OPEN ONLINE THEATRE FESTIVAL 2021
presents an exciting mix of new performance and panel discussions
at the vital intersections of performing arts and the digital
openonlinetheatre.org | facebook.com/OpenOnlineTheatre
DISCOVER: New artists making work for the digital realm
EXPERIENCE: Sensography - work created for up to 4 live streaming cameras
IMAGINE: Get involved in future-focused discussions with cutting edge thinkers at the intersections of performing arts and the digital
IJAD Dance Company launches its 2021 live-streamed Open Online Theatre (OOT) Festival featuring new pieces by performing artists making work specifically for live-streaming using up to four cameras. As part of IJAD Dance Company’s Open Online Theatre (OOT) programme, Clemence Debaig, Daisy Harrison, Lauren Tucker, Reem Naamani and O. Pen Be present performances reflecting their experiences of 2020 in 4 regions of the UK and also Lebanon. Through December and January, they will be developing their work via online co-creation sessions on the Open Online Theatre platform. The Festival is also hosting four Connective Matrix panel discussions featuring artists, technologists and researchers at the cutting edge of performing arts and the digital. Audiences can ask questions via live chat and together imagine the best and most exciting future possibilities. Open Online Theatre Festival is on Monday 1 to Saturday 6 February 2021 and tickets for individual performances, talks, or for the whole festival can be purchased here: https://openonlinetheatre.org/
Exploring the intersection of science, movement and technology, and collaborating with specialists and communities to create work for all, Open Online Theatre (OOT) enables artists to reach audiences that they otherwise wouldn’t, including curators and programmers, because of venue capacity, accessibility or geography. Open Online Theatre’s was created to ensure that our creativity, physicality and artistry, coupled with the use of technology, continues to evolve. Its principal aim is to future-proof the arts sector as a driving force for forward- thinking artists to explore new performing possibilities and new ways to connect with audiences across the world. OOT allows IJAD and other arts companies and organisations to develop a new and dynamic relationship with their online audiences, supporting the continued development of the performing arts infrastructure.
Joumana Mourad, founder of IJAD & Open Online Theatre, said: When we talk about technology, we don’t often think of creativity and play, new performing experiences, connectivity and its many possibilities. Instead we move into the realm of business and scientific exploration. But creativity opens us up to new possibilities; it allows us to explore the world around us in a different way. To develop new technology that will help us create the best performing arts experiences, we need to remember the way we played as children, experimenting with wonder and curiosity. If we are going to succeed in creating engaging performances for this new digital realm, we need to combine new strategies: creativity, the correct tech, time for R&D, and audiences. Bringing these components together is the challenge, but it’s part of the same journey of possibility. Coupled with digital expertise, Sensography allows artists to create explicitly for live-streamed performances, varying from one to a multitude of cameras that give our online audiences a better viewing experience.
Open Online Theatre programme provides entrepreneurial guidance to artists including how to grow and promote their practice through commissions, workshops, performances, installations, and research into tech products, to create better viewing experiences. The OOT training includes Sensography, a 360° live-streaming choreography and dramaturgy technique pioneered by IJAD director Joumana Mourad, as well as social media engagement and entrepreneurship. After an expected, but sudden rush to use digital platforms earlier in the year, it became clear that this area was, and still is, seriously underdeveloped. Open Online Theatre has been operating as a live-streaming and co-creation platform, and offering artist development since 2017, with the aim of support performing artists to enjoy long and sustainable careers.
Founder and Artistic Director of dance company IJAD and performance training platform Open Online Theatre, Joumana Mourad is a choreographer and sensographer with over 20 years’ experience in dance and performance across the world.
Joumana researched with Astrophysicist Professor Andrew Newsam, and Neuroscientist Professor Ian Loram for the development of Sensography. She embraces digital technologies in dance, creating performances presented on three different yet interlinked stages (physical, digital-stream and digital-social) to create meaningful worldwide conversations, before, during and after a performance. From working with 45 performers in Taiwan to engaging audiences across four continents with their live-streamed performances across Open Online theatre, IJAD embraces unconventional spaces and new formats.
