The Digital Theater: Producing Online Venues for Performance

Audiences have become used to seeing performances and not having direct contact with the performers, either for feedback or clarification. For theater and dance companies, this audience feedback is crucial to artistic development. To facilitate listening and dialogue, I am producing a video blog to house video pieces and other artifacts from Misnomer, an NYC based dance company. A video blog, unlike a static website, allows for conversations to occur around the work and ideas of Misnomer and its developing audience. As part of the overall online audience initiative, we are exploring different ways to develop new audiences for the performances as well creating a new audience in the online world.

With the explosion of online video publishing (YouTube) and the ability to edit video online, the possibility to engage with video content is readily available. This is particularly relevant for the performing arts. Technologically speaking, the performing arts has a reputation for being behind the curve. With the advent of cheap digital video publishing, any arts organization is able to participate in a way that was previously available to only a few people with expensive equipment. The most recent technological development in the past year is the availability of online video editing. Online Video Editing opens the door to easily create and manage video content.

The way we create affects what we create. By sharing content and co-creating online, this project aims to help arts organizations foster the overall goal of the arts - expression, creativity and vision.

I began my undergraduate as a performer, with a bias towards the richness of "liveness." Film, like Electronic music, did not inspire me because of a lack of human contact. A machine made it - it was simply too mediated. However, the richness of "liveness" rarely transpired in the live performances and stage work I was creating and watching in New York.

With a cultural movement towards open-source and sustainability, I began seeing possibilities in the rehearsal and creation process. In my personal experience, I saw the process as very exclusive and exclusionary. Many actors rehearse for months at a time in closed rehearsals and then have limited runs of their shows. This is not ideal - neither for the performers nor the audience.

In my thesis exploration, I began considering whether rehearsals could be a time to create work for an online venue, as well as a time to create work for the stage.

These issues led me to work with Misnomer, a dance group that is curious about video technologies and what is possible in an increasingly connected world.

For the entire 20th century, experimental theater has been inquiring how to fully engage the audience. From Augusto Boal's Political Theater in Brazil to Bertolt Brecht's theater in Germany (and later the United States), the theater world has found many things that have worked.

Most recently, we have seen the explosion of Improv Comedy. For those lucky enough to be in New York, the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) have been working to revamp what it means to perform comedy. By taking suggestions from the audience, the actors rekindle the interactive aspect of performance. If you haven't been to NYC to see UCB, think "Who's Line is it Anyways?"

However, there are many things that are still "broken," in the traditional audience / performer relationships. Dance and theater are not exactly the same form as improv comedy. I am addressing the "broken" audience/performer relationship directly by creating a platform to foster this relationship.

For this particular project, my initial audience is the dance community. However, because this project extends beyond the performing arts and is a project in participatory media, my audience includes anyone who is creating or watching video online.

Users will be coming to the site to learn about the Misnomer, the dance company. However, the focus will be on creating inlets and outlets for participation on the blog. Users will be able to:

GET CONTENT via:
RSS feeds
email subscriptions
podcasts
video channels (blip.tv, youtube)

CREATE CONTENT via:
video editing contests
submission, or a call for work

REQUEST PERSONAL PERFORMANCES via:
email
a GoogleMapsMashup program

The entire blog will be built with Wordpress as a CMS (content management system). I will be using Final Cut Pro to edit and compress video.