New Media Dramaturgy Performance, Media and New-Materialism [Hardcover]

This book illuminates the shift in approaches to the uses of theatre and performance technology in the past twenty-five years and develops an account of new media dramaturgy (NMD), an approach to theatre informed by what the technology itself seems to want to say. Born of the synthesis of new media and new dramaturgy, NMD is practiced and performed in the work of a range of important artists from dumb type and their 1989 analog-industrial machine performance pH, to more recent examples from the work of Kris Verdonck and his A Two Dogs Company. Engaging with works from a range of artists and companies including: Blast Theory, Olafur Eliasson, Nakaya Fujiko and Janet Cardiff, we see a range of extruded performative technologies operating overtly on, with and against human bodies alongside more subtle dispersed, interactive and experiential media.This exciting new book identifies and examines those changes to live performance occasioned by the rise of digital media in contemporary theatre aesthetics. Formulating a new framework for both analyzing and creating contemporary new media performance including multimedia theatre and dance, video performance and installation, the book also explores how the synthesis of new dramaturgy and new media has changed the experience of live arts for the spectator. Drawing on case studies from artists and works including dumb type, The Wooster Group and Blast Theory , amongst others, the book will be of interest to academics, students and artists working in new media and dramaturgy.