9 theatres from 9 European countries in cooperation with 9 universities exploring the artistic challenges of digital transformation 2019–2024
https://play-on.eu
Project coordinator and tech partners page 2
UTOPIA –Here and Now page 3
HOPE – A creative online forum: How two years of digital conferences brought theatres and technologists together page 4/5
PARTNERS & SPOTLIGHTS
From VR to escape rooms and interactive props page 6/7
The network looks into the FUTURE page 8
Dirk Neldner speaks with Lucy Hammond, Projects Producer (Pilot Theatre,UK) about the PlayOn network, an ambitious project exploring the future of storytelling with technology.
L: How did the idea for this collaboration between theatres and immersive technologies begin?
D: Theatres are experts in storytelling. But their way is usually one-sided: the artists on stage with the audience listening, watching. Only slowly is an understanding developing for new storytelling, for interactive story structures. This is the interface to the game industry and thus to many digital technologies. To reach the audience of tomorrow, theatre must become even more active.
L: How would you describe the way the PlayOn! network brings together experts and makers?
D: We have two target groups that we want to address. Firstly, theatre-makers who want to open up and expand their theatre language with (digital) immersive technologies. And secondly, digital artists and experts who have mastered these technologies and are perhaps discovering a new medium in live theatre.
L: So the network aims to enhance the skills of both technologists and theatre makers through shared learning and practical application?
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is the artistic inspiration at the centre of the PlayOn! project – and an immediate provocation. It’s surprising to find the oppositional words Concrete and Digital together in one phrase. Throw in the wild card idea of Utopias and it becomes even more intriguing. So, what does it all mean and where can it lead us?
The concept of the Concrete Utopia was
created by Ernst Bloch, the mid-20th century German political philosopher. At first sight, it may seem strange. If Utopia means an imaginary perfect state or social system, and concrete means real, then it appears we have two conflicting principles impossible to reconcile“imaginary” versus “real”, “realistic” versus “unrealistic”. So does PlayOn! mean to challenge us to chase after the impossible? No - in fact it’s the opposite. Common modern usage of the term Utopia tends to refer to something that is
inherently impossible, unrealistic, naïve. If an idea is called Utopian it’s dismissed, insulted or treated like a joke. But why? Utopia was the name chosen by 16th century English writer Thomas More for his fictional perfect island state, part satire, part provocation. More created the name Utopia by combining two Greek words meaning “no” and “place”. However, when spoken aloud it sounds very similar to the two Greek words meaning “good” and “place”. And here perhaps we have the roots of Utopia as
an unrealistic fantasy; the “good place” is “no place”. It does not exist, which very easily becomes “It cannot exist”. Some claim the whole idea of Utopia is against human nature itself. Of course theirs is a very specific viewpoint usually based on an absolute certainty that human nature is fixed. Their argument depends on believing that what human beings are today, they were yesterday and they will be forever. The world is as it is. Human nature is as it is. Therefore change is impossible – so they say.
Clearly there are those people who want the world to stay exactly as it is, since it works perfectly well for their tiny portion of humankind. But what about the rest of us who have no good reason to reject Utopia? Shouldn’t we at least ask ourselves some Utopian questions? What does Utopia look like? Do we want Utopia? If we want Utopia, how do we get it? Just because Utopias don’t or even can’t exist today, there is no reason they won’t or can’t exist in the futurebecause things (can) change.
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D: Yes the real challenge lies in the field of training! There are - at least in Europe - no offers at schools for directing and acting that introduce young artists to the new immersive technologies. This is where bridges need to be built. So far in our experience in our network where theatre and digital universities meetstudents of technical disciplines are also very interested in artistic realisations.
And we need mediators between the two worlds: Theatre and digitality. You can't imagine how difficult it is to bring representatives of these two worlds into a common working process. Because there is still a big gap in understanding, it is so hard to convince theatre-makers to open up. The same is seen on the other (digital) side.
L: There have been some really exciting projects coming out of the network so far. Pilot’s experience as a theatre company for young people has been that it is a new way for us to explore storytelling for our audiences as well as appealing to those who may be excited by being active or part of the live experience. It has also been a good opportunity to see the inventive ways our partners across Europe approach these technologies and
methods. The training aspect of the network will be an interesting and valuable legacy for the project, what is your hope as the project reaches its midway point?
