Marina Hanganu is a theatre director, cultural manager and researcher exploring the intersection of art and technology from a practical and theoretical perspective. She holds a PhD in Theatre and Performing Arts from The National University of Theatre and Film I.L. Caragiale (UNATC) in Bucharest for the thesis Telematic Theatre – From Concept to Performance (2022), an MA in Advanced Theatre Practice from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (London, 2015) and a BA in Theatre Directing from UNATC (2014).
Since 2016, she has been the Artistic Secretary of George Ciprian Theatre in Buzău, Romania, where she is responsible for writing funding applications, establishing national and international partnerships and managing cultural projects. She was the project initiator and coordinator of Tele-Encounters and Tele-Encounters: Beyond the Human, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.
Her directing and playwrighting credits include a variety of telematic performances: 2032 SMART-FAMILY (Romania-Italy, 2022), Generation 200 (online performance, George Ciprian Theatre, 2020-2021), The Planet of Lost Dreams (Romania-Spain, 2018), Tele-City (co-funded by AFCN, George Ciprian Theatre, 2016), Before Sunset/After Sunrise (London, Bloomsbury Festival 2015 and We Are Now Festival 2016, supported by the Romanian Culture Institute in London) and No. 30 Popa Rusu Street (Theatre 7, Bucharest, 2015). Other directing credits: Orpheus and Eurydice (Buzău/Love/Theatre Festival 2017), an audio play with binaural sound recorded with visually impaired children, The Suicide Shop (Comedy Theatre, Bucharest, 2017), a dark comedy musical after Jean Teulé’s novel (winning project of the Comedia Ține la Tineri contest for young directors) and Marisol by José Rivera (UNATC, Bucharest, 2014).
As a researcher, she has published academic books and articles in English and Romanian. Author of the monograph Telematic Theatre (Ed. Universitaria, Craiova, 2022 – in Romanian). Editor of Beyond the Human: Theatre, Robots and Social Realities (Ed. Universitaria, Craiova, 2023 – in English), Tele-Encounters: Telepresence and Migration (UNATC Press, Bucharest, 2019 – in English) and Tele-City: Telematics and Pedagogy (Ed. Alpha, Buzău, 2016 – in Romanian; co-editor). She has taught theatre directing as part of the MA in Theatre Pedagogy at UNATC Bucharest as a doctoral student and subsequently as an independent researcher.
Member of the IETM International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts since 2020.
We interviewed her about very modern theatrical issues that explore the intersection between art and technology from a practical and theoretical perspective, and we came up with this result…
Marina Hanganu. September 2022. Photo by Mihai Mîncu.
Hayel Ali Al-Mathabi: Let’s start at the end. Tell us about your latest research projects regarding theater and your projects in Tele Encounters Beyond, which you manage?
Marina Hanganu: My latest finalised project is “Tele-Encounters: Beyond the Human”, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union in the period 2020-2023, in continuation of “Tele-Encounters” (2017-2019), the previous EU project I coordinated. “Tele-Encounters: Beyond the Human” was a partnership between “George Ciprian” Theatre in Romania, which is the public theatre where I work, UCAM Catholic University of Murcia in Spain and Industria Scenica in Milan, Italy. I initiated the project and prepared the funding application. My roles in the project were manifold: theatre director alongside Camilla Brison (Italian director), playwright alongside Bianca Trifan (Romanian playwright), researcher and manager (artistic director). Indeed, project management takes a significant part of my time.
“Tele-Encounters: Beyond the Human” resulted in a telematic theatre performance with a custom-built robot performer, “2032 SMART-FAMILY”, and a website with interactive virtual characters powered by GPT-3, “Imaginary Robots” (no longer active). Thematically, the project explored the potential role of social robots as future companions for elderly people whose close relatives have emigrated. Outward migration is a major phenomenon in Romania, with many Romanians working in Italy or Spain as top destination countries, hence the main thread connecting the project countries was migration. Since this was an interdisciplinary project, we conducted research on several axes: qualitative research into the relationship between Romanian emigrants and their elderly parents who have stayed in Romania; artistic research into the creation process of our telematic performance; research into the audience’s experience of the telematic performance; research into how humans perceive social robots; and research into the users’ experience of interacting with the GPT-3 powered virtual robots. All these studies were published in the open-access project book, “Beyond the Human: Theatre, Robots and Social Realities”.
