AURAL/ORAL DRAMATURGIES: A TRANSMEDIAL INNOVATION OF THE DIGITAL AGE?

TRANSMEDIA ARTS

SPEAKER: Duška Radosavljević, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London

This presentation shares the findings of the Aural/Oral Dramaturgies (A/OD) research project, an AHRC-funded investigation (2020-2022) into the emergent primacy of speech and sound in contemporary performance. While the late 20th century theatre was dominated by a power struggle between literary textuality and corporeality as the main dramaturgical motors, this research identifies a significant ‘aural turn’ that has reshaped contemporary cultural production across multiple forms and contexts. The A/OD investigation focused on compositional strategies in contemporary theatre that center speech and sound, establishing theoretical frameworks for this paradigmatic shift, and analyzing the symbiotic relationship between technological and dramaturgical innovation. The latter aspect particularly resonates with the Transmedia Arts series' exploration of the intersection between contemporary art/theatre and new media technologies. 

Drawing from findings documented in the project’s digital archive www.auralia.space and the accompanying monograph Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age (Routledge 2023), this presentation offers a summary of how technological advancement has transformed performance in three critical ways: by disrupting the centuries-old hegemony of written text in performance-making; by enabling new modes of political engagement through formal innovation; and by facilitating bottom-up processes of artistic authorization that challenge 19th century conceptions of authorship. The A/OD approach provides a practical response to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's more theoretical notion of ‘cyborality’ (2007), as it focuses on specific artistic practices in the 21st century and how they navigate between traditional oral forms and digital technologies in contemporary theatre and performance. The www.auralia.space website serves as both a research platform and creative resource, offering audio interviews, performances, and theoretical discussions. The site itself embodies the concept it explores by using digital means to capture and transmit aural/oral performance traditions and therefore provides a new methodological approach to the field of artistic research.

About the Speaker

Duška Radosavljević is a Professorial Research Fellow at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London and currently teaches at the University of Lund, Sweden. Her academic books include Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age (2022), Theatre Criticism: Changing Landscapes (2016), The Contemporary Ensemble (2013) and the ‘David Bradby award’-winning Theatre-Making (2013). Her research website www.auralia.space has received the 2022 Elliott Hayes Outstanding Contribution to Dramaturgy (Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas) and the 2022 Award for Excellence in Digital Scholarship (Association for Theatre in Higher Education and American Society for Theatre Research). She also writes about contemporary theatre and performance for outlets such as The Theatre Times, Exeunt, SEE Stage and The Stage Newspaper.

How To Join

Please add your name and email address to this registration page. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with a link and passcode to the event. 

If you have any questions, please contact Magda Romanska at magda[at]metalab.harvard.edu

This event is co-sponsored with metaLAB (at) Harvard.