Performing Poetry and the Postnarrative Text in the Theatre of New Media

This article presents a narratological study of interactive multimedia performance, arguing that the text in such works reflects a postnarrative perspective. In Blast Theory’s Rider Spoke (2007-present) and David Pledger and Jeffrey Shaw’s Eavesdrop (2004 -5) the audience’s co-creation of the text reveals a transition away from the binary of narrative and non-narrative, of narrative and database, and into the field of postnarrativity. When the grand design of an overarching narrative has been rejected, and focus placed on the small intricacies, relations and nuances of different elements, meaning is not given but is developed, and performed, through the accumulation of layered effects. Using theories of non-traditional narrative and new media studies and referring to theorists such as Marie-Laure Ryan and Lev Manovich, this exploration maps the characteristics of the postnarrative encounter within interactive multimedia performance and argues that the postnarrative text can be best accessed and examined through the analytical tools of poetry that look to understand the effects of rhythm and resonance. Narrative construction reflects the cultural paradigm in which it is created, and connections are made here between the dynamism of postnarrative environments in new media performance, and contemporary cultural perceptions as influenced by the ubiquity of computational technologies.