D: Theatre has often proven in the past that it is able to adapt to new technologies, to use them to tell stories even more intensely. But the reason really have such great hope that theatre plays such an important role today is because
of the hopelessness of the times. People are longing for profound debates, for guidance, for critical and open discussions in a time when we are afraid of war, of climate change, of pandemics, of the tearing apart of our societies. When theatre is open to learn new artistic language formats and explores these themes, the future of storytelling is not only exciting but important in helping us navigate the world that we are living in. ´
By accepting that Utopias are possible, the connection with the word “concrete” no longer feels like a paradox or a problem. If a Utopia can exist, then obviously it must be able to be concrete - real, not abstract. How? Because things changed.
But isn’t Hope the oldest con-trick in the world? Was Bloch asking us to believe in fairy tales? Certainly not. Bloch’s hope is not the hope of desperation when everything else has gone. Nor is it the passive hope of wishful thinking. This is Hope redefined as a problem to be solved. We hope for a perfect system and then use that hope to drive our actions towards a solution.
when is always Today.
https://vatteater.ee
Est. 1987 as the oldest Estonian independent theatre 15 permanent employees + over 30 freelancers
Shows per year (during the pandemic) 150 Spectators per year 15000
VAT Teater is a small theatre with a big... ...reach!
Many theatres within and beyond
PlayOn are interested in how mobile phones can be integrated into their productions. This is a complex topic and it can be difficult to understand what is possible and the creative opportunities presented by this platform.
To help, Ben Kirman (Digital Creativity Labs) has made a demonstration app toolkit that can be helpful in thinking about different kinds of ways mobile phones can be used apart from the familiar. It is a playful tool that might help give some ideas of unusual interactions.
The demo app is only available for Android, however the features work on iPhone too.
You can download the app on an android device, and instructions are available on the webpage at https://ben.kirman.org/stuff/ playon_app.html
There is also a short video demonstration of a couple of the features: https://youtu.be/_dCTcEGSyY8
The app has a selection of features to explore. Of particular interest for thinking about "concrete utopias" is the "location" tab, which finds out some features of your current location, and the "remote data" tab, which allows you to give feedback live to a server. On your computer (or another device) you can see the output of this on this control panel: https://playon-demo.web.app/
https://ben.kirman.org/ stuff/playon_app.html
The app and the control panel are connected live changes in the control panel affect everyone with the app immediately. You can send notifications, change messages and colours, trigger events and there is a simple voting system. Note it might be confusing if many people are using the control panel at once!
This liveness gives interesting possibilities - events triggered when certain numbers of audience members are in different locations, or even tied to external systems like lighting cues or other displays.
Ben is happy to talk more about the creative potential of this platform ben@kirman.org you can also see more of Ben's work at: https://ben. kirman.org
Est. 2019
10 employees + associated member
The Academy focuses on technical and ar tistic research and exploration of Digitality. We enjoy Complexity and Interdisciplinarity.
The institution is characterised first and oremost by the artistic-technical research work of the (international) fellows. The invited artists, technologists and coders spend five months conducting prototypical and application-oriented research on the development of digital tools and methods between sensor technology, actuator technology, XR, VR, AR and artificial intelligence (funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes). This is complemented by a pilot project the academy has launched with the Helmholtz Association as a research scholarship, as an encounter between science and art. The research and development is accompanied on one hand by technology-oriented further education, on the other hand by the initiation of the master's degree program "Digitality in the Scenic Arts" (working title) with the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts. As part of the Theater Dortmund, the academy regularly cooperates with the five other divisions of the house, as most recently in the context of PlayOn! for the KJT's production: "The Future".
https://theater.digital/en https://digitalcreativity.ac.uk
Est. 1963
22020 students from 150 countries
Staff 3800 across 30 departments
The University of York is a research university and the home of the Digital Creativity Labs, £18m multidisciplinary lab for technology and storytelling, with internationally recognised research.
