well as images and sounds which convey meaning (at some level) from message senders (the group effort consisting of actors, directors, designers, playwrights) to message receivers (the audience) gathered in the same space and time.

Related terms such as “live,” and “interactive” will be addressed in the body of this work.  At this time, it would be fitting to examine the situation, which compels the explication of Digital Theatre.  At this stage in human development, computers are opening up information exchanges between individuals, physically disparate locations, mechanized and organic, and between art disciplines.  Though in many ways digital technology, is simply one more tool which can be used to mount a traditional theatrical production (with actors, audience, a stage, a script, etc).   It is also (literally) removing the walls of the theatre itself, recasting the ensemble with non-human actors, and threatening to dissolve theatre into other disciplines (such as art or dance) which are using powers of synthesis and information dissemination in ways which have been “theatre’s” domain in the past. 

 

Related Terms:

 

Though digital theatre has gained currency in the arts, it is still an open term. While it may encompass many of the following terms, it is not to be confused with: VR Theatre (Mark Reaney), Computer Theatre (Claudio Pinhanez), Computers as Theatre (Brenda Laurel), Virtual Theater (Stanford), Desktop Theater (Santaman’s Harvest), or Multimedia (performance art such as Laurie Anderson’s Puppet Motel).

Mark Reaney, head of the University of Kansas’ Virtual Reality Theatre Lab, investigates the use of virtual reality (“and related technologies”)[3] in theatre.   This is a subset of digital theatre focusing on utilizing virtual reality immersion in mutual concession with traditional theatre practices (actors, directors, plays, a theatre environment). The group uses image projection and stereoscopic sets as their primary area of digital investigation. Another example of digital theatre is computer theatre, defined by Claudio Pinhanez in his work Computer Theatre (in which he also gives the definition of “hyper-actor” as an actor who’s expressive capabilities are extended through the use of technologies). “Computer Theatre, in my view, is about providing means to enhance the artistic possibilities and experiences of professional and amateur actors, or of audiences clearly engaged in a representational role in a performance.”[4]  Pinhanez also saw this technology being explored more through dance than theatre.[5] As suggested by his writing and shown in his productions of I/IT, computer theatre is digital theatre. Oddly on his website, he references the Stanford work which removes the human element.

On the far end of the spectrum, and outside digital theatre, are what are called desktop theater and virtual theatre.  These are created and presented on computers utilizing intelligent agents or synthetic characters, called avatars.  Without human actors, or group audiences, these works are computer multimedia interfaces allowing a user to play at the roles of theatre rather than being theatre.[6] For these reasons the Virtual Theatre Project at Stanford[7] and desktop theatre (Adriene Jenik’s [8] computer production of Waiting for Godot, featuring avatars in a chat room) not digital theatre.

Other terms to be aware of include “Telematic Art” defined by Heidi Grunmann as “art that deals with simultaneity, telepresence, distributed authorship”.[9] “Telematic Performance Work” is defined by the Cellbytes website as the “use of a telecommunication network to establish links between two remote spaces at the same time and to present the activities in those two separate spaces variously as a single performance event”.[10]  This then can have overlap with other art forms including video, sculpture and performance.  Barry Smith defines “Live Art”, as “time based arts…interrelated hybrids”[11] which may include theatre as well as visual, filmic, and music elements. Though they often feature digital technology, these art terms may or may not be theatre.  Digital Dance is a term used to describe dance productions containing digital projection or motion capture technology.[12]

The assimilation of the word “theatre” into computer metaphor and terminology (by Brenda Laurel) and its overuse in describing a variety of worldly concepts, has caused the term to become overextended.  Theatre partnered with words such as “virtual”[13] should still refer to “live” people in the same time/space (audience), receiving a creative message (at least partially verbally) from primarily live human actors.  While new forms of art may test these ideas, they can also be called something else, such as digital performance[14] or technology-based art.  Theatre is a limited interaction in the same space/time between living actors and audience.  Digital Theatre is theatre that incorporates digital technology while not bypassing or excluding the human/theatrical element.

 

IV. Digital Theatre Components:

 

Digital Theatre’s components are:  computer technology, live human actor and audience, limited interactivity, and the existence of both (predetermined) spoken word and visual and/or musical information.  Each of these elements could be conceptualized as continuous bipolar dimensions.  For example, scale would range between: fully human and computer, completely visual/musical and spoken, no interactivity and the dissolution of theatrical roles of artist/creator and audience, and between face-to-face events and pre-recorded cinema.  To be Digital Theatre, elements must not dwell at the extremes (at 0 or 10 on a 0-10 scale) on any of these scales.

