Innovations in Socially Distant Performance is a research project led by theatre and opera director Elena Araoz and is housed at Princeton University where she is a faculty member. The project is generously supported by Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts and Princeton’s University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Home page: Puppet Flowers grow in Cyberspace
Current: Sowing Cyber Seeds both by Katharine Matthias
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, an entire artistic field pivoted to develop new methods of live performance. “Live” and “in-person” connection between performer and audience is a core value often cited to distinguish live performance from film, television, and other recorded media. Such forms of socially distant performance are not new - but suddenly they became the only option.
When creating live virtual theatre, we are making site-specific work within a virtual venue. Performers are forced back behind the proscenium arch of the computer screen and, most often, are stuck in a two-dimensional landscape. When we make in-person socially distant theatre, we wrestle with collaboration and connection within unique spatial relationships.
Innovations in Socially Distant Performance explores how live performance makers adapted in this time of isolation and how their work continues to innovate the arts as we slowly begin to gather again. The Library of Congress is archiving our project for “The Coronavirus Web Archive” which documents the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on every aspect of American life.
As practitioners in the field, our virtual production partnerships with theatres and producers become laboratories for experimentation. Innovations in Socially Distant Performance was honored with a 2021 Drama League Award nomination for its virtual experience The Manic Monologues produced by McCarter Theatre Center. The New York Times dubbed Innovations in Socially Distant Performance as “form-busting” for our artistic collaboration on the virtual production of Virginia Grise’s a farm for meme and praised the unique combination of “box puppets, shadow play, live film and archival footage into a gorgeous mise-en-scène that feels theatrical in its purposefully homemade aesthetic.” By making live performance alongside our scholarship, we are actively learning by doing.
We are proud to partner with UCLA’s “Diversifying the Classics” to launch “Digital and Distanced Advances in the Theater Arts,” a world-wide open-access list of productions and their innovations for anyone to consult.
ISDP’s 2022 Team
ELENA ARAOZ
Elena Araoz is a stage director of theater and opera, as well as a writer, choreographer, and performer. She works internationally, Off-Broadway, and across the country. She is a faculty member in the Program in Theatre at Princeton University. This summer, she will direct the live virtual CGI and motion capture opera Alice in the Pandemic (White Snake Projects) and a virtual production of Virginia Grise’s a farm for meme (Cara Mia Theatre). In this time before her currently postponed productions return to their stages, this research project is fueled by Elena’s passion for innovation in the theatre. She is particularly interested in developing systems to redistribute resources and opportunities within the field and democratize theatre making and consumption. She also hopes that this research will unlock new structures of storytelling for her. Elena holds her MFA in acting from the University of Texas at Austin. www.elenaaraoz.com
KATHARINE Matthias
Katharine Matthias (she/her) is a writer, director, and scholar interested in dissolving the boundaries between artistic disciplines. She is passionate about finding a sense of play in her work. She has recently worked on White Snake Project’s A Survivor’s Odyssey, McCarter Theatre Center’s The Manic Monologues (Drama League Nomination), Virginia Grise’s a farm for meme, and NBC’s broadcast of the Tokyo Olympics. She co-wrote the article “Puppeteering Liveness: Reimagining Theatre for a Virtual Space,” published in the August 2021 edition of the academic journal Theatre Topics. Additionally, she has worked as a director, playwright, performer, and designer for dozens of projects at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts. She currently works in Film and TV Development at an independent production company based in New York and London. She is a recent graduate from Princeton University with a degree in Comparative Literature and a certificate in Theater.
Eliyana Abraham
Eliyana Abraham is a junior at Princeton University studying Neuroscience with certificate studies in Theater and Music Theater. Eliyana views theatre-making through a lens of process over product. She creates projects that lead with cultural inquiry and engage critically with history through modern lenses of queerness and anti-racism. She seeks to overcome the impossible challenge of making theatre that transcends time and place, while being connected to the here and now. Eliyana’s studies in Neuroscience underscore her theatrical work as she aims to understand the intersection between cognition and art-making and the ways that art-making can shape neural development. She works as a director, performer, producer, movement-maker, educator, and sound designer. Her recent productions at the Lewis Center for the Arts include directing the original work Vestalia by Lydia Gompper, performing as Lia in the original work Lia by Meigan Clark, performing as a contortionist in Take Care: Collective Circus Project, and performing as Setsuko Banks in Velina Hasu Houston's Tea. Eliyana is the child of immigrants from Urumqi in Xinjiang, China, and she speaks Uyghur and French.