Human beings constantly make plans that require new techniques, technology or thinking to deliver. So we simply apply this to the idea of the Concrete Utopia and understand that all our thinking, our planning and our actions must be for the future. The important thing is to understand that a Concrete Utopia is not fixed by today’s situation or what happened yesterday, last year, last century. It all depends on what we can make happen tomorrow - if we change things. Ernst Bloch put it like this: Concrete Utopias are possible but Not Yet. Not Yet is not the same as Never. Never shuts everything down. Not Yet keeps the way forward open.
On the way there will be mistakes. That’s fine. We don’t give up today because our Concrete Utopia is not yet possible. We build it piece by piece every day so that tomorrow it will be one day closer. But what can possibly drive the creation of a Utopia that we will most likely not live long enough to see? Bloch’s answer is clear: the book that first introduced his concept of Concrete Utopias is called The Principle of Hope.
In fact it’s a whole system constructed from many solutions that must work ogether in harmony. And work for every person Utopias must be ambitious. OK for some people, even OK
Our Today is the Digital Age and this is just the start. For some people it’s been a bad beginning. For others, the good outweighs the bad. But Concrete Utopias are not built by trusting to fate or by projecting dystopian visions of today into the future. Today it is only natural for us to fear another wave of the pandemic. Today it is understandable to feel despair at the brutal aggression unleashed against the people of Ukraine.
However Today is only really significant as the time and place to identify what specific hopes we have for a better world. Then we must move on to address those specific problems we must solve to get there.
Recently came across the British literature professor Terry Eagleton and his book: Hope without Optimism.
I don't know if he would approve of me mentioning him in our context, because when googled him, I read his article "Why never use email", which is more than critical of everyday digital applications. However, when searched further came across his book "Culture" and thought to myself
immersive technologies ... the hope for improvement drives us, trial and error is our process of hope and failure.
We are proposing a once in a lifetime ritual for the people of Naarm (Melbourne) to speculate about the next century and consciously emphasise with future generations who will inherit our society. It’s called Child of Now.
We ask people to imagine the next century through the eyes of a child born today to contribute to a massively co-authored story about the next century and the most ambitious portrait of our population ever created.
for most people is not good enough. It must be the “good place” for all people, which can only be imagined and created by the ongoing input of all people towards this common goal.
Clearly such a consensus is not possible in today’s world, but that is not an obstacle. We just focus on finding the solution to make it possible tomorrow.
Concrete Utopias are always historically specific and no Concrete Utopia model can be imposed on another time and place; one size does not fit all. Every Concrete Utopia must begin in a specific place at a specific point in time. The place is a matter of choice and will, but
PlayOn! is hopeful that within our Digital Age are the seeds for Concrete Utopias to grow into the good places of omorrow for everyone. We can choose to accept that technology will just build a digital version of the old world with all its failings and injustices. Or we can choose to hope and identify the problems that technology can solve. We can choose to see that the past is really “no place”. We can learn from it, but we must not allow it to stop us hoping for something different and better. “Concrete Utopias in the Digital Age” is definitely not a call to imagine the impossible. Instead it’s a challenge to search for the huge, wonderful, limitless potential of the possible and to choose to make it all really happen, one day at a time. Let’s hope.
¬- here is a connection to PlayOn! in terms of content. But this book is a takedown of culture as we know it; in Eagleton’s eyes culture is "overrated". The self-identified Marxist complains: "In some places, culture has become a way of not talking about capitalism". A culture to Eagleton's taste would have to create a utopia beyond capitalist reality.
Eagleton notes that there can be hope only if the future is anchored in the present. However, a future that could be fairly described in the language of the present would have too much in common with the status quo, to be considered a real future at all. And with that, Eagleton destroys my assumption that we can really deal with utopias in theatre – because we simply lack the language to do so. If understand this correctly, we can hope, but we must accept that hope cannot predict the future, and just be content if we succeed in reflecting where change is needed in the present.
Hallelujah, here are the utopian ideas we are looking for – in a relevant context!
