WEEK 6

Last week, we were set the task of reading a chapter from the book Virtual Theatres. The introduction talks about how technology and virtuallity are becoming more and more involved in out theatres now. From studying experimental theatre as another module, I can see this is true.

Theatre groups such as, The Blueman group, Ping Chong, and Coco Fusco, all break down the 4Th wall convention and become some what engaged with intermediary work. They go beyond what is normal and are not afraid to experiment. Since late 1960s a massive change has been seen in the theatre world, a change which has experimented, some has been successful other have failed, but it is safe to say that technology is playing more of a part in our theatre today. Video and Internet are being used more and there is now less of an empathizes on live theatre, and more of an empathizes on visual instillation. Giannachi express how important virtual work is as it takes place through the viewer’s performance, rather than the actors. Virtual theatres, appeals to viewers on different levels and is more stimulating. As modern technologies improve likewise does the theatre.



Gabriella Giannachi discusses this idea in depth, she also comments on the previously discussed topic of Remediation. A phenomenon rapidly taking over in our per formative society. Theatre is now being forced to re mediate its content in order to appeal to the audience. We have seen many famous books go from paper to film; the theatre is grasping onto this idea and making the material suitable for the theatre. And example of this is Tolkiens Lord of the rings, the popular trilogy started as text before becoming sequel of films, now it has been put to the stage, using a range of virtual techniques in its performance. Remediation is essential in the running of virtual theatre.

After reading this chapter, it became apparent that we could adapt some of these ideas into our performance piece. We didn’t want to do a straightforward performance, but instead a reflection on what we had been studying over the last few weeks.

We came up with the idea of how the internet exploits racism as a form of entertainment and question why! We wanted to show, the amount of racism shown on the internet and question the public to weather t was a form of entertainment. We began researching the subject. We found many videos on YOUTUBE alone, all exploiting racism, added to this I even found websites glorifying racism. We raised the issues of the internet encouraging violence, and investigated the different types of racism. Racism happens every day, but the media only gets involved when it it’s published an example of this is the famous racist encounter which happened in Celebrity Big Brother.

We had ideas of making a collaboration of videos. Empathizing the shock factor and then making a docudrama by interviewing people on their responses, we would then make a video for our performance.

Below is a list of links to some of videos and sites we found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_MS6LNimDU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoWZk8R2WB4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk
http://www.adl.org/poisoning_web/racist_rock.asp
http://www.stumbleupon.com/tag/racism/