A Room Inside a Room Inside a Room: Metamedium in Digital Performance

Abstract

Through the case study of multimedia solo performance Can You Help Me Decipher Barbara Walters’ Handwriting? (I think she was having an affair with my grandfather) I explore how the incorporation of digital elements within performance can be used to comment on themselves and the politics embedded within them. Drawing from Marshall McLuhan’s Medium is the Massage, This paper posits that meta medium is a marker of digital theatricality through its inherent self awareness, and compares and contrasts the influence of the digital within traditional theatre and solo performance structures and processes.