I had the opportunity last week to help Cara with her dramatic reading of Act 5 Scene 1 from the Tempest. She wanted to integrate a digital mediation in the performance so we read the play via Skype and the class listened in. I think that it was an interesting experience. There were several technological difficulties, but in the end I think that it was cool. The students would have had a unique time because they only heard the play, they couldn’t see us reading it, and there were no physical actors. It would be like “watching” a youtube video with your monitor turned off. So the experience was completely linguistic. This meant that the feeling designed by the syntax and the flow of dialogue completely controlled the performance, and when someone forgot a line or took too long a different cast member had to step in because the flow was essential to keeping the tone and “realism” of the play alive.
I think that it was entertaining, and was a good way of getting into the text maybe even more, because stage fright was extremely minimized. If I had the time I think it would be great to do more analysis of this maybe looking back at radio performances done prior to the “video killed the radio stars” era. Thanks for the opportunity Cara.
