Theatre, Performance and Digital Tools: Modelling New Modes of Political Engagement

This dissertation investigates how theatre and performance artists use new media tools to facilitate political engagement. The chapters cover a diverse range of performancesfrom interventions in video games to mobile phone walking tours to theatre productions that use social media. In contrast to the dominant narrative of intermedial theatre and performance studies, when analyzing these examples I consider intermediality as a political rather than solely aesthetic mode. By explicitly connecting intermedial approaches to political performanceand acknowledging how these two concepts are already always conjoinedthis dissertation works to expand how we might think about intermediality as a lens that covers digital practices as both form and content. I also consider the value, challenges and dangers of asking spectators to interact with performers and digital tools in order to model new modes of political engagement, and question how various artistic choices impact the ways that audiences are activated through these new technologies. As the examples range in form, content and location, this dissertation traverses numerous intermedial modes and political topicsa multitude of approaches that challenge any singular or simple understanding of how intermediality functions in contemporary theatre and performance.

Although there is wariness about overstating the role of new media in creating concrete political change, examples such as the Occupy movement reveal how political discourse is now intricately linked to the digital. In this dissertation, rather than simply reinforcing cyberutopian or cyberpessismistic views regarding the political impact of digital communication, I investigate socio-political contexts and analyze the motivations and receptions of specific projects. I consider a number of questions, including: How are new media performances influenced by the potentially democratizing nature of digital interactions? How do performances integrate with digital media to investigate the ways we connector fail to connectas publics? How does performance also address exclusions related to the digital? Who is the we in the intersubjective relations produced by intermedial performance?