Courtesy of Szilvi Toth
Facebook has made us and our networks the stars of our own lives. Similarly the audience is one of the main characters in Theatre Junction’s upcoming show Social Fiction.
Created by Amsterdam-based theatre collective PIPS:lab (the same group that brought DieSpace 3.0 to Theatre Junction last season) Social Fiction expands the traditional definition of theatre by using real-time interactive technology — more akin to cinema and video games than straight drama.
Many PIPS:lab shows use social media as inspiration and the company’s fascination with the topic is multifaceted. First of all social media is changing society.
“We are constantly changing due to the new possibilities that social media or new techniques are giving us” says Thijs de Wit an actor/artist with PIPS:lab via email. “Facebook LinkedIn Instagram Tinder — they are all new ways to interact with each other. This new social interaction is fascinating and shows new aspects of human behaviour.”
Also top of mind for many social media users (and abstainers) is the idea of privacy: those constant decisions of what to share how much and with whom. And what was in those terms and conditions anyway?
The show’s structure is based on social media. “The basic principle of social media of course is that it is in itself an empty framework a shell. All content is created by its users” says de Wit. “This is also the principle for the show. We create a blueprint that will be filled with content from the audience.”
PIPS:lab pulls out some cutting-edge technology to make Social Fiction work but the primary challenge of the show is more mundane: how do you rehearse a show in which the audience is a main character… without an audience? (Answer: with a test audience.)
“In the beginning there does not seem to be a narrative arc — we are just using the audience to create the content for this new world” says de Wit. “But all is not for nothing and everything will be used and re-used in new scenes.”
As for the performers onstage (actors camera-operators and musicians) they melt in and out of roles as the show progresses: they could be workers in a factory members in a strange cult bits and bytes or fellow Internet users.
If the audience is a character in Social Fiction so too is the technology that captures the audience. “Technology plays an essential role in this performance. It seems to control us during the show just as much as it is controlling us in real life” explains de Wit.
PIPS:lab gathers information like text messages and scanned physical likenesses from both the audience and performers to use as the building blocks for the show. Mo-Cap the company’s one-of-a-kind motion-capture studio transfers movement into data and its “Potator” installation processes elements of images into a combination of paint and canvas in 3D.
Make sense? If not that’s all right. After all de Wit promises to bring audiences “into an augmented state of confusion.” (“Be prepared to go on an unexpected journey” he says.)
Like any social media platform audiences in Social Fiction will be both content providers and consumers. In terms of a theatre show the use of state-of-the-art technology expands the possibilities of stage performance hinting at further innovations to come.
In many ways though Social Fiction is a reflection of our current reality and raises “some awareness of the benefits and the danger of new technology” according to de Wit.
Are we controlling the technology or is it controlling us?
Social Fiction runs November 19 to 22 at Theatre Junction Grand.
