ISDP Updates
Current
ISDP FEATURED in LONDON’s “The Stage”
Reporter for London’s The Stage, Howard Sherman, interviewed Elena Araoz about Innovations in Socially Distant Performance’s research and virtual theatre productions. The article takes Elena’s quote for its headline “‘Right now, virtual theatre is just like when silent film was invented’” and includes many virtual theatre-makers speaking about virtual theatre’s continued growth, even as in-person theatre returns.
ISDP WINS SECOND PLACE AWARD and substantial funding at the Keller Center’s 16th Annual Innovation Forum
Innovations in Socially Distant Performance won second place after competing in The Keller Center’s Innovation Forum, an event showcasing Princeton research with the potential to be commercialized. The Keller Center is Princeton University's hub for entrepreneurship, design and design thinking, social impact, and innovative engineering education. The competition consisted of a track for science and engineering innovations and a track for social sciences and humanities innovations. Elena Araoz, representing ISDP, demonstrated the practice and importance of forms of virtual theatre which maintain the live feedback loop between performer and audience. ISDP will use the awarded funding to create an interactive virtual opera, where live singers can hear and respond to the audience - fully capturing the live feedback loop that is at the heart of opera and theatre.
ISDP’s “notes from the field” is published in “theatre Topics” journal
“Puppeteering Liveness: Reimagining Theatre for a Virtual Space” by Innovations in Socially Distant Performance’s Elena Araoz with Miranda Allegar and Katharine Matthias is published in the academic journal Theatre Topics (Volume 31, Number 2, July 2021, pp. 169-177, Published by Johns Hopkins University.) This “Notes from the Field” chronicles ISDPs virtual productions and the genres which inspired them, from Baroque scenography to Instagram magicians, to couture fashion shows. The essay posits that virtual performance, often a form of puppetry, even though it interacts with its audience through a screen, is indeed theatre. The journal has been declared free to read by the publisher during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The manic monologues
Innovations in Socially Distant Performance partners with McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton University Health Services, and The 24 Hour Plays® to create the online virtual theatrical experience The Manic Monologues. In a unique collaboration with director Elena Araoz and a team of designers and interactive web engineers, viewers to the platform will take a trip through the minds and personal stories of diverse individuals who have something to say about the way mental health has affected their lives. Audiences will be able to engage, at their own pace, with 21 uniquely filmed performances.
RECENT
ISDP HONORED as a Gold Award Winner from NASPA Excellence Awards
Innovations in Socially Distant Performance’s virtual production of The Manic Monologues, created in partnership with the McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton University Health Services, and The 24 Hour Plays, has won the Gold Award for the 2021-2022 NASPA Excellence Awards in the category of Athletics Recreation Counseling Health Wellness.
ISDP Nominated for drama league award
Innovations in Socially Distant Performance was nominated for the prestigious DRAMA LEAGUE AWARD. ISDP partnered with the McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton University Health Services, and The 24 Hour Plays to create The Manic Monologues, an interactive theatre piece about mental health. The piece was nominated in the category of “Outstanding Digital Theater, Collection or Festival.”
ISDP in the New York Times
The New York Times features Innovations in Socially Distant Performance in Jesse Green’s article “The (Virtual) Theatrical Fringe Moves Front and Center.” Mr. Green discusses the project and ISDP’s collaboration making the virtual production a farm for meme by Virgina Grise: “Virginia Grise’s a farm for meme has the form-busting down. A 20-minute meditation on growth, death and rebirth, it mixes box puppets, shadow play, live film and archival footage into a gorgeous mise-en-scène that feels theatrical in its purposefully homemade aesthetic. Arms are made of red construction paper; flower stems, of measuring tapes...We are going to need those innovations.”
ISDP ARCHIVED BY THE UNITED STATES LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
The website of Innovations in Socially Distant Performance will be archived by The United States Library of Congress. The Coronavirus Web Archive contains select web-based evidence to document the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on every aspect of American life and the many communities within the United States. Through the collection of web content from various sources such as government websites, blogs, scientific studies, artistic multi-media, news, and organizational initiatives, a wide range of Library of Congress subjects are represented. The Library will make this collection available to researchers at Library facilities and by special arrangement, and more broadly by hosting the collection on the Library's public access website.
ISDP ON Ny1 Spectrum News
Spectrum News NY1 features Innovations in Socially Distant Performance and The Manic Monologues in a report about bringing awareness to mental health through virtual theater. Click here to view the news story on the NY1 Spectrum website.
Alice in the pandemic
Elena Araoz directs the world premiere of the virtual opera Alice in the Pandemic by composer Jorge Sosa and creator and librettist Cerise Lim Jacobs. The opera is the first to sync live singers in disparate locations, using CGI animation and facial motion capture. The Library of Congress will acquire Alice in the Pandemic for the Performing Arts COVID-19 Response Collection, stating "This exceptional work embodies the artistic qualities and subject content we are seeking for this special collection."
A Farm For Meme
Innovations in Socially Distant Performance premieres the virtual production of a farm for meme by Virginia Grise, directed by Elena Araoz, and featuring performances by ISDP researchers BT Hayes, Minjae Kim, and Katharine Mathias. A collaboration between ISDP, Cara Mia Theatre, allgo, and a todo dar productions, a farm for meme becomes Howlround Theatre Commons’ most watched production.
