Digital Media on the Contemporary Stage: A Director’s Testimony

A lecture by Avra Sidiropoulou

s digital design inscribes its own narrative from the outset of the rehearsal process, twenty-first century theatre artists and audiences are becoming increasingly accustomed to porous dramaturgies, influenced by information technologies and digital articulations. Following a practice-as-research approach, this talk will explore uses of technology in contemporary performance from within the rehearsal room, interrogating the diverse functions of the multimedia element by touching on several theoretical and practice-related issues: how has technology affected performance both in terms of creative strategies and audience experience? What are some of the pleasures and dangers involved in the omni-presence of the media in today’s theatre landscape? How has digital articulation enhanced, ironized or redefined structure and characterization? Under what conditions can the encounter of corporeal presence with an electronically interceded image provide meaningful experiences for the audience? Bringing in examples from different multimedia productions that Avra Sidiropoulou has directed, Avra will focus on the semiotics of a mise-en-scene that draws from the sensory and the ontological collision between the live and the mediated.

Avra Sidiropoulou is Professor of Theatre and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Open University of Cyprus. She is also a professional director and runs Athens-based Persona Theatre Company. She has published extensively on directing theory and practice, the ethics of adaptation, contemporary performance and dramaturgy. Notable publications include: Directions for Directing. Theatre and Method (Routledge 2018), Authoring Performance: The Director in Contemporary Theatre (Palgrave Macmillan 2011), Staging 21st century Tragedies. Theatre, Politics and Global Crisis (editor, Routledge 2022), Adapting Greek Tragedy. Contemporary Contexts for Ancient Texts (co-editor, Cambridge UP 2021) and Contemporary Directions in Director Training Theatre, Dance, and Performance Training (co-editor, 2023). Avra is an elected member of the Executive Committee of the European Association for the Study of Theatre and Performance (EASTAP) and was nominated for the 2020 Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award by the League of Professional Theatre Women in New York.