Intermediality is an imperative aspect of performance for many contemporary experimental companies. Its ability to punctuate and convey emotion is too powerful to disregard. Intermediality, transmediality and multimedia are all techniques of theatre performance, especially contemporary performance, which require media within performance but each term defines a different type of usage. When discussing an abstract from Chapple and Kattenbelt’s Intermediality in Theatre and performance, Hadjioannou and Rodosthenous make noteworthy statements in analysing the author’s attempt to explain intermediality by commenting that it’s “the process of merging diverse media in theatre as a power that triggers a reconfiguration of the relationship between performer and audience” (Hadjioannou, 2011, p3). I can only assume that the configuration they are referring to is one that was set by conventional theatre and is still associated with standard theatre today where the characters attempt to perform the story without the help of media. Many artists and theatre practitioners in the Avant Garde have tried to reconfigure this relationship such as Meyerhold and Piscator; Meyerhold “recognized the impact cinema had on drawing an audience away from theatre” (Sheldrake, 2007, p13) and to create spectacle theatre, he argued that theatres must be “cineficated” to meet the demands which have been made necessary by the technological advancements in cinema. Piscator’s use of multimedia, which was highly political and agenda-orientated, was evident in Rasputin (1927) as it involved powerful tactics such as staging “a discussion on the finer points of military strategy in front of a screen showing genuine film clips of a massacre of the Somme” (Mitter, 2005, p43).
Given the apparent omnipresence of intermediality in contemporary performance, we feel it’s necessary to have some aspect of our performance which is aided by the use of media. For that reason, in a section of our show which involves the distortion of taboo words by rearranging their letters and prolonging their vowels in speech, we plan to do the entire section speaking into microphones to impact the significance of our alteration of the words. There is a certain power given to speech once it is empowered by microphones and we feel that a section such as this deserves to wield that power as it’s one of the most important sections in our piece.
We also have a section in our performance which involves the use of music; we have parodied a number of iconic 80’s and 90’s songs by installing taboo words into them in an attempt to decontextualize them. We are going to have karaoke versions of all the songs playing through stereo speakers whilst singing the altered lyrics.
These are the only two characteristics of intermediality that we plan to have in our performance. I feel that with its omnipotent ability it would have been useful to be able to have more intermediality. For instance, it could be effective if we were to interview members of the public about their opinions on these taboo words and topics and have them playing on screens within the space; the audio would be playing through wireless headphones and the audience could have the choice of listening to several opinions on the topics.
Works Cited
Hadjioannou M, Rodosthenous G. In between stage and screen: The intermedial in Katie Mitchell’s… some trace of her. International Journal Of Performance Arts & Digital Media[serial online]. March 2011;7(1):43-59. Available from: International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance with Full Text, Ipswich, MA. Accessed December 10, 2013.
Mitter, Shomit and Maria Shevtsova (2005) Fifty key Theatre Directors, London and New York: Routledge.
Sheldrake, Pauline (2007) Weaving Worlds: Multimedia and Space in Contemporary Theatre, MA: Queensland University of Technology. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16336/1/Pauline_Sheldrake_Thesis.pdf
