Digital Theatre in Canada, Volume 12 (May 2021)
New Essays on Canadian Theatre
Editor, David Owen
General Editor, Roberta Barker
PLAYWRIGHTS CANADA PRESS (CALL FOR PAPERS)
Contributions of are invited for a new anthology dedicated to the study of digital theatre in Canada. Abstracts defining proposed essays topics of 250 words should be submitted directly to David Owen by December 1st, 2017.
Steve Dixon, in his book Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art and Installation, defines digital performance as “all performance works where computer technologies play a key role rather than a subservient one in content, technique, aesthetics, or delivery forms” (3). This is the same quote used at the beginning of the special issue of Canadian Theatre Review on digital performance in Canada (Volume 159). The connection is intentional. Using Dixon’s definition as a starting point and influenced by recent scholarship by Andy Lavender, Sarah Bay-Cheng, Hans-Thies Lehman, and Jennifer Parker-Starbuck, this anthology of essays will explore how digital technologies force us to change or re-evaluate our definitions of space, our bodies, and our relationships through recent examples of digital theatre in Canada.
The anthology will be divided into the three broad categories mentioned above and will focus on one or more topic areas that befit that broad category. Some example topic areas are:
Space:
- Performance within virtual environments (including videogames)
- Alternate and/or Augmented reality
- Telepresence
- Issues of liveness
- Interactive space as a form of performance
Bodies:
- Interactivity (performer to performer, performer to audience, audience to audience)
- The cyborg
- The posthuman
- Presence/absence
- Liveness
- Gender
- Race
- Ability
- Embodied knowledges and histories
- Wearable technology
Relationships:
- The influence (and use) of social media
- Issues of interconnected isolation as defined by Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together
- Virtual relationships
- New definitions of narrative
- Algorithmic interactivity and game structures
- Issues of liveness
- Identity creation (and theft)
- Virtually participatory theatre
These topic areas are not exhaustive and contributors should not feel constrained by their implied boundaries.
This anthology on digital theatre in Canada is scheduled to be published by the Playwrights Canada Press in May of 2021, as the twelfth volume in the series of New Essays on Canadian Theatre. The proposed timeline for this publication is:
- Abstracts (250 words); Bios (100 words) – Due December 1, 2017.
- Successful contributors will be informed – January 1, 2018.
- Full draft of articles (6000-8000 words including Works Cited and Notes, MLA style) – Due December 1, 2018.
- Editing and polishing throughout 2019.
- Files are to be sent to the publisher – September 2020,
- Publication Date – May 2021
For submission, questions, and inquiries, please contact David Owen directly at davidowen999@gmail.com