Experiential Theatres is a collaboratively edited and curated collection that delivers key insights into the processes of developing experiential performance projects and the pedagogies behind training theatre artists of the twenty-first century.
Experiential refers to practices where the audience member becomes a crucial member of the performance world through the inclusion of immersion, participation, and play. As technologies of communication and interactivity have evolved in the postdigital era, so have modes of spectatorship and performance frameworks. This book provides readers with pedagogical tools for experiential theatre making that address these shifts in contemporary performance and audience expectations. Through case studies, interviews, and classroom applications the book offers a synthesis of theory, practical application, pedagogical tools, and practitioner guidance to develop a praxis-based model for university theatre educators training todays theatre students.
Experiential Theatres presents a holistic approach for educators and students in areas of performance, design, technology, dramaturgy, and theory to help guide them through the processes of making experiential performance.
Recenzijos
Recipient of the 2024 Edited Works Award from the Association of Theatre in Higher Education
As new technologies present themselves, their use value extends only as far as they can contribute to processes that increase democratization, equity, and inclusion in the theatre. That contribution requires the type of scaffolding found in Lewis and Bartleys collection. Social media, large language models, virtual and hybrid presence(s), and their ilk require absorption and integration with theatrical activity to the point that they respond to creative inputs and manipulations. Experiential Theatres illuminates this moment in unique ways that will undoubtedly prove useful to faculty, students, and curricular designers looking to reimagine their relationship to technology, pedagogy, narrative, and the experiential.
Paul Masters, Boston Conservatory at Berklee
"The book offers an incredibly useful codification and categorization of experiential theatre practice the innovative structure of this edited collection makes a significant stride forward in how researchers, artists, and teachers draw together scholarship, artistic practice, and pedagogical insight to offer new knowledge to the field. What is most refreshing and exciting about this volume is how the editors have curated and structured the work to reflect their manifesto for theatre and performance pedagogy."
Sarah Weston, New Theatre Quarterly
An insightful and necessary read for Higher Education stakeholders, such as students, artists-researchers and senior management teams, on how to develop the performing arts curricula of the not-so-distant future.
Evi Stamatiou, International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media
| Acknowledgments |
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| Author Biographies |
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| Introduction: Experiential Theatres: An Introduction |
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1 | (22) |
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Section 1 Collaborative Experience Making and Interactive Performance Practice |
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1 Frameworks for Making and Performing in Experiential Performance |
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25 | (10) |
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2 Designing Play: Game Techniques in Experiential and Interactive Performance |
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35 | (11) |
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3 Framework Design: A Curatorial Approach to Teaching Participatory Performance |
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46 | (7) |
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4 Intimacy in Play: Training Actors for Agentic Symmetry in Unscripted Interactions |
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53 | (11) |
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5 Experiential Theatres and the Value of Rethinking Theatre Education: A Conversation with Performers and Interactive Theatre Makers on Developing Methods for Collaborative Experience Making |
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64 | (10) |
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6 Facilitating Narrative Agency in Experiential Theatre |
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74 | (6) |
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7 Training the Actor for Roleplay and Other Improv-Based Interactive Theatre Forms |
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80 | (6) |
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8 Standardized Patient Experience: Reframing Pedagogical Approaches in the Acting Studio |
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86 | (5) |
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9 The Significance of "Role-Play" and "Instruction-Based Performance" as Modes of Teaching, Collaborating, and Performing with/for Participating Audiences |
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91 | (7) |
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10 Collaborative Development Workshop: Approaching Conceptualization through Audience AfFordances and Experiential Trajectories |
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98 | (7) |
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11 A Postdigital Response: User Experience Design, Interactive, Immersive, and Mixed Reality Performance |
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105 | (8) |
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Section 2 Narrative and Dramaturgy for Experiential Forms |
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113 | (70) |
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12 Models for Experiential Training in Playwriting and Dramaturgy |
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115 | (5) |
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13 Mapping Narrative in Pig Iron Theatre Company's Pay Up and Franklin's Secret City |
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120 | (10) |
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14 The Dramaturgy of Tabletop Roleplaying Games |
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130 | (10) |
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15 Rasa in This Is Not a Theatre Company's Experiential Productions |
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140 | (11) |
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16 Reconfiguring Narrative and Experiential Dramaturgy: A Conversation with Professional Educators and Dramaturgs on the Future(s) of Storytelling |
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151 | (9) |
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17 Wildwind Performance Lab: New Play Development through Abstraction |
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160 | (6) |
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18 It's Okay to Not be "Right": Incorporating Creative Thinking into Theatrical Partnerships |
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166 | (5) |
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19 Theatrical Immersion within Alternate Reality Games |
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171 | (4) |
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20 A Postdigital Response: Experiential Dramaturgies of Online Theatre, Cyberformance, and Digital Texts |
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175 | (8) |
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Section 3 Performance Technologies and Design Thinking |
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183 | (82) |
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21 Pedagogies for Design Thinking and Experiential Technologies |
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185 | (9) |
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22 Storyliving: A Creative Process |
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194 | (12) |
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23 Theatre Majors and Immersive Technology: An Interview with HP's Joanna Popper |
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206 | (6) |
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24 Interaction and Extended Somatechnics |
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212 | (11) |
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25 A Design Roundtable: The Creative Process of Experience |
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223 | (11) |
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26 Playing with the Past: Pirates in the College Classroom |
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234 | (6) |
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27 Unlocking Formal Qualities to Discover the Iconography in Visual Design |
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240 | (4) |
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28 Designing an Interactive Production: A Practical Walkthrough |
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244 | (7) |
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29 A Postdigital Response: Performance Technologies and Design Thinking |
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251 | (9) |
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30 An Afterword: Experience and Theatre Education |
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260 | (5) |
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Appendix 1 Glossary of Experiential Terms |
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265 | (9) |
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Appendix 2 Companies, Organizations, and Ensembles |
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274 | (4) |
| Index |
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William W. Lewis, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Theatre History, Literature, and Criticism at Purdue University. His research focuses on spectatorship, politics, digital cultures, and experiential performance. As a scholar-artist he also utilizes practice-based research, where he integrates interactive technologies into live performance to better understand the relationships between contemporary audiences and mediatized culture. He has published in Theatre Topics, Performance research, GPS: Global Performance Studies, The International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, and Theatre Research International. Recent book chapters have appeared in New Directions in Teaching Theatre Arts (Palgrave, eds. Anne Flitosos and Gail S. Medford) and Avatars, Activism and Postdigital Performance (Bloomsbury, eds. Liam Jarvis and Karen Savage). Will is the founding co-editor of PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research.
Sean Bartley, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Theatre History at Northwestern State University. His research centers around contemporary site-specific, ambulatory, and immersive theatre practices and sports as performance. His work has been featured in TDR: The Drama Review, Theatre History Studies, Theatre Journal, PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research, and Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation. Recent book chapters include "Youre Out! Presence and Absence at the Ballpark" in Sporting Performances: Politics in Play (Routledge, ed. Shannon Walsh) and "The President Makes a Play: Putin and Erdogans Sporting Diplomacy" with Jared Strange in Performing Statecraft: The Postdiplomatic Theatre of Sovereigns, Citizens, and States (Bloomsbury, ed. James R. Ball III).
