Stage and technologies
FOUGARO ARTCENTER welcomes the distinguished theatrologist Béatrice Picon-Vallin, invited by the Nafplio-based Department of Performing and Digital Arts of the University of Peloponnese, for a lecture on “Technologies on stage: from electricity to artificial intelligence” (Que font les technologies sur la scène: de l’électricité à l'IA) on Wednesday 15 November 2023 at 19.00 in The ANTHOS Library.
The lecture will be conducted in French with summaries in Greek.
Technologies on stage: from electricity to artificial intelligence
The stage was never afraid of technologies. It welcomed them, used them, built them and adapted them to its requirements, from electricity to digital video and from still to moving images in immersion environments. In this way it enriched the art of the theatre in terms of image and sound, thanks to the cameras that get increasingly versatile and sophisticated but also thanks to microphones, computers and consoles of all kinds.
This is an old story, and in the twentieth century the stage went hand-in-hand with the transformations of society to embrace or criticise them. Initially linked to the avant-gardes (Meyerhold, Piscator, Polieri), this phenomenon affected both drama and opera as well as documentary theatre, sometimes becoming a kind of fad that one had to adopt.
Numerous experiments were attempted in the 21st century, like the “filmic performance” of MXM Collectif. The actors may disappear behind the stage set and only be visible on a screen superimposed on the set (Kastorf, Gosselin). This presence/absence may be the prelude to the actors’ ultimate replacement by robots and AI-built creatures. We shall examine the main effects of these developing technologies, mainly in relation to the changes they will bring to the productions as well as the spectators.
Béatrice Picon-Vallin
Born in 1946, she is former director for the Performing Arts at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France. Her research centres on Russian and Soviet theatre, the history of acting and directing in Europe and theatre’s relation to other arts and the new technologies. One of the top scholars on the work of Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold, she has translated in French his entire theoretical oeuvre. She is in charge of publications in the fields of Performing Arts (CNRS Editions), 20th-century Theatre (L'Age d'Homme) and Stage Directing (Actes Sud-Papiers). Among other subjects she has taught theatre and direction history at the Conservatoire National and the Institut d’études théâtrales of Paris III Sorbonne-nouvelle.
