{"id":1059,"date":"2026-06-15T18:17:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T18:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/?p=1059"},"modified":"2026-06-17T17:15:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T17:15:54","slug":"editors-note-reconfiguring-presence-performing-arts-technology-and-the-future-of-embodied-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/editors-note-reconfiguring-presence-performing-arts-technology-and-the-future-of-embodied-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s Note. Reconfiguring Presence: Performing Arts, Technology, and the Future of Embodied Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hana Strej\u010dkov\u00e1<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The relationship between theatre, technology, and human experience is undergoing a period of profound transformation. In contemporary performance practices, emerging digital technologies no longer function merely as tools that extend existing theatrical languages; instead, they increasingly shape the very conditions through which performance is created, experienced, documented, and understood. The contributions gathered in this conference section address a central question: what becomes of theatre when embodiment, presence, spectatorship, memory, and artistic creation are reconfigured by computational systems, immersive media, and new forms of mediation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This thematic section brings together selected contributions originally presented at the international conference Film, Video, Digital and AI in Theatre Stages<\/em> (Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 10\u201312 October 2025), organized by the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC) and the Doctoral School of the Faculty of Theatre and Film at Babe\u0219-Bolyai University, in partnership with the Lucian Blaga National Theatre. For publication, the contributions have been reworked, substantially expanded, and adapted to meet the methodological and formal requirements of academic scholarship. Among them, several articles by Romanian academics and critics examine the changing ontology of performance in technologically enhanced environments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Horea Avram<\/strong> examines how artificial intelligence destabilizes traditional understandings of bodily presence and liveness, proposing the concept of the \u201cmeta-body\u201d to describe a distributed, technologically mediated corporeality emerging from human\u2013machine entanglements. Related concerns are developed in Anca Ghenoside<\/strong>\u2019s analysis of performance capture and virtual reality theatre, where actors increasingly negotiate the tension between physical embodiment and digital representation. Together, these studies point to a theatre in which the body is no longer bounded by its material limits but extends across networks, interfaces, and algorithmic processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The transformation of spectatorship constitutes a second major concern. Adelina-Laura Buliba\u0219a<\/strong> traces a historical trajectory from Jerzy Grotowski\u2019s via negativa<\/em> toward contemporary technologically saturated performance environments, arguing that digital expansion has fundamentally altered the role of the spectator. Audiences are no longer positioned as passive observers but are increasingly invited to participate, interact, and co-create theatrical experiences. This shift resonates with Ana Tecar<\/strong>\u2019s investigation of digitally archived one-to-one performances. While such performances have traditionally been understood through the intimacy of singular co-presence, digital documentation produces new layers of reception, extending personal encounters into collective and distributed forms of engagement. Both contributions suggest that spectatorship today operates across multiple temporalities and scales of participation, challenging established distinctions between witness, participant, and audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions of mediation are further explored through sensory and affective dimensions of digital experience. Andreea Iacob<\/strong>\u2019s study of the immersive installation Oasis of Silence<\/em> demonstrates how virtual reality, generative sound, and responsive visual environments can actively influence psychological states, opening new perspectives on the relationship between art, wellbeing, and neuroaesthetics. Likewise, Marius-Alexandru Teodorescu<\/strong> examines synthetic voices as emerging theatrical agents whose presence complicates established assumptions about authenticity, emotional labour, and vocal embodiment. In both cases, technological mediation does not simply reproduce human capacities but generates novel affective ecologies that transform how audiences perceive, feel, and relate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The section also foregrounds questions of identity and human vulnerability within contemporary performance. Daniela \u0218ilindean<\/strong>\u2019s contribution shifts attention toward illness narratives and first-person storytelling, examining how bodily difference and pathology function not as obstacles to representation but as productive dramaturgical lenses. Her analysis reminds us that technological futures must remain attentive to lived experience and embodied subjectivity. The body, whether augmented by digital systems or marked by illness, remains a central site of meaning-making, negotiation, and artistic expression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taken together, these contributions point toward a broader redefinition of theatrical practice in the twenty-first century. Theatre emerges not as a stable medium but as a dynamic field in which bodies, technologies, institutions, and communities continuously renegotiate their relationships. This perspective is most explicitly articulated in Cosmin Matei\u2019<\/strong>s reflection on theatre education and research in contemporary Romania. By identifying the gap between rapidly evolving artistic realities and persistently traditional educational models, Matei raises a pressing question that echoes throughout this collection: are our institutions preparing future artists and scholars to critically engage with emerging forms of performance, or are they merely preserving inherited paradigms?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than presenting technology either as a threat to theatre\u2019s essence or as a solution to its future, the essays assembled here reveal a more nuanced landscape. They demonstrate that contemporary performance is increasingly characterized by hybridity between physical and virtual presence, human and non-human agency, intimacy and distribution, documentation and event, embodiment and mediation. Collectively, they invite readers to reconsider some of theatre\u2019s most foundational concepts not in order to abandon them, but to understand how they are being reimagined under contemporary conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The future suggested by these studies is neither fully posthuman nor entirely technological, but one in which theatre remains a privileged site for investigating what it means to be present, to perceive, to remember, and to encounter others in an increasingly mediated world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo:<\/strong> Truman Buffett. The Feast Theater, The Adding Machine: A Cyborg Morality Play<\/em> (2024), ca. 120 min. Adaptation & direction: Ryan Guzzo Purcell; performers: Julie Briskman, Holiday, Alexander Kilian. Courtesy of the artists. From Horea Avram, \u201cDistributed Bodies and Automatic Sensorium: AI in Performing Arts (four case studies),\u201d Conference Section of this issue. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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*<\/a>Hana Strej\u010dkov\u00e1<\/strong> is an associate professor and vice-dean for science and research, doctoral studies at the Faculty of Music and Dance of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. She holds a PhD from the Department of Nonverbal Theatre at AMU. She teaches at both the AMU and Palack\u00fd University in Olomouc. She publishes in many cultural magazines, writing mainly about movement theatre and cross-over projects. Hana also works as a theatre director and dramaturg. Her training includes studies at the Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School and completion of a three-level program in Meyerhold\u2019s Theatre Biomechanics under the mentorship of Master G. Bogdanov.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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