The dramatic property: a new paradigm of applied theatre practice for a globalised media culture

This thesis tests through theatre and drama the Dramatic Property as a new paradigm of Applied Theatre activity. It does this through the artistic practice of The Dark Theatre, Cambat and the livingnewspaper.com - projects developed by Paul Sutton, Artistic Director of the Theatre Company, C&T - and through the analysis of these works. These are presented here as four Dark Theatre comics, an archive CD-ROM of the Cambat website and two CD-ROMs for the livingnewspsaper.com. The first of these is an actual part of the livingnewspaper.com project, as used by participants. The second disc is a presentation of the processes and functions of the project on and offline.

The written component of this thesis marks out the practical and theoretical territory that the paradigm of the Dramatic Property seeks to occupy. It does this by setting out the early practice of C&T and by identifying the factors that led the company to seek to develop a new model of practice. It then moves on to explore young people’s relationship to the fabric of early twenty-first century media culture and their engagement with it. It argues that the processes of drama naturally underpin this fabric, particularly when considering immersive digital media. It then goes on to extrapolate from the practice-as-research dimension of this thesis the concepts, forms and synergies that underpin the paradigm as a whole. In particular it identifies five qualities so far generic to all Dramatic Properties and maps out the synergies that underpin their value to the paradigm.

Finally, case studies of the three Dramatic Properties under examination contextualise and theorise the practice documentation.