A Photographic Journey through Digital Technology in Canadian Performances

This photo essay showcases digitally mediated performances across Canada. Just as books on the subject of digital performance have featured an impressive and varied breadth of shows under that umbrella, like Steve Dixon’s book sporting the same title, this slideshow highlights a diverse range of performances-from zombie-infested augmented reality games to technology-enhanced cooking displays to interactive web games created for theatre festivals. This is not an exhaustive list but rather a sampling of recent productions that, like the other shows discussed in this issue of Canadian Theatre Review, demonstrate how theatre creation is shifting in response to today’s digital media and game-savvy audiences.

The journey through these images starts with the use of social media to engage spectators even before they enter the theatre space, moves inside the theatre to productions that use visual and aural media enmeshed with live bodies, and then out again to site-specific performance in real-world and online spaces, which are augmented in evocative ways by digital technologies.