In order to discover or circumscribe Digital Theatre from among Digital Performance and Art, I looked to the Turing Test[15].  While Alan Turing set forth the criteria that the computer must pass for human 70% of the time in an open ended five-minute trial, the digital theatre construct is meant to be inclusive, requiring an event pass each of the levels above a minimum.  This minimum is measured by standards related to each category, but could loosely be considered one solid unit or 10% of the whole.

 Digital Theatre must:

a)      Feature live human actors as well as digital technology

b)      Be presented with minor mediation before a “live” physically present human audience

c)      Contain only limited interactivity which allows for theatrical roles

d)      Include spoken words as well as audio/visual media

 

(See Table)

 

Actors or Alive Message Senders

 The human to human contact, previously referred to as the “live” and sometimes “communal” aspect of theatre is dependent on there being both human actors (a least one) and an audience or group (of at least three) to watch, listen, and sense the event.  Previous to our current era it was understood that the theatre audience was in the same space and time as the live performers (or primary message senders), but with the introduction of Internet technologies, it is necessary to include this to our definition.  Dr. Baz Kersaw, in his presentation at University of Maryland, spoke of “co-present” actors and audience.[16]

If one imagines a scale (0 to 10) between machine and human, digital theatre must exist at neither the extreme of 10, human actors speaking without microphones (or other standard mediation), nor must it be at 0, robots acting as viewed remotely over the internet or a computer program playing theatre games by itself.   There must be present both digital technology, and human actors. 

The difficulty lies in the determination of when an actor is partially modified or mediated by technology.  In the case of projecting images onto costumes as in Kansas’ Dinasourous[17] or Gertrude Steins’ Making Americans[18], the organic actor in them is still present and, therefore creating theatre.  If however, only the actor’s voice issues from an animated avatar, then the outcome is not one full human being (both sight, sound, smell, and touch) available to an audience member.  This is not digital theatre. In the case of The Tempest at the University of Georgia, the character of Ariel was played by an actress offstage and only her voice and gestures were human and present before the audience.  However, there were other actors on stage with the animated projection, so this is an example of digital theatre.

Though Phillip Auslander attempts to “problematize”[19] liveness seeing technology mediating all aspects of performance, he re-defines live in terms of what can be done to it (be recorded [20]) and not what it is. This may apply to the concept of message sending but does not clarify the phyical makeup of the message creator/sender. He does not leave room to explore human and artificially created characters. Auslander rescinded his statement “Virtual + Dance= Virtual” [21], saying that one does not consume the other.  Video does not replace the existence of human dancers on stage – but adds the technological to the “live” making it both live and mediated.  Though he occasionally uses the word “live” to describe living actors, Auslander does not offer a new term to describe levels of human-in-the-moment performance. He addresses community as existing in mediated performance and the ephemeral nature of video tape[22], but does not offer any distinction for situations which occur in immediate proximity with the same air passing between actors and performers, or in the same time frame. Aliveness (or live[23]), as I may use it, will stand for the relationship of time and space that puts two entities in the same breathing space and refers to performers which breathe.

 

Audience/ Message Transmission

 Theatre is a community or group event that happens in the social sphere.   Though the Internet brings access to debate and viewer/audience-like information into and out of the truly “electric cottage,”[24] a study by Robert Wyattet, et al. still found that the private sphere of home has a different sense about it which allows people to act and discuss (political) issues more comfortably.  Perhaps more study should be done on the use of remote or “Internet audience,” an audience (collective, not isolated single users) who meet in a group at a predetermined time to watch/participate (somewhat interactively) in a staged performance within the public sphere.[25]  Until such time as this new remote audience can be demonstrated as acting/reacting as if they were in public, in direct proximity to live actors, theatre is something which must occur before a group of three or more spectators sharing the same time and space with a live unmediated human actor.[26] [27]  In the case of Maggie’s Lovebites[28], or other multi-site or web-cast performances, if the human actors who are being broadcast are observed by three people sharing the same physical space and time (as they broadcast to individuals and gathered groups in other locations), then they are also participating in theatre.

