Digital Media and Technology

Digital media and technology are ever-evolving, and so is their relationship to theatre. In this section, you can learn about how theatremakers are incorporating media and tech into their art-making and career-building, as well as read New Crit pieces about work created to be shared online. Two interesting series to explore for a sense of how quickly the conversations change are Gwydion Suilebhan’s Techne—essays written in 2013 and 2014—and Performing the Internet, curated by Kate Bergstrom in January 2021. Check out content from the 2019 Digital + Performance Convening for a multifaceted look at this topic!

The Latest

Ontroerend Goed’s Participatory Metaphors

Podcast

Ontroerend Goed’s Participatory Metaphors

by Jeffrey Mosser, Alexander Devriendt

24 May 2023

Our Trauma Twin Siblings: Building Creative Spaces for Queer and Trans Tamil Community as Teardrop Collective

Essay

Our Trauma Twin Siblings: Building Creative Spaces for Queer and Trans Tamil Community as Teardrop Collective

by Gitanjali Lena, Hari Somaskantha

31 March 2023

Imagining Creative Fat Futures

Essay

Imagining Creative Fat Futures

by Morgan Davis, Jules Vodarek Hunter

29 March 2023

Ontroerend Goed’s Participatory Metaphors

Podcast

Ontroerend Goed’s Participatory Metaphors

24 May 2023

Artistic director of Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed, Alexander Devriendt talks through their process for imagining and developing participatory content. Alexander and Jeffrey Mosser also dig into financing art in Europe, the cost of touring internationally and how COVID has affected it, and sustaining family and art simultaneously.

Illustration of several different pairs of people holding hands with each other.

Our Trauma Twin Siblings: Building Creative Spaces for Queer and Trans Tamil Community as Teardrop Collective

Essay

Our Trauma Twin Siblings: Building Creative Spaces for Queer and Trans Tamil Community as Teardrop Collective

31 March 2023

Hari Somaskantha and Gitanjali exchange letters discussing their work with Teardrop Collective, a Toronto-based group that centers stories of queer, trans, Deaf, and hearing people of Tamil, Sri Lankan, and South Asian descent.

Illustration of various cushioned chairs.

Imagining Creative Fat Futures

Essay

Imagining Creative Fat Futures

29 March 2023

Morgan Davis and Jules Vodarek Hunter discuss the process of creating Fat Fables, a theatre program for fat LGBT2SQ+ artists who are twenty-nine and under.

An illustration of a clothesline with a film strip in front of it.

Making Then Is Now During a Pandemic with Our Chinese Canadian Feminist Elders

Essay

Making Then Is Now During a Pandemic with Our Chinese Canadian Feminist Elders

28 March 2023

Julia Hune-Brown and Keira Loughran discuss crafting Then Is Now, a concept album/video playlist they created through conversations with Chinese Canadian women who grew up in Toronto’s Chinatown during the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

A purple stage with a lit blue backdrop.

Inventing the “Flay” (Film/Play) with Campo Santo

Essay

Inventing the “Flay” (Film/Play) with Campo Santo

16 March 2023

When Campo Santo decided to film their production of Star Finch’s Side Effects early in the COVID-19 pandemic, they were embarking on a creative journey that felt entirely novel and a little overwhelming. In this conversation, the production’s directors discuss development of the production’s aesthetic and the generative process they embarked on at the intersection of “film” and “play.

A still from Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World.

How Javaad Alipoor’s Fourth World Trilogy Disrupts What We Think We Understand About History, Politics, and the Internet

Joseph

Dunne-Howrie

Essay

How Javaad Alipoor’s Fourth World Trilogy Disrupts What We Think We Understand About History, Politics, and the Internet

14 March 2023

Joseph Dunne-Howrie examines the way that three of Javaad Alipoor’s plays infuse the internet into theatrical performance, creating intersecting narratives that interrogate identity formation in the age of global interconnectivity.

A performer in front of a virtual background with trees and bright sunlight.

Digital Theatre Is Here To Stay: Paula Vogel’s Bard at the Gate

Jonathan

Mandell

Essay

Digital Theatre Is Here To Stay: Paula Vogel’s Bard at the Gate

13 March 2023

Theatre critic Jonathan Mandell discusses virtual playwriting series Bard at the Gate and looks at the impact and future of digital theatre.

Histories of the Avant-garde event poster.

Histories of the Avant-garde and Contemporary Disruptive Technologies

NORDWIND

Video

Histories of the Avant-garde and Contemporary Disruptive Technologies

Cyber Attack: Digital Art and Activism Conference

Wednesday 16 November 2022

Berlin, Germany and international.

