Messages from social networks displayed on a big screen, a stage devoid of actors, an audience attending a robot’s lecture, spectators gathered at one of their homes with acting instructions….

These examples of recent performances challenge the traditional definition of theatre. After performance and image theatre, documentary forms and creations inspired by relational aesthetics are now shaking up the theatrical experience.

The cycle proposes an exploration of these new dramaturgies based on examples of emblematic creations, which have multiplied since the beginning of this century. Rabih Mroué, Berlin, Rimini Protokoll, Zaven Paré, Kate McIntosh, Arthur Nauzyciel and Marion Siefert, and others, play with the boundaries of theatre and open it up to other artistic and theoretical disciplines (sociology, philosophy, etc.).

Beyond a discussion of disciplinary categories, the aim will be to discover these forms and expand our understanding of contemporary theatre.

The first three sessions of the course will be given by Karolina Svobodova, PhD in Performing Arts and Broadcasting and Communication Techniques from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. She is the author of a thesis on new cultural and urban forms in Belgium in the 1970s and 1980s. She is a member of the editorial board of the magazine Alternatives Théâtrales. She is currently conducting post-doctoral research on scenographic practices in Burkina Faso.

The last session (R)evolutions de quoi – Les arts de la scène et création digitale native d’après la COVID-19 will be directed by Sylvia Botella, dramaturge at the Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, arts critic/chronicler and teacher. She is the winner of the 2017 SACD Prize for her work as a critic. At the same time, Sylvia Botella teaches in the Master in Performing Arts at the Université libre de Bruxelles. She is also a lecturer in current artistic practices at the Institut des Arts de Diffusion (IAD) in Louvain-La-Neuve. Since 2020, she has been sharpening her eye on the post-Covid-19 performing arts, on their capacity to adapt and project: from the public space to digitalisation, from theatrical film to native digital creation, up to the hybridisation of formats and media.

R)evolutions of what – performing arts and native digital creation according to COVID-19. Here, the challenge is to identify the mutations in progress, to be as close as possible to the live performance, its production and its reception. This attention implies taking an interest in recent native digital creations such as Jean Genet’s Splendid’s directed by Arthur Nauzyciel on Zoom at the Festival Fantôme at the Théâtre National de Bretagne or Marion Seifert’s _Jeanne_Dark_ on Instagram and live at the Impact 100% digital Festival at the Théâtre de Liège, in 2020. Rich and stimulating dialogues on the very nature of live performance, on the uses and relationships of spectators to live streaming performance, and on the alliances between arts and technologies.