Drama and Digital Arts Cultures is a critical guide to the new forms of playful exploration, co-creativity, and improvised performance made possible by digital networked media. Drawing on examples from games, education, online media, technology-enabled performance and the creative industries, the book uses the elements of applied drama to frame our understanding of digital cultures. Exploring the connected real-world and virtual spaces where young people are making and sharing digital content, it draws attention to the fundamental applied drama conventions that infuse and activate this networked culture. Challenging descriptions of drama and digital technology as binary opposites, the book maps common principles and practice grounded in role, embodiment, performance, play, and identity that are being amplified and enhanced by the affordances of online media. Drama and Digital Arts Cultures draws together extensive original research including interviews with game designers, media producers, educators, artists and makers at the heart of these new digital cultures. Young people discuss their own creative practices and products, providing insight into a complex and evolving world being transformed by digital technologies. A practical guide to the field, it contains case studies and examples of the intersections of drama conventions and networked cultures drawn from the US, Canada, UK, Netherlands, Singapore and Australia. Written for scholars, educators, students and 'makers' everywhere, Drama and Digital Arts Cultures provides a clear understanding of how young people are blending creativity and learning with the powerful and empowering conventions of drama to create new forms of multimodal and transmedia storytelling.

Drama and Digital Arts Cultures is a critical guide to the new forms of playful exploration, co-creativity, and improvised performance made possible by digital networked media. Drawing on examples from games, education, online media, technology-enabled performance and the creative industries, the book uses the elements of applied drama to frame our understanding of digital cultures. Exploring the connected real-world and virtual spaces where young people are making and sharing digital content, it draws attention to the fundamental applied drama conventions that infuse and activate this networked culture. Challenging descriptions of drama and digital technology as binary opposites, the book maps common principles and practice grounded in role, embodiment, performance, play, and identity that are being amplified and enhanced by the affordances of online media. Drama and Digital Arts Cultures draws together extensive original research including interviews with game designers, media producers, educators, artists and makers at the heart of these new digital cultures. Young people discuss their own creative practices and products, providing insight into a complex and evolving world being transformed by digital technologies. A practical guide to the field, it contains case studies and examples of the intersections of drama conventions and networked cultures drawn from the US, Canada, UK, Netherlands, Singapore and Australia. Written for scholars, educators, students and 'makers' everywhere, Drama and Digital Arts Cultures provides a clear understanding of how young people are blending creativity and learning with the powerful and empowering conventions of drama to create new forms of multimodal and transmedia storytelling.

Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture examines the recent history of advanced technologies, including new media, virtual environments, weapons systems and medical innovation, and considers how theatre, performance and culture at large have evolved within those systems. The book examines the two Iraq wars, 9/11 and the War on Terror through the lens of performance studies, and, drawing on the writings of Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou and Martin Heidegger, alongside the dramas of Beckett, Genet and Shakespeare, and the theatre of the Kantor, Foreman, Socíetas Raffaello Sanzio and the Wooster Group, the book positions theatre and performance in technoculture and articulates the processes of aesthetics, metaphysics and politics. This wide-ranging study reflects on how the theatre and performance have been challenged and extended within these new cultural phenomena.

This volume reshapes a contemporary understanding of research in theatre and performance arts. Bringing together distinguished scholars from all over the world, the book serves as an arena for international scholars to introduce innovative research methodologies and disseminate their research findings regarding VLT, data archiving, and digital history and discusses the impacts of digital culture in art production, stage performance, film, and literature. The Ibsen focus in the book is illustrative of the power of digital database research that is generating new relations in spatial-historical dimensions that have otherwise gone unnoticed. It demonstrates how a new methodology can bring practical benefits to handling big data with the support of digital technologies. In line with the post-pandemic landscape, this book engages a reflection on how the digital revolution has brought about changes and challenges, and constraints and breakthroughs within the field of theatre and performance arts. It is of appeal to theatre artists and practitioners, scholars, critics, librarians, digital archive engineers, and postgraduate students interested in theatre, performance studies, digital media, information technology, library science, communication, education, sociology, as well as political science. “The book investigates the latest methodological development in digital cultures and performance arts, which significantly contributes to the ever-changing and increasingly advanced technological culture in this field.” - Jessica Tsui-yan Li, York University, Canada "In line with the post-pandemic landscape, this book engages the reader in reflecting on how the digital revolution has brought about chances and challenges, constraints and breakthroughs to the field of theatre and performance arts. An original, eye-opening and inspiring volume at multiple levels, this book brings together distinguished scholars from all over the world." - Dr Anna Tso, The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong

The aim of this book is to explore digital media and intercultural interaction at an arts college in Tanzania, through innovative forms of ethnographic representation. The book and the series website weave together visual and aural narratives, interviews and observations, life stories and video documentaries, art performances and productions. It paints a vivid portrayal of everyday life in East Africa’s only institute for practical art training, while tracing the rich cultural history of a state that has mixed tribalism, nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and cosmopolitanism in astonishingly creative ways. While following the anthropological tradition of thick description, Digital Drama employs a more artistic and accessible style of writing. Dramatic, ethnographic details are interspersed with theoretical reflections and postulations to explain and make sense of the unfolding narratives. The accompanying website visualizes and sensualizes the stories narrated in the book, unfolding a dramatic world of African dance, music, theater, and digital culture.

Live Digital Theatre explores the experiences of Interdisciplinary Performing Arts practitioners working on digital performance and in particular live digital theatre. Collaborating with world-leading practitioners – Kolectiv Theatre (UK), Teatro Os Satyros (Brazil), and The Red Curtain International (India)- this study investigates the ways to bring live digital performance into theatre training and performance making. The idea of Interdisciplinary Performative Pedagogies is placed within the context of the exploration of live digital theatre and is used to understand creative practices and how one can learn from these practices. The book presents a pedagogical approach to contemporary practices in digital performance; from interdisciplinary live performance using digital technology, to live Zoom theatre, YouTube, mixed media recorded and live performance. The book also combines a series of case studies and pedagogical practices on live digital performance and intermedial theatre. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in performing arts, digital arts, media, and gaming.

Critical Themes in Drama is concerned with the relationship between drama and the current socio-political context. It builds on and contributes to ongoing scholarly conversations regarding the use, benefit, challenges and opportunities for drama and theatre as a social, cultural, educational and political act. The intention of this book is to canvas current theory and practice in drama, to provide an extended examination of how drama as a pro-social practice intersects with socio-cultural institutions, to link critical discourse and examine ways drama may contribute to a broader social justice agenda. Authors draw on a variety of theoretical tools from the fields of sociology, anthropology and cultural studies. This combines with an exploration of work from drama practitioners across a variety of countries and practices to provide a map of how the field is shaped and how we might understand drama praxis as a social, cultural and political force for change. This book offers drama scholars, practitioners, researchers and teachers a critical exploration which is both hopeful and critical; acknowledging the complexities and potential pitfalls, while celebrating the opportunities for drama as a practice for social action and positive change.