‘Mourad has since gone on to be one of the most intriguing figures on the British dance scene, challenges the very nature of what you think a dance performance will look like.’ Keith Watson, Metro
Open Online Theatre Festival 2021 is possible thanks to an emergency grant from Arts Council England which enabled the company to begin training and enabling artists to create and develop new performance works using technology.
DATES & TIMES
PERFORMANCES
Friday 5 February
19:00 Clémence Debaig, Remote Intimacy
19:40 Lauren Tucker, Alexa
20:20 Daisy Harrison, Flying/Falling
Saturday 6 February
18:20 Reem Naamani, The Loop-hole:الثغرة
19:00 Clémence Debaig, Remote Intimacy
19:40 O.Pen.Be, Touch Outlaws
PANEL DISCUSSIONS – please see website for full details
Monday 1 & Tuesday 2 February, 14:00-15:00
Wednesday 3 February, 14:00-15:00 & 15:30-16:30
TICKETS
All performances ticket – 5 & 6 February
Performance day ticket – 5 OR 6 February £15
Individual panel discussion tickets
*Your generous donation can help us keep on supporting our creative community by allowing us to carry out our training programme, maintain our online platform, extending our research into new ways of working online and, most importantly, pay everyone working with us a fair fee for their time and commitment. If you would like to add a donation, please follow this link openonlinetheatre.org/donate/
PERFORMANCES
CLÉMENCE DEBAIG, REMOTE INTIMACY – Fri 5 & Sat 6 February, 19:00
Via wearable technology, Clémence explores what intimacy means to us, especially when physical presence is not possible. How can we keep or develop relationships? How can we recreate the feeling of physical touch? Follow the journey and struggles of two protagonists on their quest to reconnect from remote locations. Designer, dancer and computational artist Clémence Debaig creates new mechanics to collaborate with the audience while exploring notions of control, harassment and empathy, questioning how human behaviours are changed when using technology as a proxy to interact. Facebook: @clemencedebaigart Twitter: @clemencedebaig_art Instagram: @clemencedebaig_art
LAUREN TUCKER, ALEXA – Fri 5 February, 19:40
With growing awareness of tensions between the human and digital interface during social distancing, Lauren turns to Alexa as collaborator. Can Alexa fill the void of human connection? Is she becoming part of the family? In this piece, Lauren will turn to Alexa for answers. Lauren Tucker’s creative practice includes choreography, making, performing, participatory practice, storytelling and producing, and making work with and for children. Lauren is supported by Merseyside Dance Initiative. Facebook: @tuckshopdancetheatre Twitter: @tuckshopdance Instagram: @tuckshopdancetheatre
DAISY HARRISON, FLYING/FALLING – Fri 5 February, 20:20
Flying/Falling is an immersive performance, exploring the delicate tipping point between flying and falling. Many of us have recently experienced the feeling of the rug being pulled from under our feet. How much ownership do you have over the perception of your experience? Do you choose to fly or fall? Or is the experience out of your hands? Daisy works collaboratively with artists to integrate dance with music, lighting design, projection and film. She is a freelance dance artist based in the South West, creating work as part of Prism Project. She is supported by Dance in Devon. Facebook: @prismprojectexeter Twitter: @prismprojectexe Instagram: @prismprojectexeter
REEM NAAMANI, THE LOOP-HOLE: الثغرة – Sat 6 February, 18:20
A vibrant, dance piece performed by 13 young Lebanese performers, recreating their surreal existence, you will go through a myriad of emotions. Young people under pressure need to let off steam. In Lebanon’s restrictive climate they cheat the rules and find release in nightclubs: rare spaces filled with music and dancing and a taste of how freedom might feel. Reem re-creates the nightclub with her dancers to explore clubbing as release, as political act, as survival. A contemporary and classical ballet dancer based in Lebanon, Reem has danced with acclaimed Arab companies from Syria and Lebanon and is fascinated by contemporary dance using classical elements, bringing together the simplest of stories and the most controversial humanitarian issues. Facebook: @ReemNaamaniOOT Instagram: @naamanireem
O.PEN BE, TOUCH OUTLAWS – Sat 6 February, 19:40
In this experimental movement piece O. Pen Be plays with objects and textures to explore the effects of touch deprivation over months of pandemic restrictions. What happens when your body is seen as a danger to others, and even to yourself? Who is the contaminator? Is there an enemy within or without? Who do we choose to protect, or not? How do we keep our vital and joyful senses of touch alive when it feels so unsafe, for so long? Facebook @O.PenBeLiveArt Instagram @o.pen.be
PANEL DISCUSSIONS
Monday 1 February, 14:00
Panel discussion 1 – WHO OWNS YOUR WORK ONCE IT GOES ONLINE?
