Below you can find a selection of performances, venues and literature that have explored the practice and theory of digital performance in particularly evocative ways. We would like you to participate in expanding this selection. Please send us a message with suggestions of other examples, texts, or places to include.
Digital Performances – A Selection
ON DEMAND
- Unterscheidet Euch (Distinguish yourselves) by Turbo Pascal (various locations) takes on a game structure to explore how we separate ourselves and categorise other. Following an in-person version in 2019, this production has now been adapted to Zoom (next at the Impulse Theater Festival on June 8 and 9, 2021)
- Loulou by onlinetheatre.live (Hebbel-am-Ufer-Theater HAU 4, Berlin) is an interactive fiction game, exploring manipulation strategies, discourses, and goals of the New Right (app experience from June 2021).
- Müller-Fon by Interrobang (Hebbel- am-Ufer Theater HAU 4, Berlin): a telephone encounter with the voice of Heiner Müller, exploring Müller’s take on a range of topics from contemporary theatre and the crisis of Europe to global social inequities. The caller chooses how to engage in a dialogue with Müller’s voice from dead (until April 20, 2021)
- VR Theatre productions (Staatstheater Augsburg): Virtual Reality dance and theatre experiences, including works by Einar Schleef, David Mamet, Nicolai Gogol, and Maurice Ravel (some available in English and German)
LIVE ONLINE
- A Thousand Ways (various locations/times) by 600 Highwaymen, USA: a one-on-one telephone performance in which you meet a stranger, moderated by an AI.
- International Online Theatre Festival by TheatreTimes.com (from around the globe): 3rd iteration of the IOTF, presenting the best of global theatre and performance that was developed under pandemic conditions (May 20 – June 4, 2021)
- Homecoming by MachinaEX (at Hebbel-am-Ufer Theater HAU 4, Berlin, Germany; in repertory): a participatory live performance on telegram and various other digital platforms, which explores lockdown culture, pandemic paranoias and data obsessions.
- Nathan, der Weise by G.E. Lessing (Theater Dortmund, Germany): online version of Lessing’s play that uses digital communication rooms, vlogging and social media platforms to adapt the play to the virtual present (in May/June)
- Romeo -Juliet by Creation Theatre, UK: interactive Zoom adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, in which the audience gets to choose sides between the Capulets and Montagues (from May 12, 2021)
- TM by Ontroerend Goed (Cork Midsummer Festival, Ireland): live interactive one-one-on experience exploring media manipulation and conspiracy theories (June 2021)
- Twin Speaks – Telegram Edition by vorschlag:hammer (Festival Perspectives): a live performance that cuts across mystery, TV series and docufiction on telegram and with various video and audio instalments (May/ August 2021)
- Werther.live (various locations/times): digital adaptation of Johann Wolfgang v. Goethe’s The Sorrows of the Young Werther across various online apps (WhatsApp/Zoom).
LIVESTREAMS FROM THEATRES
- BE at Home (Berliner Ensemble, Germany): offers a video and audio archive plus livestreams and various online formats
- Dramazon Prime (Schauspiel Köln): live-streaming service of the theatres online offerings
- Digital Without Walls (La Jolla Playhouse, La Jolla, CA): streams and on-demand performances
- HAU 4 (Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Germany): has implemented a permanent digital stage.
- Junges DT Digital (Deutsches Theater Berlin, Germany): Youth theatre of the DT offering wide range of live and on-demand digital media formats.
- National Theatre At Home (London, UK): On demand streaming of wide range of performances; the Netflix of theatre.
- Public Everywhere at the Public Theatre (New York, USA): Streaming services, both live and on-demand.
- Old Vic: In Camera (London, UK): offers both livestream and on-demand options of their performances
- Schaubühne Berlin (Germany): Offers an online season schedule with recorded performances and film material
- Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh, UK): has implemented a permanent online stage, the Traverse 3.
LITERATURE
Theatre and Performance
GENERAL
- Bial, Henry. “Performance Studies 3.0”. In: The Performance Studies Reader (3rd ed.), ed. by Henry Bial and Sara Brady. London and New York: Routledge, 2015.
