Multimedia theatre in the virtual age.

This research aims to delineate various modes and means of communication in the field of multimedia theatre and to relate this field of practice to contemporary debates in both theatre and media studies. This thesis defines 'multimedia theatre' in two ways: firstly to include performance where media technologies are brought into the theatrical frame as a feature of the mise en scene, and secondly to refer to the area of new media performance, where a live performer may not be present but a high degree of performativity and liveness are achieved. Discourse in the field of digital aesthetics and new media theory is applied to examples and case studies of contemporary multimedia theatre practice to highlight the formal structures and modes of audience engagement operating within such work. Multimedia theatre may be characterised by the qualities of intermediality, immersion, interactivity, and postnarratvity, and these characteristics are used in this thesis as focal points to structure analysis and investigation.The thesis also argues that recent developments in the field of multimedia theatre and performance may be viewed as related to a larger cultural shift predicated on the dissolution of the separation of the real and the virtual. It is further argued that multimedia theatre is acting as a forum for the exploration of the contemporary human experience, an experience shaped by the ubiquity of digital media and the development of a 'posthuman' perspective