Theatre Workshops at a Distance

1. Theatre Workshops at a Distance Mark Childs

2. ANNIE Project Linking together UK universities and outside experts • Universities are Warwick, Kent, De Montfort, Exeter, Queens Belfast • Experts in Kansas, Vancouver, Frankfurt and around UK (BBC, Blast Theory and universities listed above)

3. Sections • Introduction to virtual performances • Telematic Performance workshops at Warwick • Three contrasting types of workshop • Questions raised by virtual performances

4. Telematic Performance

5. Labels • Virtual performance • Virtual theatre • Telematic performance • Telepresent performance • Distributed performance

6. Definitions the phrase "telematic performance work" refers to the use of a telecommunication network to establish links between two remote spaces at the same time and to present the activities in those two separate spaces variously as a single performance event.… these activities … make use of the Web as a third performance "space". Cellbytes, http://isa.hc.asu.edu/cellbytes/scott/

7. Definitions "telematics" means more than simply videoconferencing, it implies a different awareness of your body and a different engagement with the visual/kinetic information received from the other end (or ends) - Susan Kozel

8. Virtual Performance Draws on experiences of technology (specifically virtual reality) • explores notions of "self", "location" "body/identity" Exploits advantages of technology • accessible, mutable, recordable, transferable, innovative, fun

9. Telematic Performance at Warwick

10. The Telematic Performance • Susan Kozel, Practitioner based in Vancouver • First year students at Warwick • Performance and Practice module

11. Performance space • Physical performance space • Virtual performance space

12. screen PC Monitor webcamera P Laptop Data projector Video camera Video bus PC Monitor webcamera P P P P P P P multipoint Hub P uplink

14. Audiences • Performers can see each other on their computers • People sit in studio and watch via projection

16. Activities in workshop Discussions of concepts • Online chat Structured improvisations • Creating a virtual face and body • Follow the leader Rehearsed performance pieces

17. Discussion of concepts Susan asked students what they hoped to get out of session. Answers were: • cross Atlantic chat could be a great way of creating intellectual relationships • how using the web can play around with what is 'real', both with time and image.

18. Discussion of concepts • the idea of being together and not together in the same place could be interesting • how the Internet can offer up opportunities for a new type of performance and performance space, making things accessible

19. Discussion of concepts • what is real and illusion, and how image and physicality can interact in the here and now while spatially being worlds apart. • how absence of verbal communication affects our interaction and puts emphasis on the physical

20. Structured improvisations

27. Rehearsed performance piece

30. Images in telepresence performances 1. layering (overlapping of performers in a virtual space). 2. juxtaposed windows 3. point to point (where they are projected into your space and you into theirs but you do not see your own image)

31. Performance and audience relationship to image • performance within the physical space • relationship of performance to camera • relationship of separate images within virtual space to each other • relationship of images to other channels (audio, chat, etc.)

32. Questions raised: degree of materiality • Do you feel as if you are just as material when you engage with the camera? • Do different parts of someone's body seem to be more "material" than others? • Do you feel as if we are present with you, as if all sides are equally present?

33. Questions raised: Sightlines and relationship to image • where do you look when you work across cameras and projections? • where do you need to position the camera and your eyes in order to gain a real sense of interaction?

34. Main issues • Communication more difficult. Requires greater structure. • Constraints of technology • New setting for performance • New opportunities for collaboration • But: How real an experience is it?

35. Blast Theory workshop

36. Blast Theory • Theatre group incorporating new technology in their work. • Merging audience and performers • Rationale: to make work accessible, to engage with changes in society, to reposition theatre as innovative and exciting

37. Can You See Me Now? • involved performers running around Sheffield while audience members directed them online http://www.canyouseemenow.co.uk/

38. Warwick workshop At Warwick students developed pieces using • Walkie talkies • Chat rooms • Displayed on screen via data projector

39. Physical Performance workshop

40. Videoconferenced physical performance • Took place Friday, 8th March, 2002 • Canterbury and Exeter • Eastern physical performance • Performers in one half of studio • Wall-length screen hung in centre • Other half of group projected on screen

41. Why did it fail as a workshop? • delays in setting up • low frame rates • image freezing and speeding up • time lags

42. Why did it fail as a workshop? • Inappropriateness of subject matter • Selection of activities • difficulties with communication • difficulties with performance space • sightlines • inappropriate expectations

43. Telematic Performance at DMU

44. Differences with Warwick • Students based at home for 2nd and 4th session • Dial-up modems created additional difficulties • Performance and connection from own space created different ‘feel’

45. But is it art?

46. Final Thoughts (1) The idea of the body displaced in time and space though “performing” in a present, virtual space is not enough (in my opinion) to support the rhetoric and hyperbole that drives much of the web-based activity we are speaking of. - Johannes Birringer “Connected Dance”

47. (2) But ... In response to ADaPT - a performance across six sites involving: • “live decorporealistions” • tearing up paper in front of a camera • multiple images of someone swivelling in a chair

48. (3) Questions • Is this a new area for performance work or a few techies getting over-excited by technology? • Is it a springboard for creativity, or a mask for lack of creativity? • Is it missing the entire point of theatre, or rediscovering it?

49. Contacts • m.childs@warwick.ac.uk