Theatre of the 4th Dimension: Making Meaning in a Digital Space

Abstract

This is a PhD thesis consisting of written dissertation and creative thesis. It investigates practices and methods of theatre making in the multimodal environment of internet social media platforms, specifically mediated via ‘live-streaming’. Embedded throughout the text, the reader will be guided towards hyperlinks to video content of cited sections from fieldwork and the creative analysis performance outcomes (plays). Between 2017-2019 I conducted a creative development project with the aim of investigating if and how the various technologies of social media platforms were transferrable and effective in theatre making practice. This research was conducted as an auto-ethnography to capture the complexity of this creative process and the ethnodramatic analysis which resulted. And, as research investigating the complexity of performance behaviour in web-based environments, this emulates a digital humanities perspective “of the plasticity of digital forms and the way in which they point towards a new way of working with representation and mediation” (Berry 2012). This perspective is important to remember because, by its nature, the experience of engaging on social media is a mixture of private and public presentation (Berry, Harbord et al. 2013, Hookway 2014), which emulates the perspective of an actor or performer on a drama. The project is therefore presented as a hybrid written thesis and creative analysis in the form of a recording of a live performance of the ethnodrama, which is derivative of my participantobserver experience. This research was a valuable exercise in performance theory and media. At the time of fieldwork, I observed a taken-for-granted correlation between my work as a theatre and film maker and web-based performance platforms such as Twitch and YouTube, in that both shared transferable production methods. However, my assumptions that performance techniques were as easily transferable was mistaken. The nearly eighteen-month creative development/fieldwork process deeply investigated these complimentary and opposing practices. The results of these findings were reconstituted into a dramatic narrative for performance, a stage play for a live audience. The plays were derived from conversations with informants, employing colloquial social media communication cues as literary (script) devices. The plays were developed via a script development process with the ensemble informants, then rehearsed and performed for invited audiences over a nine-month period. These performance outcomes of ‘Lunch with Jenna episode 27: Who the Hell is Samantha Deen’ and two subsequent sequels, were a valuable exercise in performance analysis using ethnodrama and mixed media. Key results and findings reveal challenges to assumed theatrical customs and relationships between performers and audience, specifically the notion of the fourth wall. I conclude that this abstract performance convention which is observed across theatre, film, and television, needs to be recalibrated with an adjusted dynamic between audience and performer, which is unique to the live-streaming environment. My account also establishes complimentary features of performance such as acting style, character within narrative, and technical production that required adaptation to spatial and temporal distinctions unique to social media engagement practices. This work is significant because it contributes to new ways of conceiving social scripts that exist between the actor/audience for ‘suspension of disbelief’ to occur. Significantly, this grassroots- style creative practice offers suggestions and questions for further exploration of ethnodramatic research. Anthropologically, the archival material and creative analysis outcome, derived from fieldwork experiences, will contribute to continuing ethnodramatic discourse. Throughout the thesis, footnotes indicate hyperlinks which are embedded within the text. These hyperlinks connect to fieldwork recordings of creative development, rehearsals, and performances. Readers of digital publications should be able to click on the link within the text to see footage which exemplifies the point being made in the text. If links have become disconnected due to file corruption, or this thesis has been printed on paper, links can be typed into search browsers. DISCLAIMER: Some content contains sexual themes and representations. The reader is advised to employ their own discretion.