Yes, Eagleton’s approach still appears dressed in the linguistic costume of Marxism: property, exploitation and class struggle ... But honestly, there’s not much wrong about that for my taste.
you or your ancestors displace others or take part in colonisation? Utopias are in tension with colonisation. A utopia, if it ever can exist, belongs in the future. This is the important work of speculative fiction, to see the future and from that future to examine the
But before we continue, it’s protocol in Australia to Acknowledge Country, to state where we are. We write from the stolen, unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung people of the Kulin nations. We acknowledge the cultural elders of the Wurundjeri people of the past and the elders keeping culture alive in the present.
We invite you to think about where you are. Do you live and work on the lands of your ancestors? How did you come to be there, have you been displaced? Did
way we can encourage this discovery. We write from the collaborative creative process of our interdisciplinary E xtended Reality (XR) artwork Child of Now, a project that speculates on radical variations of how the next century might unfold. It focuses collective attention by enacting rehearsals of possible futures. Our aim is to foster embodied experiences of indigenised, equitable and sustainable societies, to explore how the future might feel.
now. We send messages back and forth through time, using what anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner, in his 1953 essay ‘The Dreaming’, called ‘everywhen’, the Aboriginal Australian concept of time in which the abstract concepts of past, present and future do not exist. In this sense the future is a utopia, it does not exist. In the everywhen everything that can exist already does, it’s just waiting for it’s time to unfold, to reveal itself. We don’t create a future, we discover it. Child of Now is a
The artwork does this by combining narrative and portraiture to imagine the life course of a child born today. We invite 14,400 people to step into the Child of Now’s shoes at key moments in the future to help make decisions. The sum of all the decisions creates a collaboratively authored future history of the next century. The holograms we create of each person’s performance as the Child of Now form an animated portrait that ages sequentially, one body at a time,
In "Hope without Optimism," Eagleton draws a distinction between hope and simple wishful thinking idealism, or a blind faith in progress. Unlike hope, professional optimism is not a virtue and it cannot be supported or justified with serious thought or rigorous study. He illustrates this by referring to North Korea and the United States of America, where optimism is almost a state ideology. Optimism in the US is often the same as patriotism. As Eagleton says, a US-president telling Americans that their best years are already behind them is unthinkable; it would be at least political suicide and possibly even put their actual life in danger.
For Eagleton simple optimism is banal. Hope, on the other hand, requires reflection and clear, rational thinking - and always holds the possibility of failure. His conclusion that Hope drives people and states to peak performance brings us to the core issues of our work. We are all confronted with the possibility of failure when we make theatre, when we use
This confrontation with Terry Eagleton gave me a lot of pleasure, even if it’s a dark pleasure. That's why at the end of his book just felt like browsing again through Ernst Bloch and his main work "The Principle of Hope". Just to confirm that my longing for utopias is not entirely wrong. Bloch calls longing the only honest quality of man. And he gives me courage by saying that it is important that we learn to hope. Because if we stop hoping, what we fear will come to be. When it comes to the cooperation between theatre and the digital world optimism alone cannot help us. These worlds sometimes feel like two antipodes, truly hard to connect up. It demands the investment of a lot of hope to imagine we can find a way to develop creatively together. But it is my firm conviction, that here such an investment in hope is really worth it. We must train ourselves to bring these two creative worlds closer together. Again, it is about hope without optimism. Clear visions must be developed on both sides so that a common, very concrete utopia can emerge.
We are the storytellers and we have the obligation to always develop new narratives for people. And, in doing so, also show the audience the opportunities of our time in expanded spaces, so that the audience can dive into our stories and the possibilities they contain.
one minute each, through a whole life course. Then, 14,400 minutes (ten days) later, the Child of Now will die, approximately one hundred years in the future.
Child of Now is an exercise in co-authorship, that begins with the two of us, Claire and Robert, and will grow and unfold to include thousands more.
Our utopian aim is to preserve the idiosyncrasy of each voice, gesture, turn of phrase, body, skin tone, language and perspective of every contributor in the Child of Now’s future archive. This portrait of the Child of
Now comprised of thousands of people and their observations of the future will be radically plural, it will not be homogenised. Specific plurality is important.
