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= Research week 9.=

modern theatre

I’ve looked at modern styles of theatre in which the audience is (actively) involved. I will describe different currents within modern theatre below and mention what they could mean to our project.

Traditional theatre In traditional theatre or drama the audience and performers are separated by space. The performers know the outcome of the plot and the audience sits back and watches it happening. The “character” and nature of the character is revealed through dialog and lines. Further the script is usually linear. The story takes a fixed way from A to B.At the end of the evening everybody knows all the information about the plot and there are usually no loose ends.

--- You can see that traditional theatre and traditional film are much alike. This might indicate that we can use changes that are made in traditional theatre to make it modern theatre in our concept. ---

Interactive theatre Basically in interactive Drama each participant is both performer and audience.Roles can be assigned to participants, or participants make up their own character. (the character should fit in the plot). The only one who knows the “whole truth” is the director or scenario writer. The performers role play until the plot is resolved one way or another. Ever time the scenario is played there might be a different conclusion.

--- This is the most interaction you can get from an “audience” they actively play along. Implementing interactive theatre into Mov’in would require a lot of virtual intelligence and lots of movie streams, so that the movie reacts properly to the actions of the “audience”. --- Environmental theatre En

Hyperdrama In hyperdrama the traditional linear script is ‘exploded” into branches. The action doesn’t take place on one stage, but in different spaces. Further action on the different “stages” takes place simultaneously. When you decide to keep watching to the main stage you will see the traditional plot as it is intended by the original playwright. To make the original plot more interesting the playwright usually decides to let some action off stage (after a romantic scene the man and his wife move of the stage, what will happen there…….).But since you can’t be offstage in a hyperdrama the hyperdramatist would write this action, so you can decide to follow the different actors as some kind of voyeur. At the end of the play you might or might not know the plot. This makes it interesting to keep on seeing the play until you’ve seen all sides of the play. (Voyeuring different actors each time the play is played.)

(hyperdrama is inspired on hypertext. The protocol that is used for internet browsing. Clicking on different liks will takeyou to different places).

--- This might be very interesting for our concept. There still can be a main plot just as in the traditional movie, but the “audience” can decide to see (parts) of the movie from a different kind of view. Second advantage of this hyperdrama is that it is highly addictive (when done properly). The big difference between the space in which hyperdrama is played and the living room is that the play and the location are tuned to each other, while the living room and the movie usually have nothing in common. ---

Interactive Drama (Interactive drama is not interactive theatre) In interactive drama the audience is a computer user. He is an actor as well and his actions can modify the story itself.