Mediated audiences such as Internet audiences may miss the social and full-sensory data or be privy to non-live additional data[29] which is available to the audience in the immediate performance space.  Like cinema or television, computer users will experience a production which is bound or framed (by a monitor) beyond the director’s use of a proscenium arch.  The camera directs their gaze.  On the open stage or other theatre environment, the spectator’s eye is allowed to wander from actor to actor, to scenic elements, even into the audience.  Without a visible interface between the message sender and receiver, a perception of “being there” is immediate and other senses are allowed to mingle as well.  (Though the director may direct your eye with stage action, you are free to focus where you will, without additional devices or ambient computer noise.)  Even with the use of web-controlled cameras, this immediate access to all aspects of the sensory event is limited and delayed.[30] Also with the use of a camera or external artistic lens recording the action, you are experiencing a secondary product[31].  With this process the technology of framing of close-ups/pans/zooms/edits (techniques shared by cinema/TV/web-cam) beyond the human eye, the event becomes a “microdrama” [32] which can make the event “hyper-real” rather than real.  This is just a newer form of cinematic control and “telivisual”[33] broadcast with limited “interactivity” novelties added. 

Though mediation may occur in a limited degree between the physically present actor and audience via microphones, their primary physical/visual/auditory existence (and message) has not left the immediate location of the intended or primary message receivers.  This, then ,is still “live” theatre.  The degree of physical mediation is one of the measurements of theatre vs. camera pre-processed TV/cinema/webcast.  If the message is completely converted to digital form and transported to listeners/watchers in another contained environment(s) especially in the private sphere (home audience), then it ceases to be theatre.  It may still be entertainment, spectacle, a message with valuable/exciting or artistic content, but it is not “theatre.”  I would suggest that this mediated art form be called “digital performance” for it can be performative and impactful without a physically present audience.

 

Interactivity/ Theatrical Roles

 “The word interactive operates textually rather than analytically, as it connotes various vague ideas of computer screens, user freedom, and personalized media, while denoting nothing.  Its ideological implication, however, is clear enough: that humans and machines are equal partners of communication.” [34]  Interactivity, is more than choices on a navigation menu, low levels of participation or getting a desired response to a request. Sheizaf Rafaeli defines it as existing in the relay of a message, in which the third or subsequent message refers back to the first. [35] [36]   The problem is that if a production is truly interactive, the roles between message sender and message receiver have been reversed –therefore the audience would become the actor equally in charge of the direction of the theatrical event.  This is also the case in truly interactive writing.  Bolter[37] and Landow[38] suggest that high interactivity would erase the difference between author and reader –the text would be permanently mutable. [39] [40]  Interactivity can blur the roles of actor/audience participant and artist/audience as message author (playwright).  In the case of Crazy Wisdom Sho the web audience created the text for the actors on stage.  This external scripting muted the boundaries between the roles of audience as receiver and as message sender –which removed the theatrical role of the playwright.

Interactivity in relationship to theatre is important but not without limitation.  The roles of audience and participant have gotten closer together through participatory “happenings” and avant-garde theatre. However, if theater is to remain a somewhat organized event the roles of message sender (actor, director/playwright) and message receiver (audience/lesser participant) must remain to some degree.  “The problem with the audience-as-active-participant idea is that it adds to the clutter, both psychological and physical….It's not that the audience joins the actors on the stage; it's that they become actors-and the notion of ‘passive’ observers disappears.”[41] Chaos may ensue and the event would become spectacle rather than organized theatre.

Being immersed in a virtual reality[42] world is highly physically interactive, so much so that the audience member becames a user or particpant in the event.  Having a physical presence in the “world of the play” may change the world around them.  In terms of virtual reality (VR), “interactivity, refers to the degree to which users of a medium can influence the form or content of the mediated environment.”[43]  It is noted by Brenda Laurel (creator of the Placeholder[44] virtual world) that when influencing the world around you, your are more than an audience member. “In fact, it may be that the nature of VR makes it inappropriate to think of it as an entertainment medium at all.  Entertainment—at least mass entertainment—implies the consumption of some performance by a large audience.”[45]  Physical audience participation can happen without technology, such as in environmental plays such as Tony and Tina’s Wedding[46] where the audience shares dinner and interacts with the actors…or other productions where audience members speak or act as participants in the designated acting space.  

 

Spoken Word or Verbal Message as well as Musical and Visual Data

One main aspect of theatre and therefore digital theatre is the existence of more than one artistic mode of communication, specifically the coexistence of the spoken word with either visual images and/or musical information.   Despite disagreement over narrative in theater, spoken words remain an important factor in determining weather a work is art, dance, theatre, or something else. There are four levels of scripting which accompany the spoken word in digital theatre; they are pre-scripted, scripted, loosely scripted, and non-scripted. 