For the last few months, I’ve been preparing funding applications for two new cultural projects with digitalisation at their core, each involving partners from five or six European countries. One of the projects is under evaluation, so fingers crossed for it to get approved and start this autumn. The second project, which is more related to game design than the theatre, is in the application preparation phase – if funded, this should start in the autumn of 2025. The projects I am preparing have an artistic research component and will have implementation periods of about three years each. I cannot give more details yet, as the projects’ implementation will depend on whether they receive funding or not. What I can say is that my focus has shifted from telematic theatre to same-space performance with non-human performers, namely robots and virtual characters. I’ve also come to be more interested in young audiences and how technology can impact their experience as theatre-goers.
Book launch of Beyond the Human Theatre, Robots and Social Realities during the National Theatre Festival 2023 in Bucharest. Photo by Florin Biolan.
H.A.: Was the scientific thesis that you submitted to obtain a doctoral degree a daring adventure, as some describe it? If so, why? What results did you reach regarding telematic theater?
M.H.: The most daring adventure is practising telematic theatre – writing a PhD thesis about it was relatively simple compared to directing and producing telematic theatre! My doctoral research was practice-based, meaning that I analysed my own work alongside other telematic performances by past and present practitioners around the world. In my thesis, I pinpointed the characteristics of telematic theatre, contextualised this artistic genre and, most importantly, developed a theory of telematic theatre dramaturgy. Here, “dramaturgy” means the construction process of the whole performance, in all its dimensions, which includes but is not limited to the theatre play. So my use of the word “dramaturgy” is not equivalent to “playwrighting”, but subsumes it. Moreover, there are many ways in which telematic theatre can be developed and text is not always needed. My research was mostly filtered through the theoretical lens of posthumanist philosophy (in particular, new materialism) and new media studies.
Theatre is called “telematic” when it connects at least two spaces (physical or virtual) via telecommunication technologies (usually via the Internet, but not always), with performers and/or audiences separated by distance. As opposed to a livestreamed performance, which involves a unidirectional transmission, the different spaces of a telematic performance exchange information and thus the action becomes spatially distributed. Telematic art has a long history, going back to Allan Kaprow and the Happenings of the 1960s and the satellite-connected works of Sherrie Rabinowitz and Kit Galloway in the 1970s-1980s, in the USA. There are many other pioneers of telematic art, many of them living – e.g., British artist Roy Ascott, who introduced the syntagm “telematic art”. Telematic theatre, as a specific form of telematic art, developed later, mostly from the 1990s onwards, using virtual environments, Internet chat and videoconferencing.
The Planet Of Lost Dreams (2018), part of the Tele-Encounters project, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the EU. On stage in Spain: Ana Polo and Ruxandra Oancea. In the projection: Andreea Darie and Radu Solcanu, on stage in Romania. Photo by Francisco José Ruiz Gil. ©UCAM.
Telematic performance takes a great variety of forms, depending on many parameters (mostly spatial and technological). Unlike the more common online-only performances, which have boomed during the pandemic, telematic performances connecting physical venues are scarcely produced. The main reason for this is the huge production effort entailed. It is very difficult to synchronise different theatre venues with different production schedules, different teams of artists and several technicians, during both rehearsals and representations. To which we add the complication of connecting different countries, with different languages, theatre systems and often timezones. A telematic performance like 2032 SMART-FAMILY necessitates a large team (of artists, technicians and producers) similar in size and skills to live television or film production crews. Of course, the large production budget required is another daunting issue.
