Partners: Human and Nonhuman Performers and Interactive Narrative in Postdigital Theater

Media performance scholarship has largely not engaged with innovative work in the incorporation of technology in mainstream theater, pursuing instead a nearly exclusive focus on non-narrative works of media performance such as electronic music, dance, and installation art. This article provides a corrective to this absence, and highlights creative work from the 19th century onward with technologies in service of interactive storytelling in theater. Cornerstone concepts in the media performance field are examined, as well as possible anxieties behind the relative exclusion of narrative theater from the field. The concept of partnership is put forth as a way of understanding human and non-human performer relationships in postdigital culture, and a call for collaboration across disciplines including interactive narrative, games, electronic literature, artificial intelligence, and architecture is discussed. The practice-theory divide is bridged with a closing discussion of the author’s work in creative practice in the field.