Cross-platform Play: A Hybrid Pedagogy for Devised College Theatre

During the spring semester of 2020, I taught a performance course with the intention of integrating consumer technologies and social media platforms with practices of devised theatre. I named the class (Un)mediated Performance Project to emphasize the fertile tensions between performance in front of a live, in-person audience versus digitized performance for a remote audience. By designating unmediated and mediated as two ends of a spectrum, I encouraged students to utilize the language of theatre to critically investigate how media technologies affect their creative impulses and support communication—not only in the heightened conditions of theatre-making, but in everyday life.

The course's major project involved developing a new theatre piece in response to an existing text: American Dream by Edward Albee. This was accomplished via a series of group improvisations, games, and individual research assignments. To allow digital technologies to become an integral part of our performance language, we devised the story by creatively engaging with readily available devices such as cellphones and laptops, as well as web-hosted applications (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube) and other online tools. Throughout the semester, we shaped, refined, remediated, and organized the material we collectively generated, with the goal of a full-length performance in front of a live audience. Plans were derailed, however, by the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent migration of a highly collaborative and action-oriented process to an online-hosted virtual classroom.

As the students and I made the transition to working via video-conferencing software, I discovered that much of the foundation we had put in place through our earlier engagements with communication technologies appeared to carry over well to an exclusively online process. Before stayat-home orders were issued in Houston, the students were already utilizing video cameras, software, and the internet as a means of character development and experimentation. While the limitations of being physically isolated from the ensemble were immediately apparent within the flat confines of a computer screen, we were nonetheless better prepared to rely upon digital tools as the only means of communication, collaboration, and creation than I anticipated. I attribute our ability to persevere under such challenging circumstances to the intrinsic flexibility of devised theatre practices, and, more to the point, the form's amenability to the incorporation of the same digital tools so many of us depend upon every day.

In this essay, I relay my experiences teaching a new media performance course and directing a devised theatre piece using commonly available digital equipment and software. I hope to impart to my fellow artists and colleagues the vital relevance of collaborative creation with new and common consumer technologies in a culture where consequential exchange may happen online, in-person, or both. I propose a cross-platform pedagogy—one that privileges devising with new media both online and in-person—because I believe improvisation-based creative practices with digital technologies will only continue to resonate with purpose as our educational, professional, and social experiences continue to be divided among a plethora of media.

(Un)Mediated Performance Project (UPP)

For many university students, the affordances of new media are recognizable and intuitively purposed toward performance. Rapid forms of image-based communication that include emojis, animated gifs, memes, and short videos are second nature to those who grew up natively to the internet. Many students are also comfortable with the idea that interpersonal exchange need not take place in the same physical space, but may happen via text messaging, video-chatting software, multiplayer video games, or simultaneously across a diversity of digital contexts. It is also worth noting that certain students, especially those who are new to improvisation or performance, may be more comfortable expressing themselves through a digital device than in person with their peers.

One benefit of working with digital devices within the context of creative collaboration is the potential to reveal limitations of daily-used technologies that we might not otherwise notice. Improvising with smartphone cameras in a group setting can reveal how beauty-themed "filters" that smooth skin, enlarge eyes, apply digital makeup, and simulate other physical changes can contain...