Explores how live performers interact with digital media to create dynamic performances. Students create original works and participatory environments incorporating interactive media, and study directors, designers, and artists who have integrated media into performance in innovative ways. No prior technical or performance experience required.
Athena Title
Performing with Media
Prerequisite
THEA 2000 or THEA 2500 or THEA 3300 or THEA 3500 or FILM 2120
Semester Course Offered
Not offered on a regular basis.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student learning Outcomes
Students will develop original performance works—including writing, acting, and directing—that creatively integrate live performance with digital media, demonstrating the ability to experiment, take risks, and refine work through iterative development and feedback.
Students will distinguish among a range of functions that media can fulfill in live performance contexts, analyzing different modes of performer-media interaction and evaluating how these choices shape dramaturgical meaning and audience experience.
Students will understand the development of digital performance from experimental practice to contemporary professionalization, critically examining the work of innovative theatre companies, directors, designers, and artists who have pioneered media integration in performance.
Students will use digital media tools and technologies—including projection, interactive video, and sound design software—to create performance works, gaining hands-on skills in the technical processes required to realize creative concepts.
Students will articulate creative concepts and technical requirements clearly in written, oral, and visual form, and give and receive constructive feedback to strengthen collaborative work and individual projects.
Topical Outline
Modes of interaction between live performers and media.
Survey of innovative theatre companies, directors, designers, and artists who have pioneered media integration in performance.
Scripting interactive and participatory events incorporating media.
Performing interactively with media.
Interactive media programming: creating linear and non-linear cues.
Interactive media programming: audio and video effects.
Interactive media programming: motion and audio tracking.
Interactive media programming: particles.
Interactive media programming: projection mapping.
Institutional Competencies Learning Outcomes
Communication
The ability to effectively develop, express, and exchange ideas in written, oral, interpersonal, or visual form.
Creativity & Innovation
The capacity to combine or synthesize existing ideas, images, or expertise in original ways and the experience of thinking, reacting, and working in an imaginative way characterized by innovation, divergent thinking, and risk taking.
