Theatre, technology, and time

Time has been an emergent artistic and philosophical theme in digital theatre practice, and the conjunction of live performance and recorded/computer rendered imagery has been used in innovative ways to elicit particular temporal distortions and effects. In theatre works by The Builders Association, Robert Lepage, Dumb Type and Uninvited Guests these effects can be seen not only to disorient an audience’s understanding and experience of theatrical time, but also to challenge and go beyond established postmodern notions such as ‘atemporality’ or temporal montage. Rather, such works can be seen to operate in ways that situate them within more ancient and mythical understandings of the extratemporal. The live and the virtual combine to dramatise the experience of existing and functioning outside of time.