Performing 'technodrama' : towards a technocultural aesthetic in the age of postmodern anxiety

• Main Author: Fernandez, Stephen Frederick
• Other Authors: Daniel Keith Jernigan
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Drama
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/15286
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The late-twentieth century witnessed the emergence of ‘technodrama’, a new theatrical form that fuses mixed media elements with playacting and dramatic narrative. In contrast to earlier attempts at integrating technology into drama (such as Richard Wagner’s incorporation of various nineteenth-century mixed media technologies in Parsifal), the ‘technodramatic’ stage is a liminal space in which a reconfiguration of creativity and experimentation takes place by way of the interaction between ‘live’ actors and technological devices (both physical and virtual) on the same performance stage. As such, my central thesis for this project argues that the notion of art in ‘technodrama’ is complicit with the politics of technoculture (i.e., the problems surrounding the culture of technological dependence in almost all facets of modern society), such that each technological device presented in a ‘technodrama’ play is capable of communicating – exclusive of the narrative content – both artistic and cultural meanings. The relationship between dramatic art and technoculture creates in ‘technodrama’ a technocultural aesthetic which further alienates the audience by forcing them to deliberate on the constructivism as well as the artistic qualities and the cultural implications of mixed media plays produced in the age of postmodern anxiety. Drawing upon the concept of technoculture and such theoretical approaches as aesthetic theory, literary theory and the dramatic theories of Wagner and Brecht, my research examines the aesthetic potential and the cultural implications of integrating technology into dramatic theatre. In addition, I will also explore the ways in which Wagner’s manifestation of Gesamtkunstwerke (Total Artwork) in Parsifal and Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt (‘Alienation’ Effect) in Galileo and Mahagonny serve as precursors to the use of mixed media and digital technologies in the experimental dramas of The Wooster Group and in recent ‘technodrama’ productions such as IERC’s Everyman: The Ultimate Commodity and Susan Broadhurst’s The Jeremiah Project.