A Constellation of Imagined Theatres: Technology and Performance

In ten one-page hypothetical scores, playlets, and closet dramas, a collection of theorists and artists of the contemporary stage present “imagined theatres” interrogating what is possible and impossible at the intersections of performance and technology. A one-page gloss faces each imagined theatre, expanding on its promise in critical, historical, or personal terms. The dialogues among these texts explore how performances theorize, and how theory can itself be a performance. Together, they consider the various technologies that comprise the stage and the page, the actor and the viewer, and they recognize the theatre as a medium for imagining our world as if it were another. These pages offer a selection excerpted from a larger volume of more than 120 imagined theatres and glosses to be published in early 2017 under the title of Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage. An ever-expanding online archive and journal (www.imaginedtheatres.com) will also be launched alongside the book, inviting others to share what they imagine the theatre could become.