DRAM30310 Digital Theatre

Academic Year 2023/2024

This module explores what it means to make and preserve theatre through digital modalities in an increasingly technological world, and asks students to create their own artistic project inspired by digital theatre. In the module, students will investigate theoretical ideas, like the necessity for theatre to be “live,” for an audience and performer to be “present,” and consider who is the performer when watching pre-programmed robotic performances or using projections or holograms. Students will see how playwrights and theatre artists confront apprehensions about our technological world and extrapolate whether these themes resonate in our current landscape. Students in this module will consider the benefits and losses when we preserve theatre works in digital archives, understand the possibilities digital design offers, and consider how and what we perform in our own digital lives. Students will also assess what the pandemic illustrated in terms of what was possible, what was missed, and what should be kept from the surge of digital theatre. Lastly, having learned about Digital Theatre, students will create a digital theatre project that encapsulates these lessons in their own original work and articulate how their work is an example of digital theatre. Engaging with this topic through theoretical and literary analysis, plays, popular culture, and performance clips, students will not only analyze what digital theatre offers to the future of theatre making but make their own artistic contribution to this end.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

Learning Outcomes:
On completion of the module, students should be able to:
Define features of digital theatre and debate what qualities theatre should possess, digital or not.
Contrast how theatre artists explore technology in their works to real world intersections of technology and human experience.
Understand how humans perform digitally-- theatrically and otherwise.
Critically analyze the benefits and obstacles of digital theatre as a means of making theatre and preserving theatre.
Create a theatrical project that encapsulates digital theatre approaches and/or themes.

Indicative Module Content:

Class 1: Introduction: Theatre and Life in a Digital World

Class 2: Liveness in the Theatre

Class 3: Presence in the Theatre

Class 4: Replacing Humans with Machines: Robots – R.U.R. and Uncanny Valley

Class 5: Performance in the Digital World – AR, VR, Holograms, and Anonymity

Class 6: Replacing Humans with Machines, Part Two: The Adding Machine¸ Cyborgs, More AI Please, and Digital Design

Class 7: Digital Theatre Project: Idea Presenting and Future Planning

Class 8: The Digital Archive: Translating Performance into the Digital

Class 9: Pandemic Lessons: Theatre Problems and Digital Solutions

Class 10: Pandemic Lessons Part Two: Accessibility, Growing Audiences, and New Ideas

Class 11: Embracing Digital Theatre

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Seminar (or Webinar)

22
Autonomous Student Learning

78
Total

100
Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
Students will conduct close readings of various literature, including plays, articles, and book chapters.
Students will view performance and production clips about Digital Theatre.
Students will attend seminars with some Q&A based on readings and engage in group work.
Students will present and create their own digital theatre project.
Due to the nature of this practice-based module, therefore to receive the full benefit of the module, students are strongly recommended to attend all classes.
 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Project: Students will submit an original digital theatre artistic project that utilizes lessons from class readings/lecture/discussion and establishes their own creative approach to the subject. Coursework (End of Trimester) n/a Graded No

40
Continuous Assessment: Weekly Attendance/Responses and Prepared Tasks based on readings and class discussions. Throughout the Trimester n/a Graded No

30
Presentation: Presentation of digital theatre project in the works. Includes submission of a written analysis and evaluation of the goals and methods of this project that correlate to module material covered so far Week 7 n/a Graded No

30

Carry forward of passed components
Yes
 
Resit In Terminal Exam
Spring No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Group/class feedback, post-assessment
• Peer review activities
• Self-assessment activities

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Written feedback will be provided to students individually throughout semester. Feedback on mid-term given within two weeks. End of term project feedback will be offered in the post-assessment period.

Course Reading:
R.U.R. by Karel Čapek
Uncanny Valley by Thomas Gibbons
The Apple Family: A Pandemic Trilogy by Richard Nelson
Other excerpts from plays.

Caridad Svich, Toward a Future Theatre: Conversations During a Pandemic (London: Methuen Drama), 2022.
Toni Sant, editor, Documenting Performance: The Context and Process of Digital Archiving, (London: Methuen Drama, 2017).

Other articles/chapters provided on Brightspace.

Recommended Reading:
Kara Reilly, Automata and Mimesis on the Stage of Theatre History. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2011.
Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, Routledge, 1993.
Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in A Mediatized Culture, Routledge, 2008.
Nadja Masura, Digital Theatre: The Making and Meaning of Live Mediated Performance, US & UK 1990-2020, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
Susan Broadhurst and Sara Price (eds.), Digital Bodies: Creativity and Technology in the Arts and Humanities, Palgrave MacMillan 2017.
Lyndsay Michalik Gratch and Ariel Gratch, Digital Performance in Everyday Life, Routledge 2021.

Timetabling information is displayed only for guidance purposes, relates to the current Academic Year only and is subject to change.
 
Autumn
      
Seminar Offering 1 Week(s) - Autumn: All Weeks Mon 14:00 - 15:50