Emma Meehan

The Performing Subject in the Space of Technology

rapidly convey their wishes and responses and direct operations in multiple locations without being physically present. Schweitzer unearths hundreds of pink, yellow, and blue telegram slips from the archives documenting how impresarios and their agents used this medium to extend their imperialistic global reach. Armed with the code book used by producers Lee and J. J. Shubert, she deciphers these cryptic messages to reveal how secrecy and rapidity of communication bested competition. She draws fascinating connections between Shubertrival Frohman’s famously epigrammatic wit and his mastery of the telegram. Along the way, she shows how telegraphy itself performed onstage as well as off in popular plays like William Gillette’s Secret Service.

General Introduction: In the After-event of the Virtual

Now that the shock of the virtual and the rise of our avatars and digital doubles has subsided towards a new normal of computational interference in all areas of life, it is an advantageous moment to reflect on the passage through the virtual and back to the real. As we live within a technologically immersed world, there is a desire and need to return to what can be perceived as real. However, we propose that this entails accepting that the virtual is part of the real, or, more correctly, that we live in the era of the ‘biovirtual’ which encompasses both together. In this book, we attempt to reflect on the aftermath of these shifts encountered in the maturing of a digital culture in areas of critical theory and artistic practices. Our primary frames of reference are: performance as cultural phenomenon; as a critical methodology; and as an aesthetic concern. The book contains practice-led research analyses of dance, theatre and live art, philosophical readings regarding the work of art and technology, and performance studies investigations of the subject in the space of technology. The subtitle of our collection, Through the Virtual, Towards the Real, indicates the historical moment we wish to explore, the ‘after-event’ of the digital, when the awareness that contemporary subjectivity is one that dwells within both the virtual and the real, each existing without dominion over the other, but are rather entwined and collaborative.

Revisiting Lunar Parables : Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre and the Intangible Archive

In this chapter, Meehan reflects on a practice as research project revisiting the archives of Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre (DCDT), the first state-funded contemporary dance company in Ireland that ran from 1979–1989. Despite the important role that DCDT played in developing contemporary dance in an Irish context, very little has been researched or written about their work to date. One key aim of this project is to examine the knowledge revealed by revisiting DCDT’s archival materials through practice, focusing on the choreography Lunar Parables (1983). It considers what the ‘embodied archive’ of the performers can uncover about the company’s work, and what this reflects about Irish contemporary dance history and culture.

Immersive Performance and Somatic Practices: Joan Davis and the Maya Lila Project

In this article, I focus on the work of Irish choreographer Joan Davis in order to draw out a debate on the value offered by somatic movement approaches to the field of immersive performance. Such works immerse audiences and performers in sensory, site-based and participatory performance. There has been a recent surge in popularity of immersive theatre experiences and scholarship on this topic, with the writings for example of Alston (2013), Harvie (2013), Machon (2013), and White (2012) examining issues such as the agency of audience members and the relationship between individual freedom and group responsibility. What do somatic performances, which often physically immerse participants in outdoor environments, found spaces, or designed installations, have to offer this field of theory and practice? Drawing on ideas in environmental theatre and performance ecology, including the work of Reeve (2011), Kershaw (2007/1999) and Schechner (1973, 1993), I explore the relationship between people, sites, objects, and wildlife in somatic performances as part of a whole ecology in shifting negotiation. I propose that although active, individual, experiential participation is part of these performances, body-mind reflective engagement in relationship to context is a vital contribution somatics can offer to immersive practice more generally. This will be discussed in relation to Joan Davis’ Maya Lila project (20022015), as she invites participants to become aware of their behaviours within installation environments, as a means to explore being within and separate from a community, as well as challenging expectations, perceptions and actions.