[Commlist] CfP: Volume on Theatre and Gaming

*Call for Papers
Collective Volume*
Digital Games and/asTheatre: Retooling Entertainment, Art,Learning

The histories of gaming and theatre figure rich connections dating to 
the early-modern
period.According to Gina Bloom’sGaming the Stage(2018),theatre was 
established
in theentertainment market, in the first place,largely due to thesimilar 
experiences of
attending a play and playing a game.Moreover,theposition thatgames can be
approached and studied astheatrical media andtheatre “as an interactive 
gaming
technology”is being supported by ludologist and game studies scholars 
such as Johan
Huizinga in his seminal workHomo Ludens(1938) and Sara Lynne Bowman inThe
Functions of Role-PlayingGames(2010).

Both gameplay and theatreplay have taken a decisive digital turn in the 
past decades.
However,the advent of the digital revolution shifted the terrains of 
gaming more
radically than those of theatre.It certainlyaffected the theatre as art, 
craft, industry,
and the sweep of applied theatre, and it also gave rise to forms of 
theatre native or
adapted to the digital environment that now fall under the rubric of 
“digital theatre.”

Still, generally speaking, the basics of theatre (especially mainstream 
theatre), namely
its aesthetics, politics, and ethics, have not so far undergone any radical
transformation owing to the integration of digital technology into the 
theatre praxis.
The case is different with games. Digital games’ prevalence over analog 
games in the
last decades, and the proliferation of the former, have had a deep 
impact on the
design, production, distribution, and reception of games as loci of 
sociality and
socializing, as well as on their uses beyondthe entertainment industry, 
in education,
and in the intersection of games and the arts (Quandt and Kröger 2014; 
Dillon 2020).
Digital gaming signals a dramatic change in the ontology and epistemology of
gaming: what games are, what they do, and how we make meaning out 
of/with them.
Ubiquitous and technologically forward-facing,digital gaming is not 
simply an
intrinsic part of convergent media culture in contemporary societies, as 
game scholars
Johannes Fromme and Alexander Unger have argued (2012); rather,it has 
emerged as
one of the major actors therein. This could partially explain 
whycontemporarytheatre
has turned to digital gaming in search of tools and to engage new audiences.

Whilethe mutual feed between games and theatre was already there,it 
maybe that
the unique qualities of the digital (flexibility, mutability, openness, 
generativity, etc.)
favored a more pronounced interrelation between digital games and 
theatre in recent
years, in theory and practice.Additionally,the dawn of the performance 
studies
paradigm has also fortified the said interrelation by pulling 
thespotlight from
traditional theatre scholarship toward an expansiveunderstandingof 
performance and
an interdisciplinary multiplicity of entry points forperformance 
analysis.Importantly,
the connectionbetween theatre and gamingis present in the very founding 
of the field
of performance studies.Seminal texts that essentially instituted the 
field of
performance studiesclearly establish that connectionat least as 
potentiality.
But in the nascent field of game studies too,asClaraFernándezVarahas showed,
“[d]ramatic models have been repeatedly invoked to study virtual 
environments, . . .
in game design,[and]to refer to different strategies to create 
uncertainty and tension in gameplay.”

The way performance is currently defined corresponds towhat people
experience when engaged in digital gameplay.FernándezVara hasexpounded 
on this
issuein a2009article that delivers a theatre-based performance framework for
understanding digital games, and Massively Multiplayer Online 
Role-Playing Games
in particular(MMORPGsfor short), as software and as gameplay.Without 
equating
theatrical performanceand digital gaming, the 
scholarrendersourgraspofboth and
of theirrelationshipwith more nuance.This is also the approach that the 
present
volume adopts.

Among otherthings, this volumeseeks to probe into the question of why 
there are
good reasons for theatre to be chosen asone of thebasic reference 
modelsto study
digital games (including MMORPGs).More generally, it sets about to explore
affinities and intersections between theatre—analogue, digital, or 
mixed—and digital
gamesof various kinds, as well as the benefits that 
thetheatre-digitalgamesalliance
entailsfor both sides of the hyphen,andfor the social domains of 
entertainment, art,
and learning in which both are involved and which both affect.
We are looking for paperswhichare theoretically informed andwell-groundedin
relevant research, irrespectiveof whether the said research falls within 
the field of
game studies, theatre studies, cultural studies, popular culture 
studies, etc.We
welcome papers thatengage withboth theatre and digital 
gamesandarewritten in a
compellingand accessible prose.The lengthof each papershould not exceed 
6,000
words, including bibliography.Authors should follow the format and 
citation style of
MLA guide, 9thedition.All submissions will undergo peer review.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):
▪Connections between theatre and games from the past to the present
▪Digital games as theatrical media
▪Theatrical performances in digital gameplay
▪Theatre asareference model to studyMMORPGs
▪Theatre as gaming technology
▪The tools of digital gaming incontemporarytheatre
▪Digital (or mixedmode) theatre and digitalgames
▪Digital gaming and gameplay in applied theatrecontexts
▪Actual and potential benefits of the theatre-digital games alliance
▪The implications of thetheatre-digital games alliance for the entertainment
industry
▪The implications of the theatre-digital games alliance for the realm of 
the arts
▪The implications of the theatre-digital games alliance for education
▪DigitallyenrichedLive Action Role-Playing Games (LARPs)
▪The theatrical dimension of serious playtuned to the digitalmode

Timeline
Please send awell-developed abstract of 300–500 wordsanda biographical 
note of
150–200 wordstoDr. AikateriniDelikonstantinidou((aikaterini /at/ enl.auth.gr) 
<mailto:(terini /at/ enl.auth.gr)>)and Dr.
Dimitra Nikolaidou((d.nicolaidou /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(d.nicolaidou /at/ gmail.com)>)byNovember30, 2022. The abstract
should state clearly the author’s thesis,outline the author’s 
theoretical framework,
briefly describe the research method and/or design,and identify the aims 
of the work.
Your proposal should alsoinclude3–5 keywords and selectedbibliography.
Formal invitation to contribute to the volume byDecember31, 2022.
Deadline for the submission of the book chapter,April30,2023.
Projected date of publicationand publisher:TBA.

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