Digital Theatres (OSUN Network Collaborative Course)

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 6
• Convenor: Lewis Church
• Assessment: an in-class group assessment (60%) and creative project (40%)
  

What happens when theatres go digital? This exciting new module addresses how theatre and performance, as live embodied practices and forms of communal encounter, have permanently changed following extended lockdowns, social distancing and pandemic health restrictions. As an OSUN collaborative network course, we will establish collaborations between Birkbeck students and those at partner institutions in Berlin, Bogotá, Vienna, London, Johannesburg and New York to ask questions about the shifting ethics and aesthetics of cultural production in a global context, in a way that mirrors how we currently come together: physically distanced but virtually connected.  

The module asks how the performing arts have fundamentally altered their reach, audience, institutional structures and the quality of social encounter by going digital. This will include discussion of how new dispersed digital formats - including WhatsApp and Instagram performances, VR/AR-experiences and Zoom theatres - have expanded our idea of theatre. We will examine how these new networked performance experiences alter common social and cultural functions of theatre, and what that suggests about the future of the performing arts sector. These questions will be interrogated through a mix of theory and practice, combining readings and discussions with practical projects that allow you to try out the tools of digital theatre making.  

We also invite international performance makers to workshops that discuss how they have practically addressed the effects of social distancing and developed alternative bridges of interconnection. Throughout the module, you will be asked to collaborate in order to actively document this current cultural moment and reflect the enhanced role of digital media. In doing so, you will participate in our semester-long project of creating a living archive of digital theatre, consisting of video documentations, audio interviews, hybrid performances and interactive collages.

Indicative module syllabus

• Documentation
  
• Liveness
  
• Participation
  
• Performance-making
  

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• demonstrate skills in analysing and making digital theatre
• understand some of the tools and applications used in the making and mediatisation of digital theatre
  
• understand exemplary international theatre-makers and companies who make digital theatre 
  
• critically and creatively respond to key theories, ideas and discourses informing and emerging from the practice of digital theatre
  
• communicate understanding through a variety of subject-specific modes, including digital; text, visual, sonic; performance-based media
• contribute to the production of a cross-institutional archive of digital theatre.