Have a look at the diagram. The public will engage in the project in two parts. In part one, ‘Gathering’, 14400 Melbournians would come through our immersive installation to create what we call the “future archive”. This experience includes continue on page 5
Imagining the next century through the life of a child born today
Robert E Walton and Claire G Coleman | Australia
In 2021 and 2022 PlayOn! created an innovative online conference bringing together leading creatives and technologists exploring immersive technology and storytelling. Sourcing speakers from all over the world audiences were able to register for free to engage with the activities. From AR scavenger hunts to large scale installations the work showcased also traversed artforms including opera, theatre and our favourite subject ‘utopias’: Content is also available to stream online for free.
co-production: Burgtheater Wien (AT), Berliner Ensemble (DE), Teatr Ludowy (PL) and PlayOn!
This was a performance that took place in the imaginations of the audience. Using the hashtag #HopeVorstellung
macro and micro movements of different bodies. The workshop demonstrated how a performers movement could trigger a whole range of on-stage effects.
https://play-on.eu/creative-forums/
Hope conference attendees gathered on twitter collectively creating the experience of travelling to the theatre to sitting down and watching the play. The audience were supported and fired up on Twitter by actors from the three coproducing theatres as well as the other PlayOn! companies. This was a communal experience that enabled people to travel (not) to Berlin and Krakow and visit (not) a guest performance – and all in one evening!
Claudius Lazzeroni, professor for Interface Design at Folkwang University Essen (DE)
In his workshop, Claudius presented SEKLAKI, a system of different sensor and tracking possibilities adapted for an easy use on stage with little technological knowhow. The goal is an easy control of sound, light and visuals with
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A joint adventure by Akademie für Theater und Digitalität (DE), Landesbühnen Sachsen (DE), Platypus Theatre Berlin (DE)
Berlin@Play is an AR theatre game that takes place in urban space. It asks the questions: What is the city around me? What role do I play in it? The staging of the piece in public space with digital technology aims to reinterpret each place the audience encounter, turning the spectators into players and putting them in Kafkaesque situations.
Audience interact with their environment using a tablet exploring a narrative based on Kafka’s novel “The Castle”, the audience are told stories, have to find places, evaluate them and make their own decisions.
Through AR, they experience a digitally staged space. The beauty of this project is the potential for it to be played in other cities, using technology to bring the storytelling into the urban space.
You can play the game in Berlin in summer 2022
https://games.platypus-theater.de
Guy is co-founder and CEO of the ground-breaking storytelling platform charisma.ai, a toolkit for creating interactive stories with believable virtual characters. How can artificial intelligence become the co-creator of new storytelling formats? Guy’s technology allows characters and audiences to communicate in dynamic and compelling ways. https://charisma.ai
SCAVENGER HUNT.
Lorne Svarc (The TANK NYC, USA)
Mañanaland is an interactive transmedia piece that explores a utopian alternate universe where the social and political conflicts of today are a thing of the past. The story is experienced in a hybrid virtual-physical world through a virtual news network and a series of AR hunts across three of the five boroughs of New York. The piece made good use of the existing AR game app Scavengar for theatrical storytelling. Seeing new applications for existing technologies was particularly interesting with this project.
https://thetanknyc.org/ mananaland
Annastina Haaparsaari (FI)
As project manager of Opera Beyond Annastina presented a unique and ambitious project for the Finnish National Opera and Ballet, based on their recent production Laila, an immersive, interactive installation, which won the 2020 FEDORA Digital Prize. By combining arts and technology without prejudice or preconceptions, Opera Beyond builds an ecosystem of independent actors that gives rise to unusual combinations. The Laila installation changes and moulds its music and visuals when audiences interact with the piece. “In Laila, you are not the audience, but one of many actors shaping reality.”
https://operabeyond.com
recording moving holograms and audio messages addressing the future. We have just finished the first prototype of ‘Gathering’ at Arts Centre Melbourne. Once we have collected 1000s of holograms we are ready to perform part two, ‘Existence’, a ten day public performance ritual. We shuffle the holograms into age order from 1-101 years, and replay them 1 minute at a time over 10 days on top of Hamer Hall, the city's largest stage. Each day this collective portrait ages by a decade. After 10 days the Child of Now dies in a life affirming vigil with fireworks and festivities. It is in this way that the project embodies the art of speculative thinking – generating a portrait of the current population engaged in the act of imagining the next century. Our utopian aim is to create a portrait that reflects the diversity of current and future Naarm, Melbourne. It is therefore critical to consider who contributes to the archive of portraits to ensure the project captures the diversity of the current population and also reflects our estimation of the future population.
