I’m delighted to have received a stipendium from Fonds Darstellende Kunst for Devising with Distance, a research, writing and dissemination project that reflects on and consolidates my experiences in creating and performing cyberformance. My stipendium is one tiny drop of the German federal government’s Neustart Kultur rescue package – a generous injection of one billion euros into the arts and culture sector to ensure its survival beyond the Covid19 pandemic.

Through this project I seek to consolidate and reflect on my experiences, and distill methods, lessons and discoveries that may be useful to the theatre and performance artists now beginning to create in the online space. How have I gathered and nurtured distributed ensembles? What devising methods have I used? How can we write scripts for cyberformance? What is the intermedial audience? How do networked conversations function? What platforms and tools are available for cyberformance? I will compile the results of my contemplations into a handbook that directors and artists can refer to in the course of their own work, for ideas and inspiration as well as professional development.

It’s a rare and treasured opportunity to be funded to undertake this kind of reflective process. It’s also very timely, as the work complements and feeds into my work with Mobilise/Demobilise, leading the creative process with Teater InterAkt (Sweden), Schaumbad – Freies Atelierhaus Graz (Austria) and other artists from Europe to New Zealand.

Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.