Experiment 4: REALstAGE

Leaders of the experiment: Christina Back og Helle Bach.

REALstAGE is an experimental project that explores the use of everyday modern means of communication like mobiles and internet in a performing arts universe. In February 2007 the project visited Laboratoriet for a week of exploring how stories can be told in this complex universe where audience and performers are affecting each other on many different levels. How does it affect the way we tell stories that we, as modern human beings, have become used to steer through an explosive increase in information and communication every day? And how does it affect our understanding of stories? The REALstAGE Experiment is an investigation of how the extended and mobile theatrical space affects the audience experience. At the end of the week's work the project invited audiences to participate in a demonstration of a new performing arts format.

Before coming to Laboratoriet, REALstAGE had already done two series of experiments at the University of Copenhagen and at Dansens Hus Copenhagen, as well as a residency at the Watermill Centre in New York where they received feedback from Robert Wilson among others. The collaboration with New York was continued in the summer of 2007 with a grant from the Danish Arts Council's DaNY Arts programme.