Without the spoken word, a piece is art, or dance, or a performative combination thereof, but it is not theatre.  Examples of this include the non-scripted work of Riverbed or Telematic art installations such as the Difference Engine.[47]  The collaborative Digital Dances produced by Riverbed featuring collaboration with Merce Cunningham and Bill T. Jones (such as GhostCatching and Biped[48]), are beautifully created performances featuring live and digitized motion capture animations of dancers performing before the same physical audience at the same time.  However, no words are spoken by the dancers, so it remains dance.  Other dance works featuring web broadcasts are beginning to cross-over into theatre, as the dancers open their mouths and address the audience with words (sometimes from the internet)[49].  Telematic works such as the Difference Engine also play with place and presence, but do not include a pre-determined verbal message from live message sender to audience receiver.  There is a strong correlation between the presence and absence of spoken words and a performance being referred as “opera,” “theatre,” “dance,” “art,” “performance” event, or “spectacle”. 

It is necessary to have more than the visual and audio elements in a theatrical production.  Without the spoken word, an event is art or dance, or a performative combination thereof, but it is not theatre.  The use of “spoken word” or verbal message is a partial solution to the disagreement in the theater community of the value of the term “narrative” in relation to theatre. [50]  In his article, “Contemporary Performance/Technology,” Johannes H. Birringer also uses “narrative content”[51] as a distinctive element separating digital dance, arts, from theatre.  Robert Wilson is described as abandoning literary theatre for theatre dominated by images and stage picture.  However, Wilson’s theatre works do not in fact exclude the spoken word (though his operas might). 

Wilson’s own speech disorder and interest in the communication/thought patterns of autism resulted in his “disregard for the significance of the word.”[52]  He is resistant to the narrative because he views it as a control device, but it does not follow that he seeks meaninglessness.[53]  What he is seeking is meaning created within the audience’s mind – a step removed from the locus of control of the traditional playwright.  Meaning is created almost accidentally in the clashing and joining of words, sounds and images.  Still, the spoken words are there.

Works such as University of Kansas’ productions which stage pre-scripted works[54], Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre’s newly scripted productions like Making Americans, and loosely scripted productions like George Coates Performance Works Nowhere Band and Blind Messengers are all examples of performance with spoken word and other mediums, and they are all digital theatre.

 

Conclusion: 

 Trying to define digital theatre may feel a bit like holding back the tides of the ocean from a sand-castle, just as you make a moat to inscribe your concepts, waves of new information come seeping, sometimes crashing in.  But to ignore digital technology’s place in theatre, is to allow other disciplines (art, performance studies, and music) to define the artistic age we are entering and to relegate “theatre” to being used as a metaphor for other communications technologies (such as computer science).

If technology is communication, the creation and interpretation of symbols, then theatre is itself technology.  Theatre then should not fear digital technology, which is just another tool for creating the theatrical event.  It is as potentially compatible (useful) to theatre as hydraulics, the dirt circle or boards of a stage, the written technology script, or the electric or candle lighting by which to read it.  It is my hope that these conflicting elements such as human and machine can be married in a new form of theatre.  A theatre in which one does not seek to consume the other, but utilizes both aspects: the human message creator, and digital technology as a tool to expand the reach of that message to create new and insightful ways of expressing human experience.

  

 

Footnotes for Table:

 ⁵⁵ http://www.doublehappines2.com/

⁵⁶ http://www.georgecoates.org

⁵⁷ http://www.amorphicrobotworks.org/

⁵⁸ Interaction, Reaction and Performance: The human body tracking project, Sue Broadhurst, http://www.c5corp.com/venues/ydstyds/index.shtml

⁵⁹ I Do Fly, Isabelle Jenniches , http://www.9nerds.com/isabel

 Events are excluded from being Digital Theatre which tend toward extremes ends (zenith and nadir) of any of the four categories.

 

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Reaves, John.  “Theory and Practice:  The Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre.”  www.cyberstage.org/archive/cstage13/gsrt13.html. GS3

Riverbed http://www.riverbed.com/

Roberts, Paul, webmaster.  "Who is Creating Virtual Drama Today?"  Virtual Drama Society. (1996)

Saltz, David Z.  "Live Media: Interactive Technology and Theatre."

http://www.drama.uga.edu/production/archive/1999-2000/tempest/

Santaman’s Harvest http://visarts.ucsd.edu/~ajenik/adriene.html.

Smith, Barry.  “Live Art’s digital Horizons:  Recording Recent Developments in Live Art Practices.”  Literary and Linguistic Computing, Vol. 12, No. 4, 1997, 251-257. A1

Stanford Virtual Theatre http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/projects/cait/

Starbuck, Jennifer Parker.  “Triangulated Nation, and Lizard Monitors.”  Theatre Journal, 51.4 (1999) 445-450.