To summarise my theory of dramaturgy, I conceive of telematic theatre as a system of matrices, which are the different layers of a performance: the narrative matrix, the technological matrix, the spatiotemporal matrix, the body matrix (which includes the physical bodies of audiences and actors) and the matrix of encounter (the set of conventions that organise the way audiences encounter the performance). I believe my theory of dramaturgy (inspired by New Media Dramaturgy and Eugenio Barba’s dramaturgical thought) is applicable not only to telematic theatre but also to other forms of theatre, especially those with a technological backbone.
The Planet Of Lost Dreams (2018), part of the Tele-Encounters project, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the EU. Curtain call. On stage in Spain: Ana Polo, Ruxandra Oancea and Tony Blaya. In the projection: the audience in Romania. Photo by Francisco José Ruiz Gil. ©UCAM.
H.A.: Since you are one of the most important researchers and those interested in telematic theater in the world, can you give us forward-looking visions for the future of this type of theater?
M.H.: I would say the use of telematics in the theatre is driven by two main forces: practicality (using telematics for practical purposes, even out of necessity) and aesthetics (using telematics for its expressive potential). These driving forces can coexist in telematic theatre practice, but one can take precedence over the other. Most of the “force majeure” theatre of the pandemic is an example of using telematics out of necessity, often with no or little attention to the expressive integration of technology.
As part of the practicality dimension, I expect telematics to be increasingly used in the rehearsal process, but not necessarily in the public presentation of the performance (so telematic rehearsals, not telematic theatre). This could save time for the artists and ensure a more environmentally sustainable rehearsal process, especially in international co-productions.
Both as a practical and an aesthetic choice, telematics can serve pedagogical purposes in theatre education. For example, professor Dr. Tom Gorman from Coventry University in the UK uses telematics to rehearse scenes (e.g., Shakespeare, Brecht, Beckett or Martin Crimp) with students from different countries. In some cases, students meet in the same physical space to perform together at the end of the online rehearsal period, but they also do telematic presentations of the scenes, exploring the aesthetic potential of the telematic space.
Within the predominantly aesthetic orientation, I am convinced telematics will continue to be used and refined as an expressive medium intended for public presentation, but this will likely remain a niche. I am convinced that human fascination with distant beings and spaces, Earthly or alien, will keep telematic art alive. As my PhD supervisor would say, in the future, we will be doing telematic performances between different celestial bodies. At the same time, we may be heading towards a post-telematic theatre, in which distance is increasingly suppressed in the audience’s and even the performers’ experience. For example, with increasingly realistic avatars and holographic projections, or with Mixed Reality headsets, audiences may soon be unable to tell whether a performer is really in the same space or not.
The Planet Of Lost Dreams (2018), part of the Tele-Encounters project, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the EU. On stage in Romania: Andreea Darie. In the projection: Ruxandra Oancea, on stage in Spain. Photo by Costin Fetic. ©Teatrul “George Ciprian”.
H.A.: Grotowski says, “Theaters are not similar in their forms, but in their principles.” In your opinion, what are the values and principles whose stability can be bet on amid this great technological boom and the new contexts that automation imposes on everything, including theatre?
M.H.: A core principle of the theatre that I think will not go away is the much-debated “liveness”, which in simple terms can be defined as real-time action, perceived as such by live audiences. The spatial co-presence of performers and audiences is not essential for the theatrical experience, as telematic theatre makes it plain, although purists believe that theatre can only rely on physical co-presence. Rather than space, the common denominator is time. I believe that being together at the same time, but not necessarily in the same physical space, will remain an important feature of theatre.
Another staple of theatre as an art form is, from my point of view, the fictionalisation of reality, which occurs differently depending on the conventions of each performance. Even when there’s no coherent story, theatre always involves some degree of fiction. In the theatre, one pretends to be other than oneself, while spaces and objects are also recontextualised and transported to a different reality, no matter how similar or divergent from mundane reality. Upon further scrutiny, one may ask “What is reality anyway?”. I think the theatre always asks this question in the background.
