New Anthology Transmedia Theatre Plays publishes in May by Methuen Drama

Description

Between 2020 and 2022, theatre had to adapt and, in doing so, challenged ideas of what was possible – and what was even ‘theatre’.

Due to the global pandemic, an exceptional and wide range of works were made for, or adapted to, brand new conditions and limitations. While these works are defined by interpandemic conditions in the Anthropocene, they serve as portals to thinking about theatre-making in the future.

Gathered in this collection are pieces adapted or made for podcast theatre, a livestream illusionist interactive performance, an audience-uploaded hybrid performance, one-on-one online interaction, lip-synch opera-theatre, climate crisis activist manifesto film/theatre, spoken word and gaming installation art and multi-location broadcast plays, providing an accessible introduction to ‘Transmedia’ theatre.

Transmedia theatre has been a boundary-breaking and rich area of performance since the 1990s, but the (by necessity) explosion of works that were created during the early years of the pandemic signalled a new, exciting and accessible method by which theatre-makers could share their work and also challenge their own practices.

While these specific works are markers of a specific time in performance history, they also point ways forward, not only in terms of form and function, but in how educators, students and fellow practitioners could conceive of re-staging these works in person and/or on digital platforms.

For a generation that has grown up online, whose vocabularies of expression are as much digitally native as they are IRL, transmedia theatre, and the realm too of VR and AR story and audience design which it borders, holds a firm place in busting open the realm of the possible.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Can I Live? By Fehinti Balogun (UK)
I am Sending You the Sacred Face by Heather Christian (US)
Odds On by Dante or Die (UK)
To Be a Machine (Version 1.0) by Dead Centre (Ireland)
I Hate it Here: Stories from the End of the Old World by Ike Holter (US)
Every Dollar is a Soldier/with money you’re a dragon by Daniel York Loh (UK)
T.M. by Ontroerend Goed (Belgium)

Link to book on Bloomsbury HERE.

Desdemona’s Child (blood cry) has been acquired for licensing by Theatrical Rights Worldwide (TRW)

You can find the link to the upcoming publication HERE.

PLAY OVERVIEW:

Desdemona’s child comes back to the town in which they were raised, haunted by the ghost of Beautiful D, and with a desire to come to terms with trauma from their past. In this town, trouble rages, as a climate of hate threatens to overtake all. A flood and a whole lotta honest witnessing may start to turn the tide of human darkness. This play is set in modern-day US, freely inspired by and set in the wake of Shakespeare’s Othello.

Find more information about the play on this website HERE.

 


Live Online Work-in-Progress Sharing of MINOTAUR May 2nd

You are invited to a live online works in progress sharing of…

MINOTAUR
a new piece for performance by Caridad Svich
directed by Joshua William Gelb
performed by Scott Shepherd (GATZ, Wooster Group) with Rory Willats and Joshua William Gelb
Video design by Rory Willats.
Developed with CultureHub, NY and Theater in Quarantine

May 2nd, 2025 at 4 PM ET
Free (donations welcome)
RSVP at https://www.culturehub.org/events/minotaur