HOPE! Online Theatre Conference Dives Into Digital Tech Next Week (Q&A)
A chat with conference lead Dirk Neldner of the EU’s PlayOn! Network


The HOPE! Online Conference from the EU-funded theatre network PlayOn! is coming up next week, kicking off on April 4th and running through the 6th.
The conference, which will be streamed free, aims to dive into digital technologies which expand the spaces of theatre and attract new audiences.
We caught up with conference lead Dirk Neldner of the PlayOn! Network via email.
Theatres are experts in storytelling. But their way is usually one-sided: the artists on stage and the audience listening, watching. Only slowly is an understanding developing for new storytelling, for interactive story structures. This is the interface to the game industry and thus to many digital technologies. To reach the audience of tomorrow, theatre must become even more active here. — Dirk Neldner
No Proscenium: For those who haven’t attended previously, who is the target audience for the HOPE! online conference?
Dirk Neldner: We have two target groups that we want to address with our online conference HOPE! Firstly, theatre-makers who want to open up and expand their theatre language and artistic aesthetics with (digital) immersive technologies.
And secondly, digital artists and experts who have mastered these technologies and are perhaps discovering a new medium in live theatre.
NP: Is there a central theme or thesis to this year’s event or, barring that, some key trends emerging?
DN: With our theme this year, “Dive In: Immersive Theatre in expanded spaces,” we explore what theatres can gain when engaging with immersive technology. We have chosen four focus areas, each presented in a panel:
3D Sound and Immersive Music: Spatial sound in virtual reality involves the manipulation of audio signals so they mimic acoustic behavior in the real world. An accurate sonic representation of a virtual world is a very powerful way to create a compelling and immersive experience. What dramaturgical and technical requirements are necessary and where is the spatial sound and immersive music heading?
Tracking and Robotics. Tracking systems have been used in theatre for some time, we want to know what is needed to make it easier for artists to generate data that can then be processed, for example for light and sound effects. And of course, robots on stage stimulate our fantasy. Can they replace actors or at least support them? We have two very different examples of robots acting freely on stage.
The certainly most extensive panel deals with Mixed Reality in live theatre. We have invited very different theatre experiences to tell us how far the digital transformation has already progressed in theatres. Where are the threats, where are the current challenges. We go all the way to the cinema world and present a film by Jason Moore with live actors, opening up the Metaverse for theatre.
The fourth focus is very practical, we offer different hands-on-workshops to train theatres to enter urban/public space with their performances and immersive technology. What is necessary for this? How can existing digital formats be used?
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NP: What do you see as the biggest issue facing theatres at this moment?
DN: Theatres are experts in storytelling. But their way is usually one-sided: the artists on stage and the audience listening, watching. Only slowly is an understanding developing for new storytelling, for interactive story structures. This is the interface to the game industry and thus to many digital technologies. To reach the audience of tomorrow, theatre must become even more active here. In all the examples — which we will also show at HOPE! — we realise that this does not mean losing the traditional audience. So it takes courage to open up, to expand spaces. But the real challenge lies in the field of training! There are — at least in Europe — no offers at schools for directing and acting that introduce young artists to the new immersive technologies. This is where bridges need to be built. Because we experience in our network PlayOn! — where theatre and digital universities meet — that students of technical disciplines are also very interested in artistic realisations.
And we need mediators between the two worlds: Theatre and digitality. You can’t imagine how difficult it is to bring representatives of these two worlds into a common working process. Because there is still a big gap in understanding here, it is so hard to convince theatre-makers to open up. The same is seen on the other (digital) side.
NP: The online conference format is something that was sort of thrust upon so many of us from the live event world in the past few years, did running the previous PlayOn! event online teach you something you didn’t know about organizing events this way?
DN: Oh, that’s quite a long list … Last year we had a programme that ran for more than 8 hours a day. Oh man, did we torture our people there. We are still grateful to them today that they held out. But because the feedback on HOPE! has been overwhelmingly positive, we have also learned that there is a great need for the topics. We are offering more hands-on workshops this year, we want to go deeper into the topics.
We discussed the question for a long time whether — now that it is possible again because of the pandemic — we should change the format. A presence event or a hybrid format.
But we are a pan-European network and we cannot address so many colleagues from the theatres with an analogue event. And we can’t invite such amazing experts from all over the world as speakers.
That’s why we find this online format so suitable for us — also knowing the disadvantages of not being able to meet people directly. Nevertheless, we try a lot to make networking possible and we want to try new formats again this time. HOPE! is a meeting point for networking, for the exchange of artists and digital experts. And the focus here on theatre is what makes our event so unique.
NP: What’s most giving you hope for the future of theatre and theatrical practice in the future right now?
DN: Theater has often proven in the past that it is able to adapt new technologies, to use them to tell stories even more intensely. But the reason I really have such great hope that theatre plays such an important role today is because of the hopelessness of the times. People are longing for profound debates, for guidance, for critical and open discussions in a time when we are afraid of war, of climate change, of pandemics, of the tearing apart of our societies.
Theatre is the place for such debates! Theatre is in solidarity with the weak, with the persecuted, with the losers of our times. And theatre is open to learn new artistic aestethics.
I want to give you a concrete example that we are trying to do at HOPE! on Tuesday evening (8:00 pm Central European time). We want to do a Twitter theatre, it’s a theatre that will only take place in the minds of the participants. It is created in solidarity on Twitter — and we have a current topic: Mother Hope and her children.
We want to explore with our audience the question, what kind of sacrifice are we willing to make for the supposedly good cause? It is, of course, inspired by Berthold Brecht and the horrific war in Ukraine. But — and this gives me the hope you are asking for — it is an artistic invention by several theatres — led by the famous Burgtheater in Vienna — with new (digital) tools and at the (sad) height of time.
So, let’s meet on Twitter at #HOPEVorstellung and play on with us.
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