Dramaturgy and the Digital

I found I was still looking for some link – for a set of practices that spoke differently to the elements of performance and challenged the parameters of dramaturgy. I found it during a conversation with JR Carpenter, an artist, writer, researcher, and performer, who was working on a web-based computer-generated dialogue responding to transatlantic migration.

Many questions emerged from this process and answering them furthered a reflexive process that contributed to the generation of new work. The questions also furthered my search for a set of dramaturgical strategies capable of responding to all materials (texts) that are used or produced in performance practice. In the light of these and other developments in digital practice, it is necessary to find approaches that are flexible enough to adapt to work where the processes are less transparent; where the definition of text and scripting and chance can extend to programmed material; where authorship is concerned with the modification of systems, or work produced by complex communication networks and the results are available to an infinite number of participators.