Performing Data : Theatre Practice and Research

An investigation of how artists use data in creating performance and how data is visualised in researching performance.[ST1]

Artists and scholars now use data in creative ways to make and investigate theatre and performance while critiquing the power relations inherent in data collection, analysis, and visualisation. This book brings together artists who use data to create performance with researchers who visualise data about performance. Each chapter is organised around a key idea about data as performance, dramaturgy, documentation, flow, and genealogy. They use a range of case studies from around the globe, including the Builders’ Association’s I Agree to the Terms (2022),The Haka Party Incident (2022) by Katie Wolfe in Aotearoa, Rimini Protokoll’s 100% City series (since 2008), Catalogue by Rawcus in Melbourne (2013), and Algorithmen by Turbo Pascal in Germany (2014), among many others.

Demonstrating how live performance embodies data for social critique and improved data literacy, this book illuminates how artists generate data through dramaturgical processes. It also explains how sharing information about performance within a database enables broader investigations of touring patterns, long-term programming, and lines of influence between artists. Examples of data considered within this book include: play scripts, publicity material, videos and images of performance, live performing arts databases, geographical locations of performance venues, and networks of production cast and crew. By interweaving digital methods with creative research, this appeals to those looking for creative ways to engage with data and performance, and provides an accessible and engaging guide to working with performance data in digital cultures for artists, students, curators, and researchers.