Human performers may not be an essential feature of the theatre, as the use of robots and virtual performers shows. This is not to say that all theatre should be done or will be done only with robots or virtual characters. I’m just advocating for an extension of the expressive pallet that theatre artists can use, which includes non-human performers. I consider theatre with robots or virtual performers to be a variant of puppet theatre – behind these technological puppets, there is still a human creative team. I do not think human creators will go away.
Lastly, and most importantly, human audiences will always be indispensable, as theatre can only happen in a human paradigm. Theatre can only be for humans (even when done by robots) as far as our own (present) system of reference goes.
The Planet Of Lost Dreams(2018), part of the Tele-Encounters project, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the EU, On stage in Romania: Radu Solcanu. In the projection: Ruxandra Oancea, on stage in Spain. Photo by Costin Fetic. ©Teatrul “George Ciprian”.
H.A.: Since every era has its own cultural, social and industrial transformations, data and manifestations, can it be said that the transformations of our current era towards technology and artificial intelligence tools may transform theater into another, new and completely different form… As a researcher and worker in the field of theatre, telematic theater and technology, what are your future visions for this? The new and different form of theaters of the future, which can be described as metatheatre?
M.H.: The various forms theatre takes in a specific socio-cultural and historical context will always be shaped by the perception of humans living in that context. The art of the theatre has changed constantly throughout thousands of years, but it has not disappeared and we still refer to it as “theatre”. If we were to travel to the future, we may no longer recognise it as theatre, but it would still be “theatre” to those future humans or at least some of them. I don’t know if future theatre will be so different from what we have today as to be unrecognisable. But I can bet there will be some continuity, as there’s always a development process from past forms to new forms. Moreover, perception always varies from person to person, so it’s not only the “Zeitgeist” that defines what one recognises as theatre. Today, when there’s such a great variety of artistic performances, what one understands to be “theatre” varies greatly. To some, telematic theatre may not be theatre at all because it violates the principle of physical co-presence. As a side note, I believe that drawing clear boundaries between the arts is not always helpful, as one can easily get stuck in sterile debates.
No matter what form it takes, I think theatre has always been about the real-time fictionalisation of reality, where performers and audiences engage in some kind of make-believe. Technology can satisfy this need for fictional realities and I expect simulation technologies such as virtual and augmented reality to be increasingly used. This brings me to “metatheatre”. I believe you use the term “metatheatre” as in the “Sphinx Meta Theatre Festival”. So “metatheatre” in this context means digital theatre, or theatre with a virtual or Extended Reality dimension that connects it to the “metaverse”. But the word “metatheatre” has an older meaning which has no connection to technology, referring to a kind of theatre that draws attention to its own fictitious nature and its construction mechanisms. “Metatheatre” undermines its own illusion even while creating it, such as when actors break “the fourth wall” and address the audience. Associating digital performance with “metatheatre” in the older sense of the term is interesting, as it points to the existence of a “meta-reality” that technology may help create or reveal. It also suggests that technology could be used not only to create illusion in the theatre but also to undermine the illusion and expose its technological workings.
The Planet Of Lost Dreams (2018), part of the Tele-Encounters project, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the EU. Andreea Darie (Romania) and Ruxandra Oancea (Spain) meet on screen as Kinect-controlled avatars. Photo by Costin Fetic. © Teatrul “George Ciprian”.
I dare to make some other predictions. I conjecture that non-human performers will find their way to theatre stages more and more often. It may also be that physical presence may be considered less important by future generations – or maybe not, it remains to be seen. Apart from that, I am quite convinced that AI and robotics will be used for stage automation and also as creative tools, at least in the brainstorming phase (and here I am referring to generative algorithms). Whatever happens, theatre will not go away.
To read PART II of this interview, go to this link.
This post was written by the author in their personal capacity.The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of The Theatre Times, their staff or collaborators.