The technology required to make Child of Now did not exist when we started work on the project in 2017. Over the years we have worked with our collaborators at University of Melbourne and Phoria to create a holographic portraiture system, 3D models of 10,000 years of past and future life along our city’s river, interactive systems and a VR
experience to immerse visitors within the archive. In the coming years we will develop the Gathering to collect 14,400 holographic and audio portraits.
The embryonic, almost impossibly large scale, public art project Child of Now will be many things: a sculpture, an experience, a publicly and personally owned mass ethnography, a work of performance art, an archive. We have an impulse towards utopia and a certain knowledge that only through examining the past (the now that has happened) can we improve the future (the now to come). The project itself is utopic by nature, founded on the belief that with enough collaborators the near impossible can be performed.
This is in the true tradition of utopia as Thomas More perhaps saw it, an impulse towards something that might be impossible, towards a world that is better than the one we live in, towards an archive and an ethnography that is decolonised, owned by its subjects and, finally, free of the racist impulses of institutional collecting. We desire to create a new type of art, knowing it might be impossible and knowing we might change the discourse if we can indeed achieve our aims. In this way we are defining the artistic impulse as a striving towards a place that does not exist, knowing perhaps, that it’s better than here. Child of Now was born in Melbourne but it is myriad
and pluralistic, so it could be delivered anywhere the human species are found, anywhere people dream, anywhere we can imagine. We are ooking for collaborators. New cities, new populations, new children of now.
Please get in contact if you would like to join us on this adventure.
Find out more:
http://robertwalton.net/project/ child-of-now/
HOPE 2021 and 2022 were attended by over 1550 people taking part in workshops, talks and socialising in our online networking bar. What began as a need to go online out of necessity due to the pandemic became an opportunity to engage with theatre makers, technologists and creatives all over the world. Perhaps there is scope for a Hope Conference 2023? Watch this space.
CHILD OF NOW- Imagining the next century through the life of a child born today
During PlayOn! the partner theatres go through three production periods: In phase 1 they developed new forms of storytelling, building on narrative structures used in the gaming sector. In phase 2 they merged these new forms with a variety of immersive technologies creating innovative and impressive productions out of these working processes.
http://obando.pt/pt
Est. 1974
17 permanent team members
Shows per year: 120
Spectators per year: around 20 000
We are working as a collective future-oriented theatre; the focus of our projects are freedom, territories and minorities.
FUTEBOL
(co-production with Teatro Montemuro) is a theatrical reflection about the ancestral and the anthropological roots of the relationship between a human being and a ball. Joining two different teams on stage we pretend to mix the well-known codes of modern football with the historical research of Portuguese writer Álvaro Magalhães. Published in 2004, the author’s The Natural History of Football is a multidisciplinary essay which delves into the most intimate aspects of the game to discover its essence, exploring the motivations inherent to it and its essential categories. Following the PlayON! challenge, we developed an app (developed by Ben Kirman, more info on page 2) with specific contents to captivate the audience and to allow them to become an active “supporter” of this theatre game, following the results of the season of the show through videos and other types of media contents.
Est. 1803
Size of the team: around 1000
Shows per year: 800-900
Spectators per year: around 320 000
THE THEATRES are now preparing for the third phase of the project. They will leave the stage and look for immersive outreach applications. In order to exploit all the opportunities offered by the new story-world-building, they will experience how to engage the audience with points of intervention and participation in the public urban space. Immersive technologies offer a kind of flexibility, which enables theatres to exceed limits of space and time. Thematically they will further explore the topic of concrete utopias in the digital age.
https://www.landestheater-linz.at
https://www.pilot-theatre.com
Est. 1981
Size of the team 4 full time, 3 part-time + many freelancers Spectators per year: around 15000
Departments: Opera, Dance, Musical, Drama and Theatre for Young Audience (TYA) 5 stages (90 to 1 200 seats) + online “netstage”
ALIENATION
Nikola is hiding in her room avoiding expectations to conform, while trying to connect to others online. The outside world is only present via smartphone videos, sounds and written chats, while she tries to manifest an utopian society in a video game world. The audience can interact with each other via reaction.link emojis (https://www.reactionlink.de and help build the gaming environment through their decisions.
