Moving Towards Thought: Theatricality, Technology, and the Theatre

Inspired by the question of what forces us to think and employing the Deleuzian concepts of affect and the new, this thesis argues that the technologies used in theatre production construct an affective encounter from which new thinking may emerge. Moreover, this thesis maintains that a consideration of the affective encounter is a productive means of further understanding theatricality because the experience of theatricality is rooted in the affective encounter. This argument brings together theatricality and thinking through the experience of affect that is produced by the technologies used in performance. Technology becomes an integral element to this project because it is positioned as the disruptive element that incites the affective encounter from which theatricality and new thinking may emerge.This examination of the relationship between thought, technology, and theatricality is grounded by an analysis of theatre productions by The Builders Association, Troika Ranch, Toni Dove, and Marie Brassard. It is further structured by an evaluation of ways that technology shapes and reshapes understandings of space, presence and event; each of which are significant elements in our conceptualizations of theatricality. More specifically, the individual chapters consider how technologies used in performance produce disruptions that open spaces for thinking the new. This is done through an examination of the ways that screens articulate the disjuncture inherent to theatrical space; how vocal mediation challenges conceptions of presence as an originary site; and how the theatrical event is reconstituted by the use of technologies that place the spectator in the midst of a "happening" that intensifies and disrupts their common sensuous experience. The empirical material of performance is used in this thesis as a means of working through the larger philosophical concerns of the project including: questions of thought, the new, and the role that technology plays in the creation and experience of theatricality. Building upon established discourses of intermedial performance, theatricality, and affect, this thesis outlines an expression of the creative potential of spectatorship, and is ultimately invested in considering how active participation may move the spectator to think the new.Ph.D