Shaping Networked Theatre: experience architectures, behaviours and creative pedagogies

Abstract

Since 2006 the UK based applied theatre company C&T has been using its experience and expertise in mixing drama, learning and digital media to create a new online utility for shaping collaborative educational drama experiences. C&T describes this practice as ‘Networked Theatre’. This article describes both the motivations for C&T's development of the C&T Network and this website. It sets out the functionality it offers students, schools and those working in more informal settings and explores the pedagogic and creative motivations that have shaped the partnerships the C&T Network facilitates. These include the interests of schools, theatre practitioners, disabled people and communities in the developing world. At the centre of this analysis will be the notion of ‘glocalisation’ and its relevance to applied drama in an age of technologically driven globalisation. This article also looks at how C&T has adapted techniques and methods developed in the advertising and mainstream media to shape new pedagogic frameworks for the planning, delivery and evaluation of C&T's work across its network.

Keywords:

• applied theatre
• digital technology
• social media
• drama
• development

Notes

1. A detailed a critique of the paradigm of the Dramatic Property can be found in my Ph.D. thesis, complete with texts of some of the scripts from some projects (Sutton 2005). This is also available to download at http://www.candt.org

2. Prensky (2001) identifies 10 main cognitive learning style changes that he observes in the Digital Native generation as opposed to those learners of the previous generation, whom he describes as Digital Immigrants [‘they always retain, to some degree, their accent, that is, their foot in the past’(2–15)]. These changes are twitch speed vs. conventional speed; parallel processing vs. linear processing; graphics first, text second; random access vs. step-by-step; connected vs. standalone; active vs. passive; play vs. work, payoff vs. patience; fantasy vs. reality; technology-as-friend vs. technology-as-foe.

3. The Livingnewspaper.net Five Rules are Be Funny, Be Direct, Juxtapose, Agitate and Let The Facts Speak For Themselves. All are freely available on the website.

4. The job title ‘Experience Architect’ came to prominence in the first decade of the twenty-first century and commonly describes someone whose responsibility it is to shape and design the user experience of a given system. Typically these systems are websites or other forms of interactive software but the emphasis is on the holistic experience of the user, not the system itself. The equivalent term in education might be represented by ‘child centred’ approaches to learning experience.

5. Although sub menus on the site allowed students and teachers to access previous archived projects and materials. Teachers were keen to ensure it was possible to retrieve past student work largely for assessment purposes.

6. A digital version of this paper including multi-media content is available here: http://www.candt.org/research/shaping-networked-theatre-experience-architectures-behaviours-and-creative-