Alienation builds upon our first experiments with live theatre online, ranging from very little interactivity to the audience being responsible for progressing the story, a development we feel is vital for the audience-performance relationship in online theatre. For the gaming worlds we teamed up with students of the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria.
Est. 1955
96 permanent employees Spectators per year: 101 000
As a touring company, we make theatre and art with and for young people and inspire and champion creativity. Think harder, feel more!
MONOLITHS
in collaboration with One to One Development
Three women. Three voices. The northern landscape. They are monoliths – standing stones – powerful and influential forces.
In Monoliths, three stories open the world of the northern English landscape in virtual reality, what it means to come from it, live in it and belong to it.
Monoliths is a VR experience that combines the soundscapes of real locations in the north of England with the stories of three northern women. The piece is an exploration on how landscapes can be radical spaces for expression and reflection. Premiering at re:publica, 2022.
https://kolibriszinhaz.hu
Est. 1992
81 permanent workers + over 30 freelancers
Shows per year: 550
Spectators per year: around 50000
“We grow up together!” – This motto conveys our mission to offer each age group high-standard productions that are suitable for their mental and emotional development, and to accompany children through the stages of artistic experience.
WATERGATE
is an interactive theatre game about the negative effects of climate change. The story takes place in two similar Time Crypts, that come from an imagined future, an age when humanity’s drinking water supply has decreased drastically. Our audience are active participants of the game, revealing some details of the impending social and climate catastrophe themselves with the help of messages from the future. Whether their mission succeeds, whether they can prevent a forthcoming danger, depends on them. The future is in their hands.
You can hear an interview with the director and designer of the production by scanning the QR code.
https://re-publica.com/ de/session/monoliths https://youtu.be/ eNIpsOrpOe4
https://ludowy.pl
https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=MmfcApcI9E8
Shows per year: approx. 580
A theatre that expands its operation and creates new fields of art.
1984 MINISTRY OF LOVE
Decide! Accuse! Judge!
In 1984: Ministry of Love the audience become part of the jury who will pass judgement on the accused. The audience have access to a unique mobile application reaction.link and court files. Pressing a button to change somebody’s life.
The performance, whose starting point is the novel by George Orwell, 1984, places the audience, as a judging body, they are able to decide, along with the course of the interrogation, which of the four perspectives of the story they want to see. They will democratically vote on whom to grant or whom to take away the right to vote. The performance asks what the power of audience responsibility becomes in the oppressive situation of the invasion of someone's memory.
https://www.elsinor.net
https://www.teatretvart.no
Est. 1972
Size of the team: 40 permanent + 30 freelance
Spectators per year: 35 000
Shows per year: approx. 270
Teatret Vårt is an ambitious and innovative theatre touring the north-western region of Norway with home base at theatre houses in the towns of Molde and Ålesund producing a broad range of plays for audiences of all ages.
The production DREAM GAME is using an interactive stage created by microcontrollers that provides an unusual theatrical experience for a young audience aged 8+.
Est. 1904
700 permanent employees + freelancers
https://www.theaterdo.de
Est. 1999 as three theatre companies, active from the 1970s, merged together 15 permanent staff members + around other 140 per year involved in projects Shows per year: 363 Spectators per year: 50500
Elsinor’s driven commitment is focused on the exploration of contemporary theatrical prose, and the exchange and synergies inspired by traditional and new approaches.
FRANKENSTEIN
This production is a feminine interpretation of the famous book, which tells of an era in which being women and artists was much less than an exception, in which one could feel "monstrous" if she gave birth to books instead of children, in which a Creator confronts herself with the fear of being such and with the genius of her Creature: a masterpiece that has transcended its time creating one of the greatest topos of the contemporary age. A dreamlike journey into the novel and the emotionality of its author, and at the same time a technological immersion in a dramaturgy with an interactive component.
