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[Commlist] CfP: Volume on Theatre and Gaming

Wed Jul 06 16:04:58 GMT 2022





*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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