THEATRE IN CYBERSPACE:

These webpages act as a companion to TICS, where you can get more info: on the authors, from the authors, or on the topics covered in the book. Also available are additional material and photos left out of the original publication. See the Table of Contents below for more information.

What others have said.

 
This book is the only substantial collection of such scholarship currently available.  Editor Stephen Schrum has assembled a collection of essays that surveys three conjunctions of theatre and IT: computers and theatre, computers and teaching, and computers and performance.  The authors represent some of the earliest adopters of IT in theatre classrooms and performances.   The first section, computers and theatre, suggests ways and reasons for theatrical educators and artists to actually use IT to make their administrative and artistic lives easier.  The second, computers and teaching, offers three accounts of professors' use of various information technologies in their teaching.  The third, computers and performance, explores performative applications of IT, namely the ATHE MOO and virtual reality.  A MOO is a MUD (Multi-User Dimension) created with Object-Oriented programming.  The result is a text-based environment in which users manipulate objects and their own "characters" in nearly infinite ways simply by typing at a keyboard.  The authors explain and explore how the ATHE MOO was created and is used by performers, professors, and students.  Several final articles examine how more complex technologies, most especially virtual reality, can be used with theatre, "the original three-dimensional interactive environment" (4).  The book serves as an excellent introduction to the multiple uses of IT in theatre practice and training.

Theatre in Cyberspace has been used by several instructors at various institutions as a course text, including:

• Theatre and Technology (Spech & Theatre 313B), Rebecca Daniels, St. Lawrence University, Spring 2001.
  
  
• Performance Scholarship for the World Wide Web (Theatre 680), Robyn Quick, Towson University, Spring 2000. (This course created the Heartfield Project; see the Project and the course bibliography.)

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Section One: Why Computers and Theatre?

Dan Zellner, "Definitions and Directions of the Theatre"

 Bryan Garey, "Collaborating in Cyberspace"

 Charles Deemer, "The New Hyperdrama: How Hypertext Scripts Are Changing the Parameters of Dramatic Storytelling" 
 
 

Section Two: Computers & Teaching

Michael Arndt, "Theatre at the Center of the Core (Technology as a Lever in Theatre Pedagogy)"

 Terry John Converse, "Not So Distant Learning: Using Interactive Technology to Enhance the Traditional, Discussion Based Course"
 
 

Section Three: Computers & Performance

Part One: In The MOO

Jake A. Stevenson, "MOO Theatre: More Than Just Words?"

 Kenneth G. Schweller, "Staging a Play in the MOO Theater"

 Rick Sacks, "The MetaMOOphosis: A Visit to the Kafka House-A report on the permanent installation of an interactive theatre work based on Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis"

Nina LeNoir, "Acting in Cyberspace: The Player in the World of Digital Technology"
 
 

Part Two: Virtual Spaces

 George Popovich, "Artaud Unleashed: Cyberspace Meets the Theatre of Cruelty"

 David-Michael Allen, "The Nature of Spectatorial Distance in VR Theatre"

 Lance Gharavi, "i.e. VR: Experiments in New Media and Performance"

David Z. Saltz, "Beckett's Cyborgs: Technology and the Beckettian Text"