On 1 October 2022, Sara Larsdotter Hallquist and Helen Varley Jamieson presented the Mobilise/Demobilise project and gave a workshop at the Internationales Frauen*Theaterfestival in Frankfurt, Germany.
The workshop introduced participants to the UpStage platform and the artistic work and research developed through Mobilise/Demobilise, in particular Teater InterAkt’s use of UpStage to keep physically absent members of their ensemble actively part of their devising processes and peformances. Sara explained what they had discovered in the process of developing the cyberformance Remove for the Mobilise/Demobilise festival in 2021, and how they are moving forward with these methods in their current research and devising work.
Helen showed examples of UpStage performances from Mobilise/Demobilise as well as earlier projects We Have a Situation and make-shift. She also spoke about the Bodies:On:Live festival, Meta Theater’s #digital project exploring hybrid online/proximal performances using UpStage, and discussed the pros and cons of other online platforms.
This was followed by a hands-on session where the participants learned the basic operations in UpStage and discussed how it could be used in their own artistic projects.
