neTTheatre
Theatre in the Network of Relations – neTTheatre
neTTheatre is the first Internet theatre in the world. It presents its performances in the real world as well as in the virtual space. It allows the audience to co-create their sound and their visual layers; it explores the sphere of theatre interactivity. The idea refers to the tradition of the Theatre of Polish Television from the period when a few million people watched it, when plays were performed live, and the new medium was a way to reach a broad audience. neTTheatre is first of all an attempt to create a new artistic language connected with the contemporary forms of communication – a parallel, multidimensional, unformatted message. It is also an attempt to understand the state of the man of the beginning of the second millennium, consciously and unconsciously entangled in the thick of signs and messages. Due to that, the subsequent undertakings of the Theatre in Network of Relations used the latest technologies, which had never been used on stage before, such as: a human voice visualizer, an interactive virtual dancer, a stage text editor controlled by actor’s gestures, and many other cyber-realistic tools created especially for the needs of the stage.
15.12.2007 – during the premiere presentation of Requiem by Paweł Passini, 16,000 net surfers participated in the performance. During a two-hour transmission, the vision and the stereo sound were received on all continents, which marked the beginning of a new stage in the history of theatre.
21.09.2008 – the premiere of neTTheatre – the Other Room performance, based on Zbigniew Herbert’s drama and directed by Pawel Passini, took place at CHOREA Theatre. The theme of the performance is an image of a human body on the Net.
In 2009, neTTheatre – Theatre in the Network of Relations established an independent permanent activity in Lublin within the framework of The Centre of Culture and Central Theatre.
The initiator and leader of the project: Paweł Passini
Coordinator: Katarzyna Tadeusz
‘No, it is not about replacing theatre with the Internet. On the contrary, when we make a performance and we do not manage to invite anyone else than a group of friends, and we are aware that we would like to share our work not with 150, not with 500, but with 5000 people, we should send the message to the world. The information should be sent so that we could meet somewhere.’
Tomasz Rodowicz, Łódź, 30.10.2007
‘With the Internet, it is a bit like with the Polish romanticism and with the whole Polish heritage – it concerns us all, but we sniff at it and we keep a kind of distance towards it. And we cannot really say what value we want it to have for us, but on the other hand it brings order to our lives. Theatre functions in the public space, where the process of degradation of human contact takes place. Technology develops much faster than social relations which provoked it. Theatre remains a unique way of communication in the thick of different methods of communicating. It does not happen very often that a person is listening to you for an hour and a half, sitting still in the darkness. Such a viewer gives you a much bigger part of his/her personality and sensitivity than it usually happens in everyday contact. These two phenomena make it obvious that theatre should enter the Internet and search for the audience there as well. It cannot be deaf and indifferent to the things the viewer comes from and to the things s/he comes back to.’
Paweł Passini, Łódź, 25.05. 2010
Contact: netheatre@gmail.com