The past year has brought changing circumstances to the performance scene. The impossibility of rehearsing and performing to live audiences has forced artists to investigate new alternatives. This has affected both the aesthetics of performance-making and the professional practices of performance-makers. Changes in formats have created new ways of reaching audiences which have more fully exploited an ever-increasing engagement with a wide variety of screen-based technology and digital platforms.

This has significantly transformed live performances which have adapted to new ways of working and resulted in resourceful and imaginative alternatives and variations. Identifying the features of these changes will highlight pioneering directions for the future of live performance. This involves developments in the relationship between dance, theatre and film, offering digital innovations within liveness that this symposium wishes to identify and analyse.

We welcome presentations, provocations, workshops, and performances as part of the proposals for participating in the symposium. The aim is to identify and analyse the transformations and generate new conversations among artists and theoreticians.

Keynote speakers :

Anne Bogart (theatre director, SITI Company, USA)

Prof Maria Shevtsova (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)

Dr Mark Nicholls (University of Melbourne, Australia)

Wim Vandekeybus (dance theatre director, Ultima Vez, BE)

Roundtable discussion includes:

Charlotte Vincent (choreographer/director, Vincent Dance Theatre, UK)

Workshop by:

Parliament of Practices

The symposium will cover but is not limited to the following themes:

integrating screen-based technology and practices into live performance

blurring the boundaries between the stage and the screen

preserving, enhancing, or degrading the actor’s performance via screen-based technology

delivering virtual performances - platforms and best practice

the role of recording live performances

theatrical adaptations of cinematography

choreographing the camera when recording live performances

streaming performance or recording performance

site-specific as the new theatre

evolving and enduring innovations

theatre developing its own cinematic language

expanding and diminishing theatrical markets

changing patterns in audience engagement and spectatorship

cognitive dimensions of engaging with emerging forms

impact on emerging artists and pathways into production

re-thinking notions of live performance

the digital hiatus altering the experience of live performance

the experience of the liveness in a digital context

digital dramaturgies within live performance

the gendered nature of the impact of digital and technological innovations

definitions of digital theatre

blended and hybrid modes in transmission of meaning