Constructing New Narrative Corridors
In this talk, playwright and Creative Director Sharon Clark will discuss how she harnesses creative technologies and mixed realities in the curation of female-led narratives that weave historical fact with fiction. Her immersive theatre company, Raucous, investigates how stories can bleed out of theater walls to inhabit surprising and compelling spaces such as a kitchen table in the audience member’s home. In light of the pandemic, the gaze of these explorations has focused on how artists can rethink and relocate their usual modes of delivering immersive, theatrical experiences where narrative is sewn into the fabric of the audience journey. Clark will also discuss how theatre makers can design digital auditoria that imbues a sense of liveness, accessibility and communion for an audience.
Sharon Clark is a playwright and Creative Director of Raucous, a UK-based, female-led, immersive theatre company that fuses performance, music, film, AR, AI, and creative technologies. In 2017, she was awarded a Bruntwood Judge’s Prize for playwriting, and her plays have been shortlisted for the Yale Drama Prize and the PapaTango Prize. She is a resident at Bristol’s Pervasive Media Studio and senior lecturer at the University of the West of England. In 2018, she was awarded a Fellowship with the South West Creative Technology Network exploring advancements in immersion and performance, and in 2019 she was made a Royal Shakespeare Company/Magic Leap Digital Fellow. Most recently in 2020, she became a fellow as part of the Bristol+Bath Digital Clusters, researching models of expanded performance.
Our lecture series is made possible by generous support from the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, and MIT Transmedia Storytelling Initiative.
