applied theatre//bio

I work regularly with academic Dr Nicola Abraham.

Our collaboration began as a process of discussion and skill sharing. While we theoretically worked in different areas: I was making interactive theatre, and Dr Abraham was making process dramas, we found our practices had interesting and sometimes surprising points of dialogue. 

We were both making experiences where audiences gather together to undertake some form of ‘adventure’. Audiences are welcomed into a narrative world, where they are given a role, and often have agency to make key decisions within that environment. Audience members work together to solve puzzles or complete a sequence of tasks, and reach an end of the story. In both (and I recognise this is my form of interactive theatre and not all) there is a balance of action and discussion, and the participant or player is central. This is their story. 

Importantly too we were both experimenting with technology in our work, exploring how stories could be told using video games, experimenting with VR and 360 film, considering the broad storytelling capacity of powerpoint (which is significant!).

Our collaboration now is rooted in exploring the possibilities of new tools and mediums within participatory, playful, applied work, and creating experiential pieces together. 

At the core of our explorations is an investigation into how the digital can be used to reimagine our physical reality: how can it change the way time works, change the laws of physics, do magic, create moments of wonder. 

Projects have included a VR video game, and an interactive 360 experience, which was facilitated through a headset and with a live actor. Here physical cues suggested by the headset were used to prompt real life interaction, for example, a spell to produce water given by the headset results in water being poured into your hand in the real world. 

Most recently we have been creating a durational digital escape room exploring time and memory called ‘the disobedience paradox’. 

Dr Nicola Abraham is a Lecturer in Applied Theatre Practices at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. She has most recently been working on a range applied theatre, film and VR projects in NHS hospitals to develop new participant-centred approaches to creating bespoke artefacts include VR 360 videos, intergenerational augmented reality based process dramas with primary school children and older adult patients living with dementia, and films to improve subjective wellbeing of patients in acute dialysis wards. She is currently researching the potential of VR 360 video to create moments of wonder for older adult patients living with dementia.

She has published in Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance (RiDE), Applied Theatre Research, international arts and English Education journals including: TVOŘIVÁ DRAMATIKA: Časopis o dramatické výchově, literatuře a divadle pro děti amládež (Creative Drama: Journal on theatre education, literature and theatre for children and youth), English Teachers Association Switzerland(ETAS), and co-editor of the 2nd Edition of The Applied Theatre Reader (forthcoming, 2020), and Applied Theatre with Urban Youth: Witnessing Change (forthcoming, 2020/2021).