ISDP’s ALUMNI
Miranda Allegar
Miranda Allegar is a rising senior at Princeton University, based out of Houston, Texas. She is majoring in the School of Public and International Affairs with minors in Theater and Cognitive Science. Miranda views theater-making through the lens of community and service to both the self and others. She is deeply interested in intersections – of culture, of identities, and of disciplines, focused on the impact of communication and language on interpersonal connection, and delighting in the synchronicity between her seemingly-disparate fields of interest. Miranda has worked as an actor and community coordinator for projects at the Lewis Center for the Arts (LCA) and spent the summer of 2019 in the Public Works department of New York’s Public Theater, assisting in the world premiere of the stage adaptation pageant of Disney’s Hercules. This fall, she will act in and serve as dramaturg for a production of The Wolves at the LCA alongside Katharine Matthias. She is interested in exploring the power of theater in community-building, especially across the boundaries of space, time, and lived experiences.
BT Hayes
BT Hayes is a rising junior from Pittsburgh, PA majoring in Comparative Literature. She enjoys performing, directing, designing, and writing work, especially when it involves comedy, science fiction, translation, and the absurd. This summer, she received support from Princeton’s Program in Translation and Intercultural Communications to translate between English and Spanish for Alejandro Ricaño’s play El amor de las luciérnagas and Charles Mee’s Big Love. She also is learning German, Portuguese, and Modern Greek, often experimenting with the interplay between languages. A firm believer that accessible, equitable theatre is a crucial space for protest, community, and possibility, she is excited to explore the boundaries of theatre’s structure, definition, relevance, and purpose.
Minjae Kim
Minjae Kim was born in Taiwan, born Korean, and sworn in Canadian. He currently lives in Toronto and is a rising senior at Princeton pursuing a major in English and a certificate in Theater. He enjoys working with the many different facets of theater-making, some of his favorite projects being sound designing Machinal, acting in Sister Mok-rahn, and set designing Intimate Apparel. In the upcoming school year, he is planning on writing and directing Korean Play, exploring the distance within a family, further exacerbated by generational and cultural divides. He is invested in bringing his experiences to the room, and as an Asian theater maker, is interested in developing works of underrepresented voices and the integration and normalization of Asian content into mainstream media. On this project, he designed this website and continues to do research on new theater productions.
Reed Leventis
Reed Leventis is a rising junior at Princeton University and is currently based in Washington D.C. He is majoring in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology with minors in Global Health and Theater. He particularly enjoys working in the design and technical aspects of theater. Reed is an active designer at the Lewis Center for the Arts (LCA) with past projects including lighting design for Macbeth, set design for Mother Courage, and lighting design for Twelfth Night. Reed has a specific interest in the intersection of medicine and the arts. Currently, he is working on an art installation that details disparities in medical care access through the stories of underserved individuals and the professionals who work to improve the healthcare system from within it. He is also fluent in Spanish, and hopes to promote the decentralization of the English language within the American theater canon. Reed is a staunch supporter of utilizing theater for advocacy to positively influence current public policy and to reflect and shape today's social climate.
KATE SEMMENS
Kate Semmens is a junior from Brooklyn, NY, studying History with minors in Music Theater, Theater, and American Studies. Kate’s academic research looks at the intersection of history, women’s studies, religion, and American culture. She brings her specific interests in the women’s suffrage movement, Broadway, and Hollywood of the 1920s to her theater-making. Kate is primarily a director, movement maker, actor, and producer. Some of her favorite recent projects include devising and directing through the 2020 Hangar Theatre Lab Company, acting in A Little Night Music, and producing and acting in the Princeton Triangle Club’s virtually filmed movie-musical All Underdogs Go to Heaven. Kate works to create theatre that builds community, encourages people to step out of their comfort zone, breaks down theatrical expectations, engages directly with the audience, and embraces interdisciplinary performance and design.