Synopsis

In The Iliad Project, each area—text, design, performance technique, technology—is impacted by research in the other and incorporates a deliberate focus on the unique characteristics of digital technology as they affect dramatic literature and performance practice.

As we attempt to intrinsically include the audience as an important element of our story, and do so via technology, the technology in our work takes on an incredibly relevant significance that parallels how it is used and how we are used because of it. Technology off the stage is unavoidable. And onstage, it is often gratuitous. Because of this research process, we are beginning to understand how drama can evolve, making technology as intrinsic as Aristotle's logic and as captivating as Beckett’s illogic. We will be engaging audiences with the tools at our disposal, not only because of them.

We will start off with a website, one that replaces a more traditional prologue. In addition to introducing the world of play, it will pull information from the participants supposedly for the purposes of the characters. A relational database will store the survey responses for later use onstage and in the galleries. This setup and interaction will continue via an e-mail news list, which will also serve the characters’ purposes. In relation to a more traditional structure, this will serve as dramatic transition from the prologue to the larger body of performance and include an inciting incident: Helen’s kidnapping. When the audience (participants) arrive at the location of the event, a gallery of photography will elaborate on the themes of the website, and include more logic to relate to the inciting incident.

Using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, the tickets of participants will identify them and “connect” their experience to the information in the relational database. The first gallery will serve the purpose of a play’s more traditional exposition, and will also capture images and actions of the participants (and store them in the database) for further dramatic development, bringing echoes of their real lives into the performance itself.

Here and throughout the piece, the inchoate feelings and intents of the citizens of Los Angeles (our first audience) will not be processed or homogenized through the eyes of a vigilant playwright. Instead, the populace, by virtue of the computer capabilities and software technology being developed, will be present as an equal participant with the playwright’s text. In fact, the populace will be able to literally make an impact on the dramatic event, not just the first time it is presented on stage, but every time it is presented on stage.

By the time the recognizable “performance” begins, the audience and the performers will be ready and eager to act upon the consequences of the inciting incident—the kidnapping—without the need for further exposition, and the actors will be armed with information from the audience to dynamically relate to the given situation. As this more traditional act concludes, an interactive intermission gallery will sustain the event and, like the opening gallery, provide fuel for further dramatic development by observing and interacting with the audience. As the second more traditional act begins, the piece will begin to turn on itself as in a more traditional play, but the elements of performance will be intensified by the acquisitions (echoes of the audience, live media from the city) up until that point. Media from throughout the city of the performance will be streamed into the space, and juxtaposed with recently captured images, processed website and gallery responses, and real-time sensor data. When the event concludes, a final gallery, customized to the attending audience, will substitute for a more traditional epilogue.