Systemic Dramaturgy

A Handbook for the Digital Age
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-0-8093-3831-3
Verlag: Southern Illinois University Press

Buch, Englisch, 272 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Theater in the Americas

Working theatrically with technology 
 
Systemic Dramaturgy offers an invigorating, practical look at the daunting cultural problems of the digital age as they relate to performance. Authors Michael Mark Chemers and Mike Sell reject the incompatibility of theatre with robots, digital media, and videogames. Instead, they argue that problems with technology are really problems of art: How can we tell this story and move this audience with these tools? And when we have different tools, should that change the stories we tell?
 
This volume attunes readers to “systemic dramaturgy”—the recursive elements of signification, innovation, and history that underlie all performance—arguing that theatre must be understood as a system of systems, a concatenation of people, places, things, politics, feelings, and interpretations, ideally working together to entertain and edify an audience. The authors discuss in-depth the application of time-tested dramaturgical skills to extra-theatrical endeavors, including multi-platform performance, installations, and videogames. And they identify the unique interventions that dramaturgs can and must make into these art forms.
 
More than any other book that has been published in the field, Systemic Dramaturgy places historical dramaturgy in conversation with technologies as old as the deux ex machina and as new as artificial intelligence. A spirited and playful blend, the volume collates histories, transcripts, and case studies and applies the concepts of systemic dramaturgy to works both old and avant-garde. Between chapters, Chemers and Sell include conversations with some of the most forward-thinking, innovative, and creative people working in live media as they share their diverse approaches to the challenges of making performances, games, and digital media that move both heart and mind. This volume is nothing less than a guide for thinking about the future evolution of performance.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft Einzelne Theaterschauspieler & Regisseure
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wissenssoziologie, Wissenschaftssoziologie, Techniksoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft Theaterregie, Theaterproduktion

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Thinking and Making Systemically
- Chapter 1. Sokyokuchi
- INTERLUDE 1. Kill Your Darlings: Marianne Weems on Collaboration and Devising
- Chapter 2. Play
- INTERLUDE 2. Play Matters: Elizabeth Swensen on Theatricality and Gaming
- Chapter 3, Empathy 
- INTERLUDE 3: Empathy for Whom? micha cÁrdenas on Activism and Digital Performance
- Chapter 4: Towards a Dramaturgy of Video Games
- INTERLUDE 4: SHTEAM: Noah Wardrip-Fruin on Storytelling in the Digital Age
- Chapter 5: A Case Study of Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom by Jennifer Haley
- INTERLUDE 5: Generations: Jennifer Haley on the Theatre Game
- Chapter 6. Systemic Dramaturgy Roundtable
- Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Michael Mark Chemers, professor of theatre arts at the University of California Santa Cruz, is the author of Ghost Light: An Introductory Handbook for Dramaturgy and Staging Stigma: A Critical Examination of the American Freak Show.
 
Mike Sell, professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, is the author of Avant-Garde Performance and the Limits of Criticism and the editor of Ed Bullins: Twelve Plays and Selected Writings.