Etheatre Project and Collaborators: A series of devised, collaborative, site-specific cyberformances about migration, immigration and emigration.

Venue(s):Online Venues - UpStage, Waterwheel TapOffline Venues - Signalraum (Munich, Germany); 19 Tory Street Art Space (Wellington, NZ)Year of fist performance: 2014

URL:  https://etheatreblog.wordpress.com/portfolio/etheatre-project-and-collaborators/ 

Additional Information:
Etheatre Project and Collaborators comprises a series of experimental real-time cyberformances, co-edited and directed by Papagiannouli, that aim to test a completely remote collaboration process of political cyberformance making and explore its interactive potentials. Papagiannouli used ethnographic methods including participants’ observation, to study audience behaviour and document participants’ responses in the interactive, collaborative events. This is mainly documented in the text logs – scripted versions of the live event and real-time audience feedback through the text box, were spectators could verbally respond to the performance. The use of the chat box allowed participants to share their own stories alongside those of the collaborators in a creative setting and express their own interpretations and opinions about the themes and events mentioned in the performance. This is important because it enables individuals and the community to be presented and represented as part of the actual performance. The originality of the Etheatre and Collaborators lies in its consideration of the dialectical and interactive character of cyberformance and the use of the internet for remote artistic collaboration. 
Performers: Sarahleigh Castelyn; Haralampos Gavriilidis; Evi Stamatiou; Michael Klett
Dramaturge/ Stories Editor: Ilinca Tamara Todorut
Director/Discussion Facilitator: Christina Papagiannouli,
Scenographer/Avatar, Backdrop designer: Suzon Fuks,
Creative Collaborators: Anca Doczi co-founder of Immersive Theatre;  Marischka Klinkhamer.
Impact:
Papagiannouli was invited to present a performance at UpStage platform’s 10th Anniversary Celebrations. She collaborated with Sarahleigh Castelyn, Anca Doczi, Suzon Fuks, Charis Gavriilidis, Marischka Klinkhamer, Evi Stamatiou, and Ilinca Tamara Todorut to make the Etheatre Project and Collaborators performance, based on the personal migration stories of the collaborators, who were born in different countries from where they lived at the time of the performance. The 10th Birthday of UpStage was celebrated on 9-10 January 2014 with three performances, a symposium on remote collaboration, a planning meeting and the launch of UpStage v3. The event was supported by CityLink (who provided free wifi), the venue 19 Tory Street, AUT (with the attendance of some of the student team and lecturer Anne Philpott), and Signalraum (who hosted the symposium). MAD emergent art centre assisted with the streaming. The performance was also presented after invitation at the World Water Day Symposium on March 2014, which involved 450 participants, including children, youth, communities, TED talkers, scientists, activists and artists form 34 countries and 18 physical venues. The performances were disseminated in conference papers presented to 6 international conferences in the UK. Professor Andy Lavender (University of Warwick) also talked about the performances at 3 international conferences in Spain and UK. The V&A Digital Futures invited Papagiannouli to talk about the project in the ‘Self Versioning: exploring the potentials of the digital self’ panel discussion (2015). The Etheatre Project and Collaborators text logs document the impact of the performances to the online audience. 

Media Releases and publications:
Report of the celebrations - https://upstage.org.nz/blog/?p=5935 

Media Release: https://upstage.org.nz/blog/wp-content/uploads/programme_release.pdf 

UpStage Website: https://upstage.org.nz/?page_id=6032 

Waterwheel Website: http://water-wheel.net/taps/page/588