[gray_box]This is a reading list for my Second Examination in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Read more about this project here.[/gray_box]

Minor field, advisor: Professor Peter Eckersall

The “digital revolution” of the past fifteen or twenty years has created not only new methods of (intercultural) communication and exchange, but also changed our ways of conceptualizing both performing arts generally, and the knowledge-production in and around the performing arts. In recent years, the field of Digital Humanities has been the locus for a more general, interdisciplinary conversation around these issues. The question of how the performing arts can fit into the discourse of digital humanities seems to be a fairly new one. For many scholars, the digital humanities and performing arts have been equated with the quantitative study of plays and other textual elements of theatre as well as movement in certain dance-related projects. In this field, I aim to understand the interaction between the field we call the “Digital Humanities” and Theatre and Performance Studies as a discipline in a more complex way.

The divide between “the digital” and “the analogue” has undergone an incredible change over the past ten years, and it has affected conversations within the larger field of Performance Studies and Theatre Studies as well. The arguments presented in (now classical) works such as Peggy Phelan’s Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, Philip Auslander’s Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, and even Donna Haraway’s theorization of the cyborg and its many applications within the field of theatre and performance, have been vastly re-interpreted, re-contextualized, and re-visioned. In this field, I will look at the seeming contradiction between liveness and mediatization in theatre and performance in the 21st century, and focus specifically on three areas where these questions are coming to the fore.

First, on a very basic level, I will focus on questions of documentation of and archival practices around performances and productions, which also entails questions surrounding copyright and accessibility. Second, I will look at conversations around the use of digital technologies in performances, and by extension, what has been referred to as “new media dramaturgies”: a transformation of live performance taking the cue from new media and technologies. Third, I will focus on the questions arising in relation to the unstable dichotomy between analogue and digital surrounding the ontology of performance and its consequences for the aesthetic regimes of performing arts generally, as well as the temporality and location of performance.

Books

  1. Baugh, Christopher. Theatre, Performance and Technology: The Development of Scenography in the Twentieth Century. Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

  2. Bay-Cheng, Sarah, Chiel Kattenbelt, Andy Lavender, and Robin Nelson, eds. Mapping Intermediality in Performance. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2010.

  3. Birringer, Johannes. Performance, Technology, and Science. New York: PAJ Publications, 2008.

  4. Bleeker, Maaike. Visuality in the Theatre: The Locus of Looking. Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

  5. Broadhurst, Susan. Digital Practices: Aesthetic and Neuroesthetic Approaches to Performance and Technology. Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

  6. Carver, Gavin, and Colin Beardon, eds. New Visions in Performance: The Impact of Digital Technologies. Lisse and Exton, PA: Swets & Zeitlinger, 2004.

  7. Causey, Matthew. Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture: From Simulation to Embeddedness. New York and London: Routledge, 2009.

  8. Chapple, Freda, and Chiel Kattenbelt, eds. Intermediality in Theatre and Performance. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006.

  9. Dixon, Steve. Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theatre, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2007.

  10. Giannachi, Gabriella. The Politics of New Media Theatre: Life®™. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.

  11. Hansen, Mark B. N. New Philosophy for New Media. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2006.

  12. Kozel, Susan. Closer: Performance, Technologies, Phenomenology. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2008.

  13. Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre. New York and London: Routledge, 2006.

  14. McLuhan, Eric and Marshall McLuhan. Theories of Communication. New York: Peter Lang, 2011.

  15. Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2001.

  16. Massumi, Brian. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2002.

  17. Portanova, Stamatia. Moving Without a Body: Digital Philosophy and Choreographic Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013.

  18. Salter, Chris. Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.

  19. Scheer, Edward, ed. “Live Ends: Performance in the Information Age.” Special issue, Performance Paradigm, no. 1 (2005). http://www.performanceparadigm.net/category/journal/issue-1/

  20. Stern, Nathaniel. Interactive Art and Embodiment: The Implicit Body as Performance. Canterbury: Gylphi, 2013.

  21. Weber, Samuel. Theatricality as Medium. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004.

Articles and Chapters

  1. Auslander, Philip. “Is There Life after Liveness?” In Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Activity, edited by Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon, 194–198. Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

  2. Bay-Cheng, Sarah. “Theater History and Digital Historiography.” In Theater Historiography: Critical Interventions, edited by Henry Bial and Scott Magelssen, 125–136. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010.

  3. Bedford, Christopher. “The Viral Ontology of Performance.” In Perform, Repeat, Record: Live Art in History, edited by Amelia Jones and Adrian Heathfield, 77–88. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2012.

  4. Birringer, Johannes. “Interactive Environments and Digital Perception.” In A Performance Cosmology: Testimony from the Future, Evidence of the Past, edited by Judie Christie, Richard Gough, and Daniel Wall, 87–93. New York and London: Routledge, 2006.

  5. Bolter, Jay David, et. al. “New Media and the Permanent Crisis of Aura.” Convergence 12, no. 1 (February 2006): 21–39. doi: 10.1177/1354856506061550.

  6. Brejzek, Thea. “Physicality and Virtuality: Memory, Space and the Actor on the Mediated Stage.” In The Potential of Spaces: The Theory and Practice of Scenography and Performance, edited by Alison Oddie and Christine A. White, 157–172. Bristol and Portland, OR: Intellect, 2006.

  7. Dean, Tanya. “Digital Engagement: Strategies for Online Dramaturgy.” In The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy, edited by Magda Romanska, 500–505. New York and London: Routledge, 2015.

  8. Eckersall, Peter, Helena Grehan, and Edward Sheer. “New Media Dramaturgy.” In The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy, edited by Magda Romanska, 375–381. New York and London: Routledge, 2015.

  9. Flanders, Julia. “The Productive Unease of Digital Humanities Scholarship.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 3, no. 3 (Summer 2009).

  10. Hope, Cat, and John Charles Ryan. “Dancing at the Speed of Light: The Digital in Performance.” In Digital Arts: An Introduction to New Media, 79–102. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.

  11. Noland, Carrie. “Digital Gestures.” In New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories, 217–245. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.

  12. Palmer, Scott. “A Place to Play: Experimentation and Interactions Between Technology.” In The Potential of Spaces: The Theory and Practice of Scenography and Performance, edited by Alison Oddie and Christine A. White, 105–120. Bristol and Portland, OR: Intellect, 2006.

  13. Parker-Starbuck, Jennifer. “Becoming-Animate: On the Performed Limits of Human.” Theatre Journal 58, no. 4 (December 2006): 649–668. doi:10.1353/tj.2007.0033.

  14. Pavis, Patrice. “Media on the Stage.” In Contemporary Mise en Scène: Staging Theatre Today, 132–157. London and New York: Routledge, 2013.

  15. Remshardt, Ralf. “Beyond Performance Studies: Mediated Performance and the Posthuman.” Culture, Language and Representation/Cultura, Lenguaje y Representación 6 (May 2008): 47–64.

  16. Ridgway, Nicole, and Nathaniel Stern. “The Implicit Body.” In Cyberculture and New Media, edited by Francisco J. Ricardo, 117–156. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2009.

  17. Saltz, David Z. "Performing Arts." In A Companion to Digital Humanities, edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth, 121–131. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.

  18. Svensson, Patrik. “The Landscape of Digital Humanities.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 4, no. 1 (Summer 2010).

  19. Watten, Barrett. “Poetics in the Expanded Field: Textual, Visual, Digital…” In New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories, 335–370. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.

  20. Wilson, Stephen. “Kinetics, Sound Installations, and Robots.” In Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology, 367–456. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2002.