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Digital Skriker: New Directions for Archival Practices and Performance

Digital Skriker explores both the theoretical cruxes and archival possibilities enabled by robust and increasingly accessible motion capture and virtual reality technologies using Caryl Churchill’s play, The Skriker (1994) as a case study. Kelli Shermeyer, a doctoral candidate in UVA's English department, is interested in not only in how these technologies might change the way we think about documenting stage movement and gesture, but also how they may be used to create modes of (posthuman?) performance. 

Digital Skriker is a project and adaptation of themes and subjects explored in her dissertation, “‘Less-than-Human’ Tragedy?: Ecologies of Suffering in Contemporary Tragic Drama” which uncovers shared ground between tragedy and theories of the posthuman with respect to particular questions about agency and human futures. What entities are at work in the world and what kind of agency do they possess? What are the possible futures that arise from collisions between disparate human and nonhuman entities? What, if anything, can be done to arrest the deterioration of our environment, and what will it cost? The project focuses on the role that children, animals, and natural forces play in works by Caryl Churchill, Martin McDonagh, Wole Soyinka, Marina Carr, Peter Shaffer, Edward Albee, and Sarah Kane. 

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