- Cameron, David, Rebecca Wotzko, and Michael Anderson. Drama and Digital Arts Culture. London and Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2017.
- Masura, Nadja. Digital Theatre: The Making and Meaning of Live Mediated Performance, US & UK 1990 -2020, 2020 Palgrave Macmillan.
- Otto, Ulf. Internetauftritte: Eine Theatergeschichte Der Neuen Medien. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2013.
- Schipper, Imanuel, Martina Leeker and Timon Beyes. Performing the Digital: Performance Studies and Performances in Digital Cultures. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2017.
LIVENESS
- Georgi, Claudia. Liveness on Stage: Intermedial Challenges in Contemporary British Theatre and Performance. Berlin, [Germany] ; Boston, [Massachusetts]: De Gruyter, 2014.
- Reason, Matthew and Anja Mølle Lindelof. Experiencing Liveness in Contemporary Performance: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2016.
- Sullivan, Erin (2020): Live to your living room: Streamed theatre, audience experience, and the Globe’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, In: Participations – Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, Volume 17 – Issue 1, 92-119.
PARTICIPATION
- Benford, Steve and Gabriella Giannachi. “Interaction as Performance“. In: Interactions, Vol. 19, Issue 3 (May 2012)
- Felton-Dansky, Miriam. Viral Performance: Contagious Theatres from Modernism to the Digital Age. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2018.
- Machon, Josephine. Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
PANDEMIC PERFORMANCE
- Keidl, Philipp Dominik et al. Pandemic Media: Preliminary Notes Toward an Inventory / Edited by Philipp Dominik Keidl, Laliv Melamed, Vinzenz Hediger, and Antonio Somaini.Lüneburg: meson press, 2020.
- Netztheater : Positionen, Praxis, Produktionen / Herausgegeben von der Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung und nachtkritik.de in Zusammenarbeit mit weltuebergang.net unter redaktioneller Leitung von Sophie Diesselhorst, Christiane Hütter, Christian Rakow und Christian Römer. Berlin: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, 2020.
- The Theatre Times Special Reports on COVID 19. Posted on: TheatreTimes.com
New and Social Media
- Baker, Camille C. New Directions in Mobile Media and Performance. New York: Routledge, 2019.
- Çöteli, Sami, and Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft. Cyber Public Sphere and Social Movements: Calling to Cyber Spaces. 1st ed. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2018.
- Frosh, Paul. The Poetics of Digital Media. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2019.
- Miller, Kiri. Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube and Virtual Performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
- Rosenbaum, Judith and Gwen Bouvier: Twitter, social movements and the logic of connective action: Activism in the 21st century – an introduction. Volume 17, Issue 1 May 2020.
- Wagner, Elke. Intimisierte Öffentlichkeiten – Pöbeleien, Shitstorms und Emotionen auf Facebook, Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2019.
- Wyss, Eva L., Stefan Hauser, and Roman Opilowski. Alternative Öffentlichkeiten. Transcript Verlag, 2017. Edition Medienwissenschaft.
XR and Cyberspace
- Bailey, Justin. “The Body in Cyberspace: Lanier, Merleau-Ponty, and the Norms of Embodiment.” Christian Scholar’s Review 45.3 (2016).
- Johnson, Lawrence F. and Alan Levine. 2008. “Virtual Worlds: Inherently Immersive, Highly Social Learning Spaces.” Theory Into Practice 47, no. 2 (Spring): 161-170.
- Katan-Schmid, Einav. “Playing With Virtual Realities: Navigating Immersion Within Different Environments(Artist-Led Perspective).” In: Body Space Technology, 19(1), 224 -238.
- Krajnik, Robert.Vom Theater Zum Cyberspace. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2016.
- Swisky, Lawrence. “Transmedia Ethics: Why Theatre Needs Philosophy Needs Virtual Reality Needs Video Games.” In: Theatre (New Haven, Conn.) , 2016, Vol. 46 (2), 55-67.