“A farm for meme” coloring book and sister gardens project
Innovations in Socially Distant Performance is thrilled for the continued life of Virginia Grise's a farm for meme after our virtual production in August 2020. With the successful distribution of the limited print run of 1,000 coloring books, the piece grows through daily provocations from Grise’s production company, a todo dar productions (@atododarproductions), and leads up to the unveiling of Grise's new Sister Gardens project on March 20, 2021, the spring solstice, which also marks a year of pandemic shutdown. Watch out for more updates on this project over the coming weeks.
Conversation with scott Heller, Theater Editor at The New York Times, and Debbie Bisno, Resident Producer of the Mccarter theater
Elena speaks as a guest for the Community Auditing Program at Princeton University, in conversation with Scott Heller, Theater Editor at The New York Times, and Debbie Bisno, Resident Producer of the McCarter Theatre about virtual theatre and the innovations it will bring to the theatre ecosystem
ISDP At everything immersive’s spring fling
Elena Araoz speaks as part of the "Educating The Next Generation of Makers" salon on the state of education of the immersive/site-specific/experiential for the HERE Summit and Festival, known for "covering big Ideas and celebrating revolutionary work in the Metaverse.”
ISDP at American Lyric Theater's OPERA, TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION seminar and roundtable
Elena Araoz speaks at American Lyric Theater's OPERA, TECHNOLOGY, AND INNOVATION seminar and roundtable. The conversations will "explore some of the most exciting and increasingly accessible tools that are available to opera writers in creating new works, the challenges and opportunities of digital engagement through opera. and activating storytelling through user experience."
Webinar with Docperform
On February 16th, 2021, Elena Araoz spoke about “Internet Theater” for the UK-Based Documenting Performance (DocPerform) project in a conversation chaired by Dr. Joseph Dunne-Howrie from the Department of Library & Information Science, (CityLIS), at City, University of London. Araoz will be in conversation with other scholars about the internet as a performance medium and will develop “new discourses of ‘the digital’ beyond questions of liveness and ephemerality.” Access more information and register for the event here.
Digital and Distanced Advances in the Theater Arts
Innovations in Socially Distant Performance partners with UCLA’s Diversifying the Classics to create Digital and Distanced Advances in the Theater Arts a world-wide open-access list of productions and their innovations for anyone to consult. Read Elena Araoz and Barbara Fuchs’ Howlround Theatre Commons invitation to submit to the list: “whether you are a practitioner, producer, curator, scholar, or simply an interested viewer, we invite you to fill out this survey with whatever information you have about innovative productions you have seen or participated in. Help us spread the word, particularly beyond the United States, so that DDATA can gather the most complete and diverse record of how theatre endures.”
DiVERSIfying the Classics
Virtual Production
Innovations in Socially Distant Performance is commissioned by UCLA’s “Diversifying the Classics” to create a virtual production of a non-British classic. ISDP has chosen Dr. Peter E. Thompson’s translation of the Spanish Golden Age entremés El retrato de Juan Rana to investigate where the classics fit in a digital landscape, what this technology can reveal in the classics, and how clown and comedy work online.
ISDP in American Theatre Magazine
Jerald Raymond Pierce features The Manic Monologues and Innovations in Socially Distant Performance in American Theater magazine. In the article, Elena Araoz considers the importance of the virtual production The Manic Monologues during the pandemic and her process of conceptualizing and creating the experience.
ISDP Partners on swell
Innovations to Socially Distant Performance partners with Melisa Tien on Swell, a live, online song cycle by and about ten composers who identify as immigrants/children of immigrants from countries as wide-ranging as Mexico, India, Israel, Japan, Trinidad, the Philippines, Russia, and Taiwan. Thirty artists are collaborating on this music-theater project, which will be presented by HERE March 17-21, with on-demand viewing available for 60 days after the live run. The program is accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing community via captions and ASL interpretation.
ISDP AT THE MLA 2021 Convention
Elena Araoz speaks at the MLA Conference on Friday, January 8th from 5:15-6:30pm EST for a discussion about the innovations and resiliency of theater and theater professionals during the pandemic.
ORchard Project’s
Greenhouse Lab
Elena Araoz speaks to Orchard Project's Greenhouse Lab about a virtual theatremaking practice.
Wingspace salon’s “Performance during social distancing”
Elena Araoz speaks to Wingspace Salon “Performance During Social Distancing,” alongside Virgina Grise, Kristin Marting, Kamala Sankaram, Joshua William Gelb, and Katie Rose McLaughlin.
Conversations with a Theater Maker at Princeton University
The researchers of Innovations in Socially Distant Performance speak at Princeton University’s “Conversation with a Theatre Maker” about the research project.
“Sonic Vanguard” speaker series at mount holyoke
Elena Araoz speaks for Tian Hui Ng’s speaker series "Sonic Vanguard" at Mount Holyoke about latest practices in diverse corners of the musical world.
“Teach in” at Fordham university
Elena Araoz speaks alongside playwright Virginia Grise to the theatre program at Fordham University’s “Teach In” about the making of a farm for meme.
Conversation at
NYU Tisch
Elena Araoz speaks with Mia Rovegno’s class at NYU Tisch School of the Arts about how how virtual performance is site-specific work, and how virtual and socially distant performance can allow greater access and equity for audiences and artists.
Panel at
Brooklyn college
Elena Araoz speaks on the panel "Performing Arts in the Time of COVID – What do we do now? How can we prepare for the future?" alongside Director of Institutional Giving at City Center Heather Gallagher and agent and producer Ron DeStefano for Leah Keith's "Artistic/Managerial Decision Making in the Arts" class at Brooklyn College MFA in Performing Arts Management.
ISDP Launch
Innovations in Socially Distant Performance is launched with support by Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts in June, 2020.