News & Information
Lewis's Experiential Spectatorship Published by Routlege
The Department of Theatre and Dance is proud to announce the publication of Experiential Spectatorship: Immersion, Participation and Play During Times of Deep Mediatization, a new monograph that offers insights into the ever-evolving and increasingly complex relationship between audiences and new-age contemporary media. Written by Dr. William W. Lewis, Assistant Professor of Theatre History, Literature, and Criticism, and Coordinator of Undergraduate Students here at Purdue, this new publication provides a modern post-digital framework for understanding how audiences engage with a wide range of new media experiences in today's increasingly digital world.
In a time where traditional spectatorship is being rapidly reshaped by digital technologies, Experiential Spectatorship takes a deep dive into how emerging forms of media, from participatory theatre and video games to social media platforms and interactive television, are transforming the ways we choose to engage with the performing arts. This monograph offers a digital perspective to examine audience experience across these diverse platforms, helping readers to grasp how mediatization, shaped by recent technological advancements, is redefining our decisions and capacities as spectators... Read More
Sergio Sierra Brings Embodied Performance Techniques from Manizales, Colombia
Seven students walk across the dance floor and take up positions; a live drummer starts playing, setting a tempo to follow and the performers begin moving around the space, changing direction, tempo, gait, and height at the direction of a voice from offstage. For the next 60 minutes, attendees of the Dramaturgy Living in Motion workshop watched as the performers--four dance students and three graduate acting students--moved through an engrossing series of exercises, evoking nostalgia, sadness, hope, love, joy, and more. Led by Sergio Sierra, scholar and professor from Universidad de Caldas in Manizales, Colombia, the students shared the culmination of intense exploration of expression, movement, and creation with an audience of approximately 50 Purdue University faculty, staff, and students... Read More
Purdue Theatre Partners with Show Technologies for Dead Man's Cell Phone
The phone rings. They kiss. Embossed stationery moves through the air slowly, like a snow parade. Lanterns made of embossed paper, houses made of embossed paper, light falling on paper, falling on Jean and Dwight, who are also falling.
That is how Sarah Ruhl describes the last moments of the first act of Dead Man's Cell Phone, the first show of the 2024-2025 Purdue Theatre season. The image is striking and beautiful, but figuring out just how to make it happen--over a thrust stage, with a tension-wire grid overhead, mere feet from the audience in the Carole & Gordon Mallett Theatre--vexed the design and production team... Read More
In Motion: First of its Kind Interactive Exhibit Presented by Purdue Galleries
In Motion is an interactive installation utilizing machine learning and computer vision to track the physical coordinates of visitors to the Ringel Gallery and is the first interactive exhibit to be presented in Purdue Galleries. In Motion opened on August 14 as part of the BGR Entertainment Challenge, exposing incoming students to the possibilities of collaboration between the arts and sciences... Read More
Purdue Theatre announces the 2024-2025 Season
Purdue University's Department of Theatre and Dance is excited to announce the 2024-2025 Theatre mainstage season. This season brings exciting explorations of life and death, and love and loss for long-time Purdue Theatre fans and newcomers alike, with productions by award-winning contemporary playwrights, a classic from the Bard himself, and an original production created by our own faculty, staff, and students that is sure to challenge audience expectations of a "play"! Read more