2026/05/11 by Samuel Kujala, Aska Mayer · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Artistic and Creative Research #Posthumanist Ethics and Activism #Theatre and Performance Studies
paper · doi:10.65872/teats.177301
openalex publication_date 2026/05/11 · openalex created_date 2026/05/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This article presents a reflection of the intersections of acting practices, rehearsals, and Playful Somaesthetic Technology Practices through an intensive two-week course at a Nordic theater academy on technologically augmented acting. The course brought together demonstrations of existing experiments in augmented acting, somatic exploration and embodiment exercises, as well as speculative design practices. The course design was led by the idea of crosspollination between existing rehearsal practices, future reflections and the theoretical design concept of Playful Somaesthetic Technology Practice (PSTP) for technologically mediated transformative experiences. In a cross-disciplinary comparison of these practices, we observe that in both, the bodily experience begins with transformation and moves towards augmentation. In the transformation phase, a new technological/material circumstance disrupts the practitioner’s habitual bodily experience. Through repeated practice, however, the practitioner can find new habits at the interface between themselves and the technology, and begin to sense a novel, technologically augmented embodiment. Treating the course as a site of mutual knowledge production and engaging both the practical framework of rehearsing and the theoretical framework of PSTP, we reflect upon the outcomes and observations of this course, and will present three trends for the consideration of future augmented acting rehearsals.