Karaoke Theatre: Channelling Mediated Lives

TY - JOUR

T1 - Karaoke Theatre: Channelling Mediated Lives

AU - Parker-Starbuck, Jennifer

PY - 2017/11/3

Y1 - 2017/11/3

N2 - This essay suggests that a proliferation of headphones appearing in performance contributes to what the author is playfully calling a ‘karaoke theatre,’ pointing to a channeling of others, allowing them to reverberate alongside the bodies on stage, and creating new modes of storytelling to better understand this historical digitized moment. As seen through case studies of The Wooster Group’s Early Shaker Spirituals, Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble’s (ROKE) The Art of Luv, (Part I), and Daniel Fish’s A (Radically Condensed and Expanded) Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (After David Foster Wallace), karaoke theatre uses the idea of “channelling through” forms of digital and networked media. It speaks to a reliance on technologies (from LPs to YouTube) to reactivate a story or stories, real or fictitious, it foregrounds a non-virtuosic turn in both life and performance, and it contains within it a desire to circle or loop back to, and bring to the fore, traces of past events and people.© 2017, Taylor and Francis. The attached document (embargoed until 03/05/2019) is an author produced version of a paper published in Contemporary Theatre Review, uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. The final published version (version of record) is available online at the link below. Some minor differences between this version and the final published version may remain. We suggest you refer to the final published version should you wish to cite from it.

AB - This essay suggests that a proliferation of headphones appearing in performance contributes to what the author is playfully calling a ‘karaoke theatre,’ pointing to a channeling of others, allowing them to reverberate alongside the bodies on stage, and creating new modes of storytelling to better understand this historical digitized moment. As seen through case studies of The Wooster Group’s Early Shaker Spirituals, Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble’s (ROKE) The Art of Luv, (Part I), and Daniel Fish’s A (Radically Condensed and Expanded) Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (After David Foster Wallace), karaoke theatre uses the idea of “channelling through” forms of digital and networked media. It speaks to a reliance on technologies (from LPs to YouTube) to reactivate a story or stories, real or fictitious, it foregrounds a non-virtuosic turn in both life and performance, and it contains within it a desire to circle or loop back to, and bring to the fore, traces of past events and people.© 2017, Taylor and Francis. The attached document (embargoed until 03/05/2019) is an author produced version of a paper published in Contemporary Theatre Review, uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. The final published version (version of record) is available online at the link below. Some minor differences between this version and the final published version may remain. We suggest you refer to the final published version should you wish to cite from it.

U2 - 10.1080/10486801.2017.1343243

DO - 10.1080/10486801.2017.1343243

M3 - Article

SN - 1048-6801

JO - Contemporary Theatre Review

JF - Contemporary Theatre Review

ER -