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Systemic Dramaturgy : A Handbook for the Digital Age - Michael Mark Chemers

Systemic Dramaturgy

A Handbook for the Digital Age

By: Michael Mark Chemers, Mike Sell, Marianne Weems

Paperback | 30 November 2022

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Working theatrically with technology

Systemic Dramaturgy offers an invigorating, practical look at the daunting cultural problems of the digital age as they relate to performance. Authors Michael Mark Chemers and Mike Sell reject the incompatibility of theatre with robots, digital media, and videogames. Instead, they argue that problems with technology are really problems of art: How can we tell this story and move this audience with these tools? And when we have different tools, should that change the stories we tell?

This volume attunes readers to "systemic dramaturgy"-the recursive elements of signification, innovation, and history that underlie all performance-arguing that theatre must be understood as a system of systems, a concatenation of people, places, things, politics, feelings, and interpretations, ideally working together to entertain and edify an audience. The authors discuss in-depth the application of time-tested dramaturgical skills to extra-theatrical endeavors, including multi-platform performance, installations, and videogames. And they identify the unique interventions that dramaturgs can and must make into these art forms.

More than any other book that has been published in the field, Systemic Dramaturgy places historical dramaturgy in conversation with technologies as old as the deux ex machina and as new as artificial intelligence. A spirited and playful blend, the volume collates histories, transcripts, and case studies and applies the concepts of systemic dramaturgy to works both old and avant-garde. Between chapters, Chemers and Sell include conversations with some of the most forward-thinking, innovative, and creative people working in live media as they share their diverse approaches to the challenges of making performances, games, and digital media that move both heart and mind. This volume is nothing less than a guide for thinking about the future evolution of performance.
Industry Reviews

"Refreshingly joyful in their embrace of the pleasures of gaming, without losing sight of the primary role of the audience and social identity, Michael Mark Chemers and Mike Sell celebrate the transferable skills of dramaturgy as well as its vital role in building empathy among spectators and consumers of digital media."--Jane Barnette, author of Adapturgy: The Dramaturg's Art and Theatrical Adaptation

"Systemic Dramaturgy unpacks and explores the unique ways contemporary dramaturgy exists all around us. Everyone from theatre historians to video game streamers will cherish this essential guide to speaking about dramaturgy across the theatrical and virtual worlds where we all play."--Peter Kuling, associate editor, International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media

"Chemers and Sell's excellent and important new book--Systemic Dramaturgy: A Handbook for the Digital Age--speaks to anyone interested in the relationship between performance and technology. The authors argue--convincingly--that dramaturgy's attention to the art of close reading, open-ended thinking, and artful questioning is absolutely essential to the future of theatre, new media, gaming, and digital performance. In turn, they issue two bold challenges to the field: first, for dramaturgs to readily bring their expertise in analytical thinking to ever-widening constellations (systems) of thought; second, and most importantly, for dramaturgs to apply their knowledge of history and the humanities across cultures to the transformation of fixed, oppositional binaries-- machine/soul, head/heart, digital/authentic, technology/human embodiment--into dynamic, compassionate engines of play."--Geoff Proehl, author of Toward a Dramaturgical Sensibility: Landscape and Journey with DD Kugler, Mark Lamos, and Michael Lupu

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