Cyber Attack: Digital Art and Activism is an online conference by NORDWIND in cooperation with FuturePerfect Studio (New York), Denis Semionov, Kampnagel (Hamburg), and Hellerau (Dresden). The opening session Histories of the Avant-garde and Contemporary Disruptive Technologies livestreamed on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network on Wednesday 16 November 2022 at 9:30 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 12:30 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 17:30 GMT (London, UTC +0) / 18:30 CET (Berlin, UTC +1) / 19:30 EET (Bucharest, UTC +2).

seven performers around large robotic arm in front of a backdrop of the cosmos.

Chekhov, Robots, and Holograms

Arlekin Players Theater

zero-G

Video

Chekhov, Robots, and Holograms

Experimentation with Emerging Technologies in The Orchard /an auction/, a Hybrid Theatre Production

Saturday 12 November 2022

Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Join artistic director Igor Golyak and his team of collaborators for a conversation about experimentation; unusual applications of emerging technologies; what they are learning about audience behavior and interactivity; and working with partners across cultures, platforms, and art forms to create live, in-person, hybrid, and virtual theatre. This conversation was livestreamed on the commons-based, peer produced HowlRound TV network on Saturday 12 November 2022 at 12:45 p.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 2:45 p.m. CST (Austin, UTC -6) / 3:45 p.m. EST (Boston, UTC -5) / 20:45 GMT (London, UTC -0) / 21:45 CET (Berlin, UTC +1).

Concept art for a mostly red stage with a starry sky backdrop.

Practical Artificial Intelligence for Stage Design

David

Forsee

Essay

Practical Artificial Intelligence for Stage Design

6 October 2022

Projection designer David Forsee, who brings artificial intelligence into his own design workflow, creates a toolkit for other designers interested in effectively and ethically integrating text-to-image models into their design processes.

Shakespeare in Gdansk: A Vessel for Past, Present, and Future

Monica

Payne

Essay

Shakespeare in Gdansk: A Vessel for Past, Present, and Future

29 September 2022

Monica Payne recaps the 26th international Gdansk Shakespeare Festival, where artists from around the globe adapted, deconstructed, and celebrated Shakespeare’s plays through boldly contemporary productions.

Visual Arts

Podcast

Visual Arts

21 September 2022

In the third episode of PUHA podcast, co-hosts Zsófi and Bíborka talk to the interdisciplinary collective Hollow, the experimental scenographer Eszter Kálmán, and dancer-choreographer Beatrix Simkó. Together, they discuss how their work features across different media and mixes visual and digital art with performativity. Get ready for a journey across household noise choreographies, moving bodies in Vienna’s Leopold Museum, underground queer communities in Tbilisi, and stories of friendship and pregnancy in performance art!

A screenshot of 3 actors on Zoom performing a musical in costume.

The TikTok Revolution

Katy

Zapanta

Essay

The TikTok Revolution

9 August 2022

Katy Zapanta champions TikTok as a platform with the potential to revolutionize the theatre industry’s systemic issues.

An audience member being tucked into bed by an actor on stage.

Playable Plays: Toward a New Interactivity

Drew

Paryzer

Essay

Playable Plays: Toward a New Interactivity

18 July 2022

Theatremaker Drew Paryzer discusses the creative potential of interactive art and the impact that the “playability” of a show can have on audiences.

Seeing Double: Double Consciousness as a Black Theatre Practitioner

Ekemini

Ekpo

Essay

Seeing Double: Double Consciousness as a Black Theatre Practitioner

14 July 2022

Ekemini Ekpo applies W.E.B. Dubois’ concept of “double consciousness” to the experience of performing Blackness for a predominantly white audience that may or may not be interested in disturbing the primacy of their own lived experience.

How to Produce a Podcast Series: A Beginner-Friendly Guide to the Art of Podcasting

Tatiana

Hernandez-Mitchell

Essay

How to Produce a Podcast Series: A Beginner-Friendly Guide to the Art of Podcasting

7 June 2022

Tatiana Hernandez-Mitchell, a podcast consultant for HowlRound, offers a guide to the technical side of producing podcasts. This guide focuses on equipment, software, and best practices.

