Reviewed by:

• Drama and Digital Arts Cultures by David Cameron, Michael Anderson and Rebecca Wotzko
• Alicia Corts

David Cameron, Michael Anderson, and Rebecca Wotzko have taken on an honorable task: linking digital spaces of performance and pedagogy to the art and practice of theatre. While there are some places where this volume could improve in terms of its link between research and practice, it serves as an excellent resource for theatre pedagogues looking for ways of connecting research and pedagogy in virtual spaces.

Writing about digital spaces is fraught with the danger of being outpaced by technology: as soon as you write about a virtual space, it is replaced with new technology that renders the previous one obsolete. The authors cleverly sidestep this issue by focusing on forms of virtual spaces and the theory that drives performance within those spaces, allowing readers to make their own connections between whatever updated version of the digital space is available. That focus on theory does not mean that the authors ignore contemporary apps that illustrate the theories, but it does mean that even outdated apps point to further spaces. In their chapter, “Playable Cities,” for example, the authors use Pokémon Go as the example app. While popular in 2017 when the book was published, the app has noticeably struggled since the book hit the shelves, losing 80 percent of its players by 2021.¹ The app is even used in scholarship as an example of how not to rely upon augmented reality when planning a virtual performance. The authors, however, use the app as an example of the way augmented reality calls us to play and activate our creativity, which they then map onto possible effects that performance within cityscapes can have through augmented reality. The conceit is clever: by using apps of their contemporary moment that are discussed solely in terms of the theoretical workings of the app, even outdated applications manage to seem fresh and relevant sources of inspiration for future performance.

The chapters cover a variety of theoretical topics: intermediality in arts and education, the intersection of those two disciplines, and digital creativity as it applies to devised theatre, archives, coding, augmented reality, and research. Two areas in particular offer exceptional research into the intersection of drama and digital cultures: the framework for considering drama within digital cultures and the chapter on the future of digital performance. They state that they created the framework to acknowledge the ways people have “adopted alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and creative discovery in both real and virtual spaces” (24), and, more specifically, to address the up-and-coming performers and scholars investigating the intersection of intermediality and performance.

In their framework, one of the more ambitious areas of the book, the authors attempt to categorize ways that performers and educators can consider intermediality, virtuality, and digitization for the classroom and performance. They offer four lenses to examine digital performance: creativity, performance, playfulness, and digital liveness. Of these four, the use of playfulness seems the most innovative and unexpected. While certainly not a new concept, the authors break the theoretical idea of play into seven categories that carefully dissects the usefulness of the concept. These seven categories— play as progress, fate, power, identity, imaginary, the self, and frivolous—help to categorize activities both in the theatre classroom and in performance. The most powerful example of this categorization is [End Page 405] in the discussion of identity and identity play. The digital body is a rich field of scholarship and performance, and the examples ranging from World of Warcraft to the Beowolf Sidney Project demonstrate the nuances of the theoretical arguments.

In the last chapter on the future of intermedial performance, the authors’ connection between theory and practice shows itself in its best light. While not denying the topical nature of the volume, the authors weave an almost timeless understanding of how digital performance can be a boon to both educators and practitioners. The chapter deftly interrogates years of research to demonstrate how digital performance enhances even the most minor of activities...

审核人：

• David Cameron、Michael Anderson 和 Rebecca Wotzko 的戏剧和数字艺术文化
• 艾丽西亚·科尔茨

David Cameron、Michael Anderson 和 Rebecca Wotzko 承担了一项光荣的任务：将表演和教学的数字空间与戏剧艺术和实践联系起来。虽然这本书在研究和实践之间的联系方面可以改进一些地方，但它是戏剧教育家寻找在虚拟空间中连接研究和教学的方法的极好资源。

写关于数字空间的文章充满了被技术超越的危险：一旦你写了一个虚拟空间，它就会被新技术所取代，从而使之前的空间变得过时。作者巧妙地回避了这个问题，专注于虚拟空间的形式和驱动这些空间性能的理论，允许读者在可用的任何更新版本的数字空间之间建立自己的联系。对理论的关注并不意味着作者忽略了说明理论的当代应用程序，但这确实意味着即使是过时的应用程序也指向更远的空间。例如，在他们的“可玩城市”一章中，作者使用 Pokémon Go 作为示例应用程序。虽然该书在 2017 年出版时很受欢迎，但自从这本书上架以来，该应用程序明显陷入困境，¹该应用程序甚至在学术研究中被用作在规划虚拟表演时如何不依赖增强现实的示例。然而，作者使用该应用程序作为增强现实召唤我们发挥和激活我们的创造力的方式的一个例子，然后他们将其映射到城市景观中的表现可能通过增强现实产生的影响。这个自负很聪明：通过使用仅根据应用程序的理论工作原理讨论的当代应用程序，即使是过时的应用程序也能成为未来性能的新鲜和相关灵感来源。

这些章节涵盖了各种理论主题：艺术和教育的中介性、这两个学科的交叉以及应用于设计剧院、档案、编码、增强现实和研究的数字创造力。特别是两个领域对戏剧和数字文化的交集提供了卓越的研究：在数字文化中考虑戏剧的框架和关于数字表演未来的章节。他们表示，他们创建的框架是为了承认人们“采用替代身份以在真实和虚拟空间中进行即兴创作和创造性发现”的方式（24），更具体地说，是为了应对崭露头角的表演者和学者研究中介性和绩效的交叉点。

在他们的框架中，这是本书更雄心勃勃的领域之一，作者试图对表演者和教育工作者考虑课堂和表演的中介性、虚拟性和数字化的方式进行分类。他们提供了四个镜头来检查数字性能：创造力、性能、趣味性和数字活性。在这四个中，玩味的使用似乎是最具创新性和意想不到的。虽然肯定不是一个新概念，但作者将游戏的理论概念分为七个类别，仔细剖析了该概念的有用性。这七个类别——作为进步、命运、权力、身份、想象、自我和轻浮的表演——有助于对戏剧课堂和表演中的活动进行分类。这种分类最有力的例子是[End Page 405]在讨论身份和身份发挥。数字身体是一个学术和表演的丰富领域，从魔兽世界到 Beowolf Sidney 项目的例子展示了理论论证的细微差别。

在关于中间表演的未来的最后一章中，作者将理论与实践之间的联系展现得淋漓尽致。虽然不否认这本书的主题性，但作者对数字性能如何为教育者和从业者带来福音的理解几乎是永恒的。本章巧妙地询问了多年的研究，以展示数字性能如何增强即使是最轻微的活动......