My thesis seeks to use technology, specifically video, computer graphics and text messaging, to enable an interactive theater experience. In order to provide context for my thesis, I will provide examples, both historical and contemporary, of people who use technology in order enhance the performance of live theater, especially theater with an interactive component.

The history of theater shows that many artists and performers have used technology to augment the presentation of dramatic material and the power of the individual actor.

In ancient Greece, there are many examples of ingenious stagecraft. The most well known is the "deus ex machina" or god from the machine. In order to solve a crisis in the plot of a play, an actor representing one of the gods would be lowered from a complicated machine and resolve all the conflicts. In medieval times, the magic lantern was used to project images onto a screen.

In the early 20th century, art movements such as Futurism celebrated the machine as the pinnacle of human achievement. They attempted to both use machines as part of their performances and to create a style of acting that was more mechanistic. As Roselee Goldberg describes in her book, "Performance: Live Art 1909 to the Present," used various devices to produce "noise music" which was meant to emulate the sound of trains and other industrial creations. Around the same time, Russian Constructivists built complicated contraptions meant to bring the energy and spectacle of the circus to theater. Karel Capek's 1920 play R.U.R. was the first to use the new medium of cinema to project backgrounds as part of a dramatic theater production.

More recently, Robert Whitman used film to project scenes onto actors in his 1960s play Prune Flat. With the advent of television and video, performance artists in the 1970s used video as a way to play with notions of time and repetition. The screen was used as a character unto itself.

Now computers are being used alongside video as a means of expression in theater. Recently, the concept of "Digital Theater" has arisen, defined by Wikipedia as "the coexistence of "live" performers and digital media in the same unbroken space with a co-present audience." Digital Theater is generally seen as having narrative content to differentiate it from performance art, which seeks to provoke the user into exploring an artistic statement. Digital Theater is also defined as taking place in a single location as opposed to "Desktop Theater" which includes web-based role-playing, games and collaborative storytelling.

The Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre is one theater company that has endeavored to use computer technology as an integral part of their productions. Initially, the company used computers as a way to visualize productions before building costly sets. Now The Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre has been experimenting with what it calls "digital puppetry," which involves the combining of computer generated images with a live performer to create a new dramatic entity.

They have also done a great deal of work with performing via teleconference. By partnering with technology companies such as Lucent, they have been able to take a technology primarily used for business communication and create a forum for dramatic collaboration over long distances.

The Builder's Association uses video and computer graphics alongside live actors in order to bring out the complex relationship between humans and computers. In their recent production of SUPER VISION, The Builder's Association presents a series of vignettes on the theme of privacy in the digital age. Digital information in the form of numbers, words and graphs are projected onto the stage. Live actors communicate with virtual ones existing as digital video.

Blast Theory, a UK based art and performance group, uses a range of media such as video, computer graphics and the web to tell a story. They have used video projections as a way to create sets that transform the context of the theater experience. Their work has been described as closer to cartoon than theater.

The Wooster Group is known for using video and digital media in their plays. Their aim seems to be to set up a kind of interaction with the dramatic text of the live performance. Sometimes the projected video reinforces the action onstage and other times it is in direct conflict.

Improvisational theater troupe Neutrino uses digital video in order to construct a completely improvised movie while the audience watches. In order to do this, a group of actors solicits a suggestion from the audience and then disperses. The actors leave the theater accompanied by a technical crew who use digital video cameras to tape them performing scenes. The technical team then races back to the theater where they quickly edit the scenes together and present it to the audience.

The theatrical duo of Kraft & Purver has experimented with using video in different ways. At times they project video as a backdrop. Other times they project images directly onto the actors to make a statement or set a mood. Ed Purver is currently developing an interactive video system which enables an actor to control a video projection in real time.

These groups differ in their methodologies, but they all seek to use technology to enhance and alter the theater experience. It's too early to tell how much technology will infiltrate the somewhat conservative medium that is dramatic theater. But it's unlikely that the use of video and digital media will be just a fad. More likely is that these tools will take their place alongside stagecraft such as recorded sound and computer controlled lighting as methods of enhancing the theater experience and augmenting the powers of the actor.

I should add that comedian Drew Carey has been experimenting with combining comedy improvisation with graphics on television. However his program, "Drew Carey's Green Screen" achieves the melding of improvisational performance with the multimedia content by shooting performers against a green screen and then combining the improv performance with animations in post-production. What I have in mind is the production of a multimedia performance that combines disparate elements live before an audience.