Cultural Mobility Forum 2022 on Digital Mobility

Nordic Culture Point

On the Move

Video

Cultural Mobility Forum 2022 on Digital Mobility

Hosted by Nordic Culture Point in Helsinki, Finland and On the Move

Wednesday 25 May 2022

Helsinki, Finland

Cultural Mobility Forum 2022 hosted by Nordic Culture Point in Helsinki, Finland and On the Move livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network Wednesday 25 May 2022 at 07:00 BST (London, UTC +1) / 08:00 CEST (Brussels, UTC +2) / 09:00 EEST (Helsinki, UTC +3) / 14:00 SGT (Singapore, UTC +8) / 16:00 AEST (Sydney, UTC +10).

Multihyphenate Artists

Podcast

Multihyphenate Artists

With Denmo Ibrahim and Sarah Fahmy

25 May 2022

Artistic identities can be complicated, and many theatremakers work equally within two or more disciplines simultaneously. The most interesting work is rarely created in a vacuum. These multidisciplinary artists create diverse projects in all senses of the word, broadening our idea of what theatre can and should be. Today, two such multihyphenate artists, Denmo Ibrahim and Sarah Fahmy, converse about their multiple identities, how they reconcile and manage their myriad expertise, and the role of multihyphenate artists in today’s theatre landscape.

Re-Fest 2022

CultureHub

Video

Re-Fest 2022

Bringing artists, activists, and technologists together to explore our role in reshaping the future

Wednesday 16 March - Friday 25 March 2022

United States

CultureHub presented Re-Fest 2022 livestreaming on the commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network from Wednesday 16 March to Friday 25 March 2022.

Performance and Workshop by Theatre in Quarantine (TiQ)

University of Maryland

Video

Performance and Workshop by Theatre in Quarantine (TiQ)

Symposium: Performing Arts in the Digital Age: Interactions and New Directions

Friday 11 March and Saturday 12 March 2022

College Park, Maryland, USA

University of Maryland's Maya Brin Institute for New Performance presented a performance and workshop by Theatre in Quarantine (TiQ) (Joshua William Gelb and Katie Rose McLaughlin) as part of the symposium Performing Arts in the Digital Age: Interactions and New Directions. Livestreaming on the commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network Friday 11 March and Saturday 12 March 2022.

event poster for deaf woke with erin phillips.

#DeafWoke with Erin Phillips AKA DM3

Urban Jazz Dance Company

Video

#DeafWoke with Erin Phillips AKA DM3

#DeafWoke is a Virtual Consciousness-raising, Engaging Online Talk Show, Led by Black and Native American Deaf Host Mr. Antoine Hunter PurpleFireCrow

Tuesday 15 February 2022

United States

Antoine Hunter presented #DeafWoke with Erin Phillips AKA DM3 livestreaming on the commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv Tuesday 15 February 2022 at 5 p.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 7 p.m. CST (Chicago, UTC -6) / 8 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5).

Two women sitting across from each other being filmed in a living room.

Podcasts and Zooms and Plays, Oh My!

Ezra

Brain

Essay

Podcasts and Zooms and Plays, Oh My!

Creating Non-Theatre

10 January 2022

Ezra Brain reflects on the unique process of creating and performing the new work Our Childhood Sucked and shares what the theatre community can learn from creating digital “non-theatre.”

The Future Is Now: Conversations with Cannupa Hanska Luger and Qondiswa James

Simon

Dove

Podcast

The Future Is Now: Conversations with Cannupa Hanska Luger and Qondiswa James

8 November 2021

In these episodes of The Future Is Now, CEC Artslink invites cultural worker Qondiswa James and mixed media artist Cannupa Hanska Luger, two of Artslink’s Future Fellows, to discuss their artistic work, practices, and visions for the future.

Electric Gugak

CultureHub

Video

Electric Gugak

A Multi-Locational Live Concert which Features Performances from Seoul, New York City, and Los Angeles

Friday 5 November 2021

United States

La MaMa and CultureHub presented Electric Gugak livestreaming on the global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Friday 5 November 2021 at 6 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 8 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 9 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4) / 10 a.m. KST (Seoul, UTC +9).

artist holding a sitar in front of an image of a galaxy.

Waves of Gravity

CultureHub

Video

Waves of Gravity

Through Raga, Polyphonic Overtone Singing, Experimental Music, Improvisational Flights of Fancy, and Spoken Word, Neel Murgai Creates a Psychedelic Universe of Sight and Sound

Thursday 21 October and Friday 22 October 2021

United States

La MaMa and CultureHub present Waves of Gravity livestreaming on the global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Thursday 21 October and Friday 22 October 2021 at 5 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 7 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 8 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4).