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The Multimedia Bard: Plugged and Unplugged

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Lizbeth Goodman ,
Tony Coe  and
Huw Williams
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Abstract

The relationship between live theatre and the rapidly developing multimedia technologies has been ambiguous and uneasy, both in the practical and the academic arena. Many have argued that such technologies put the theatre and other live arts at risk, while others have seen them as a means of preserving the elusive traces of live performance, making current work accessible to future generations of artists and scholars. A few performance and production teams have entered the fray, deliberately pushing the technology to its limits to see how useful it may (or may not) be in dealing with the theatre. One such team – comprising Lizbeth Goodman, Tony Coe, and Huw Williams – forms the Open University BBC's Multimedia Shakespeare Research Project, and on 4 September 1997 they presented their work as the annual BFI Lecture at the Museum of the Moving Image on London's South Bank. What follows is an edited and updated transcript of the lecture – which was itself a ‘multimedia performance’ – intended to spark debate about the possibilities and limitations of using multimedia in creating and preserving ‘live’ theatre. Lizbeth Goodman is Lecturer in Literature at the Open University, where she chairs both the Shakespeare Multimedia Research Project and the new ‘Shakespeare: Text and Performance’ course. Tony Coe is Senior Producer at the OU/BBC, where Huw Williams was formerly attached to the Interactive Media Centre, before becoming Director of Createc for the National Film School, and subsequently Director of Broadcast Solutions, London. Together the team has created a range of multimedia CD-ROMs designed to test the limits and possibilities of new technologies for theatre and other live art forms – beginning with Shakespeare

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 14 , Issue 53 , February 1998 , pp. 20 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

Notes and References

1. The As You Like It video was produced by Amanda Willett for the Open University/BBC in 1994, and was first used by some 3,800 OU students on the ‘Approaching Literature’ course in 1995. The video features Fiona Shaw working with students from LAMDA, extracts from the Cheek by Jowl all-male production, and a new version of the Banishment scene directed by Fiona Shaw, with Susan Lynch and Matilda Zeigler, in the disused St. Pancras Chambers, London. The video also includes interviews with Shaw, Deborah Warner, Annie Castledine, Declan Donnellan, and Peter Sellars. It is available from Routledge as part of the ‘Approaching Literature’ multimedia series. Extracts from the video were included in the TV programme ‘Girls Who Are Boys’ (presented by Fiona Shaw; academic associate Lizbeth Goodman; produced by Tony Coe), the third in the new showcase series, Conjuring Shakespeare, broadcast on BBC2 at 7.30 pm for six weeks in September–October 1997. The video and a range of other multimedia materials are discussed in the book Shakespeare, Aphra Behn, and the Canon, eds. Owens, W. R and Goodman, L. (Routledge, 1996)Google Scholar.

2. The question ‘how can we use technology before it uses us?’ was posed as one of the throughlines to a conference/performance festival, ‘Gender in the Field of Vision’, held at the Gate Theatre, London, on 5 July 1997 (hosted by the OU/BBC Gender in Writing and Performance Research Group, with speakers and performers including Leslie Hill, Helen Paris, Peter Ride, Huw Williams, Susan Kozel, Janet Adshead-Lansdale, Mara de Wit, Kim Morrissey, Katharine Cockin, Dorothea Smartt, Patience Agbabi, Adeola Agbebiyi and Joan Lipkin (in a ‘virtual keynote’ delivered by choral performance from the floor of a script posted in advance); chaired by Lizbeth Goodman and organized by Jane de Gay, with assistance from the ACE Combined Arts Unit. Responses to this question were discussed as part of the plenary discussion following each session and were also recorded on video by Carli Leimbach of Headlong Productions. Videos can be ordered c/o Jane de Gay, Department of Literature, Arts Faculty, Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, or via the ‘Gender in Writing and Performance’ web site (address below).

3. King Lear in Performance pilot CD-ROM, prototype version, first presented at the World Shakespeare Congress, Los Angeles, 7–14 April, 1996. Written and presented by Lizbeth Goodman; designed and programmed by Huw Williams, Charon Wood, and Nathaniel Cross; produced by Tony Coe. Featuring a master class with Fiona Shaw (Artistic Associate). Web site created by Stephen Regan and Stephen Reimer. CD-ROM produced by the Open University Faculty of Arts and BBC, with BBC Interactive Media; supported by a grant from the Office of Technology Development. Produced in collaboration with the University of Alberta, Routledge (publishers of the latest Arden edition, as yet unpublished text kindly provided by Reg Foakes), and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

4. In 1995, the Shakespeare Multimedia Research Project won an award which funded a formal study of these two CD-ROMs by Jan Rae and Ellie Chambers of the Institute of Educational Technology. That research is ongoing, and the results are feeding into the revision of the CD-ROMs for international release. The CD-ROMs and the video materials which they incorporate will be used on the new Open University ‘Shakespeare: Text and Performance’ course, to be first presented to students in the year 2000.

5. Teresa Dobson from the University of Alberta has written an original critique of the Queen Lear design concept and performance, for publication in a future issue of New Theatre Quarterly.

6. Interviews conducted by Stephen Regan, Lizbeth Goodman, and Bob Owens, produced by Jenny Bard-well, assisted by Jayne Ellery, for the Open University BBC at the World Shakespeare Congress, Los Angeles, April 1996.

7. The three storm scenes are included and discussed in the ‘Stormy Weather’ programme (No. 4), and the ‘Ealing Lear’ scenes are included in the ‘It's a Family Affair’ programme (No. 5) in the new showcase TV series, Conjuring Shakespeare, broadcast on BBC2 at 7.30 pm for six weeks in September–October 1997. ‘Stormy Weather’ was narrated by Fiona Shaw and produced by Jenny Bardwell. ‘It's a Family Affair’ was narrated by Lizbeth Goodman and produced by Tony Coe. For full details on programmes, write to the Open University Showcase TV Series, OU/BBC Production Centre, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6BH, or via the Shakespeare Multimedia Project web site (address below).

8. A related paper investigating the uses of media in teaching about performance has been written and delivered by Lizbeth Goodman at the Oxford CTI conference on Media-Assisted Learning, St. Anne's College, Oxford, 17 March 1997. That lecture was videoed, and has been published as ‘Creative Imagination and Media-Assisted Learning: Shakespeare in Performance’, in The Journal of Literary and Linguistic Computing. November 1997.