Studio Z  http://www.studioz.com

Steuer, Jonathan.  “Defining Virtual Reality:  Dimesions Determing Telepresence.”  In Communications in the Age of Virtual Reality, Frank Biocca, and Mark R. Levy, eds.   33-56.  Hillsdale:  Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995.

Tanaka, Jennifer.  “Theatrics Out of Thin Air.”  American Theatre (September 1999) 24-27.

Troika Ranch http://www.troikaranch.org/.

Winn, Steven.  “The Scene:  Meeting of the Berkeley Mock City Council:  Maybe politics is funnier when it takes itself seriously.”  San Francisco Chronicle, (16 August 2002).

http://www.daimi.au.dk/~sdela/dte/.

Weidemann, Carl http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Stage/1321/index.htm.

George Coates Performance Works:

Borris, Chris.  George Coates Interviewed by John Papageorge.  Silicon Valley Radio.  Web Networks, Inc.

Carroll, Jerry.  “Philosophical Coates”.  San Francisco Chronicle.  5 January 1998.

Carstensen, Jeanne.  “George Coates:  the High and Low of Tech”.  The Gate.  www.georgecoates.org/OnMars/show/pressrelease.txt.

Carstensen, Jeanne.  “Wittgenstein:  On Mars”.  The Gate.  1 February 1998.

DPA.  “Blind Messengers (Description).”  http://dpa.ntu.ac.uk/dpa_search/result.php3?keywords=George+Coates.

Elliott, Vicky.  Light on the Wall.  San Francisco Chronicle.

George Coates Performance Works website. www.georgecoates.org San Francisco.

Illingworth, Montieth M.  George Coats (sic): Toast of the Coast.  www.cyberstage.org/archive/cstage12/coats12.htm.

Meloan, Steve.  “CU-See Me.”  Online article, Urban Desires, 1995.

Roca, Octavio.  “‘20/20’ Visionary:  Coates’ dazzing multimedia take on William Blake.”  San Francisco Chronicle.  21 January 1997.

Rosenberg, Scott.  “George Coates and Virtual Reality.”  TheatreForum, Spring 1992, 4-12. GC1

www.albion.com/blake/archive/volume1997/24.html

http://www.fortune.org/nowhere.html.

www.georgecoates.org/

www.georgecoates.org/BlindMessenger/index.html

www.georgecoates.org/OnMars/show/index.html

www.georgecoates.org/OnMars/show/pressrelease.txt

http://www.volunteersolutions.org/volunteer/opp/one_183930.html.

Zagreus, Leah.  Art as Fascism?  No, Just a Bunch of Sarcastic Crap. http://www.auricular.com/AIM/reviews/coates/coates.html.

 

University of Kansas:

Mahoney, Diana Phillips.  "Live Theater Gets a Virtual Boost: At the University of Kansas, computer-generated scenery sets the stage for a one-of-a-kind production." Computer Graphics World, (July 1995) 76-78. K3

Reaney, Mark.  Digital Scenography:  Bringing the theatre into the information age.  Kent Interactive Digital Design Studio.

Reaney, Mark.  "The Theatre of Virtual Reality: Designing Scenery in an Imaginary World."  TD&T, (Spring 1993) 29-32.

Reaney, Mark.  “Virtual Scenography:  The Actor, Audience, Computer Interface.”  Theatre Design and Technology, 32.1(Winter 1996) 36-43.

Reaney, Mark.  “Virtual Reality Sprouts Wings.”  TD&T, 34.2 (Spring 1998).

Unruh, Delbert.  “Virtual Reality In The Theatre:  New Questions About Time and Space.”  Theatre Design and Technology, 32.1 (Winter 1996) 44-47.

Watkins, Adam with Kristen Watkins.  "Virtual Limelight." Computer Graphics World, (March 2000) 36-40. K4

"Not in Kansas Anymore" American Theatre (Dec. 1996) 50.

http://www.ukans.edu/~mreaney/index.html.

http://www.ukans.edu/~mreaney/3d.html.

http://www.ukans.edu/~mreaney/dinosaurus/.

http://www.ukans.edu/~mreaney/flute/.

http://www.ukans.edu/~mreaney/midsummer/.

http://www.ukans.edu/~mreaney/machinal/.

http://www.ukans.edu/~mreaney/wings/.

http://www.ukans.edu/~mreaney/play/.

http://www.ukans.edu/~mreaney/machine/

 

Other

Roget’s International Thesaurus.  Fourth edition.  Revised by Robert L. Chapman.  New York:  Harper & Row, 1977.

http://www.neaq.org/vtour/webcam.p.html