I.P. and rights for digitally distributed performance is still a grey area. How can we evolve this to protect artists and creators?
Tuesday 2 February, 14:00
Panel discussion 2 – HOW CAN THE DIGITAL HELP ARTISTS SURVIVE?
Which new models are being developed to help emerging and mid-career artists gain sustainable careers?
Wednesday 3 February, 14:00
Panel discussion 3 – POST-COVID TECH EVOLUTIONS: WHAT’S NEW AND WHAT WILL LAST?
What models have the performing arts explored, developed and refined during the Covid 19 lockdown period? Which adaptations have worked and will serve us going forward? Do we have new methods of best practice?
Wednesday 3 February, 15:30
Panel discussion 4 – LET’S IMAGINE THE FUTURE AND MAKE THINGS HAPPEN
How would you like to see the performing arts and tech sectors co-evolve? What would be the ideal situations for artists, venues and audiences, and how can technology support them? In a perfect world, how will things flow in and between spaces?
ABOUT
IJAD & JOUMANA MOURAD
IJAD has been working at the intersection of dance, science & technology since being commissioned to create a performance for Science Museum’s Lates event in 2013. IJAD’s work has been shown at Liverpool’s FACT, Manchester Science Festival and other venues around the UK and beyond. Through engagement and research, IJAD collaborates with communities to create work that is inclusive and accessible, ranging from work with Iraqi and Syrian refugee women’s groups and young people living on council estates in Haringey & Barnet, to dance programmes for 13-17yo refugee girls. Since 2016 IJAD has engaged with 1,600 workshop participants, 52 artists and over 15k live and virtual audience members across 34 countries. Funded commissions include: Future proof your body - A VR performance (Exeter University, 2019); Celestial Bodies 2018, (ACE-funded); OOT artist pilot, 2017 (ACE-funded); Walk into Space performance on OOT, FACT, 2017 ACE-funded); OOT platform development, 2017 (ACE-funded); Tableau Vivant Nour, Chelsea Theatre, 2015 (Borough of Kensington & Chelsea); HARC, Kings Place, 2014; Late nights at the Science Museum, 2013 (Borough of Kensington & Chelsea).
IJAD strives for work that is collaborative: recognising great things happen when we work together; fluid: adaptable, sensitive, and responsive to change; inclusive: welcoming everyone to be part of our work;
innovative: future-focused, future-driven, a hub for dance within the worlds of science and technology; and
investigative: researching, delving deep to really understand the subject. Art based on facts.
OPEN ONLINE THEATRE
Open Online Theatre principal aim is to future proof our sector. The platform allows IJAD and other arts companies and organisations to develop a new and dynamic relationship with their online audiences, supporting the continued development of the performing arts infrastructure. OOT contribution includes its upskilling programme for new to midscale artists, helping them to learn specific skills for the digital realm; generate income; help their professional development self-confidence and better mental health; reach international audiences; create collaborations and be curated.
CONNECTIVE MATRIX ROUNDTABLE
Connective Matrix roundtable is a series of bi-monthly roundtable discussions run by Joumana Mourad, interrogating the future of performance and technology and how artists can work with developers to create fully integrated solutions to present work digitally to audiences across the world.
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