Shows per year: 680
Spectators per year: 220 000
Theater Dortmund is one of the largest theatres in Germany with over 500 employees. It is divided into the six divisions (drama, opera, ballet, Philharmonic Orchestra, Academy for Theatre and Digitality, KJT - Theatre for Young audience), each of which has its own artistic direction.
THE FUTURE
Our main idea is to develop a play that refers to the current situation of humanity. Young people are facing a future that looks to be chaotic, dark, overwhelming and disturbing. Due to the Coronavirus we extend further into digital worlds without structures and ways to connect. The production is a collage of voice, body, sound, and surroundings in order to depict the immediacy of digital environments but also to explore strategies to face the future with courage and joy.
HOW PLAYON! - PARTNERS LOOK INTO THE FUTURE?
For a theatre practitioner these terms seem very similar. In reality though these methods mean quite different possibilities, problems and even technological bases. The first step is to decide, which road to choose, the second step is to find a working balance between tech and art. VAT Teater (EE)
The living challenge of creating spaces in which artistic research and aesthetic production are related to each other, in which people of different artistic and technical provenance experiment on a sensual and meaningful theatre of the future. Akademie für Theater und Digitalität (DE)
Theatre as an agile, creative, flexible art form, that brings people together, helps them communicate, problem solve and find understanding and common ground is as relevant as it ever was. And smart uses of technology within theatre are maybe the rocket fuel for enabling this connection and understanding and problem-solving ability to spread around the planet, at a time when we need those things the most. Pilot Theatre (UK)
Our goal is to be a unique center for impulse-giving art and at the same time to develop it further as an interface between contemporary art and a changing society. Theater Dortmund (DE)
We´re focusing on audience development and trying to find open forms or digital tools that immerse audiences into our storytelling. Landestheater Linz (AT)
We are finding ways to apply cutting edge technology research to help storytellers in film, games and theatre. University of York | Digital Creativity Labs (UK)
Our current challenges are to integrate the needs of the different technologies with the standard production methods, and to integrate and bring together the different audiences (more attracted to technology or traditional theatre) on new paths.
Elsinor Centro di Produzione Teatrale (IT)
DIRK NELDNER (ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PLAYON!)
With PlayOn! we aim to establish new links between the theatre artists, the professional training and the industrial sectors. We are creating synergies by pooling resources, by receiving high impact training, and by multilevel networking to benefit most. Within 5 years we will under take experiments and research in how theatres can develop the content and aesthetics of their work as an artistic asset. We will establish professional connections with the digital industry. New technologies always need new ideas (content) for application, practical and playful use. That’s our speciality as theatres. And in this way, theatres face the challenges without losing their task of communicating and engaging with the audience. Content in combination with technology can become a win-win situation for all players.
Newspaper one | PlayOn! New storytelling with immersive technologies
Our main goal is to find a way to survive as a cooperative and as a collective of artists, while trying to transgress the borders between rural and urban, adult and child, schooled or popular, national or universal, dramatic, narrative or poetic, digital or analogue.
Teatro O Bando (PT)
We look forward to the challenges and fresh perspectives offered by the two international projects – PlayOn! and MAPPING – that are running with our participation, in continuing a series of highly productive co-operations.
Kolibri Színház (HU)
We are looking for new artistic tools to make our theatre more open for every kind of audience. We try to find a balance between traditional structures of theatre performances and new forms of participation. Teatr Ludowy (PL)
Editor Odette Bereska, Lucy Hammond
Layout & Design sign.Berlin
Communications GmbH | www.sign-berlin.de
Printed by Druckhaus Sportflieger
Picture Index Richard Hurford (UK), Klaudina Schubert (PL), Jörg Metzner (DE), Kari Ylitalo (FI)
© PlayOn! New storytelling with immersive technologies is a European Theatre Network supported by the European Commission. The views expressed in this publication are only the views of the authors. The Commission cannot be held responsible for any use, which may be made of the information contained therein.
Contact Odette Bereska | odette@play-on.eu
Project Coordinator VAT Teater | vatteater.ee
Our goal is to develop and produce a program that connects with, and initiates development within a diverse audience in the county of Møre and Romsdal. Teatret Vårt (NO)
isn't the loss of security; it's the loss of the to imagine that things
