Publications
Book manuscript
Young Audiences and Everyday Postdigital Theatre. The Routledge Theatre & Performance Series in Audience Research. (Under contract).
Book chapters
Trott, Abbie V. “‘Being with:’ Multimedia Images as Collaborative Agents with Human Performers.” Revealing Posthuman Encounters in Performance, edited by Stefano Boselli and Sarah Lucie, Volume One, Routledge. (Forthcoming 2025).
Peer-reviewed journal articles
Rae, Paul and Abbie V. Trott. “‘I don’t know why I cried, but I did:’ Diversity and the Dramaturgy of Impact in Australian Theatre for Young People.” Critical Stages, vol. 28, December 2023.
Trott, Abbie V. “‘She might find out the truth:’ Action Researching with Young Theatre Audiences.” Action Research and Action Learning Journal, Special Edition, vol. 28, no. 1, 2022, pp. 72-98.
Chow, Ai Ming, Ed Hyatt, Akina Mikami, Asha Ross and Abbie V. Trott. Conclusion: Walking Beside to Find the Off Ramps. Action Research and Action Learning Journal: Special Edition, vol. 28, no. 1, 2022, pp. 153-181.
Trott, Abbie V. “What are the Ties That Hold Us Together? The Smartphone Networks in As If No One is Watching and Body of Knowledge.” Australasian Drama Studies, vol. 78, April 2021, pp. 225-252.
Trott, Abbie V. “‘It was a cracker:’ Listening in to Youth Audiences, Regional and Urban, with Show Reports.” Australasian Drama Studies, vol. 77, October 2020, pp. 244-272.
Reviews
Trott, Abbie V. Review of Deserted Devices: everyday technologies in extreme circumstances by Dani Ploeger. International Journal of Performing Arts and Digital Media, 2024, doi.org/10.1080/14794713.2024.2391202.
Trott, Abbie V. Review of Mediatized Dramaturgy: The Evolution of Plays in the Media Age by Seda Ilter. International Journal of Performing Arts and Digital Media, vol. 19, no. 1, 2023, doi.org/10.1080/14794713.2023.2170626.
Industry Reports
“Changing organisations to diversify arts audiences: Summary of findings from community of practice.” Author on Industry report with Deakin University, 2024.
“Changing organisations to diversify arts audiences: Summary of findings from a national survey.” Author on industry report with Deakin University, 2023.
“Creative Convergence: Midterm Industry Report (2017-18).” Contributed to industry report with the University of Melbourne, 2018.
PhD Thesis
A ‘standard’ Topic?: Theatre, Young People and the Everyday Postdigital (2022)
This thesis investigates how theatre examines and interrogates the integration of young people’s everyday experience of digital technologies into theatrical performance. Using a multimodal approach, I examine what I describe as everyday postdigital theatre across four contemporary Australian theatre productions involving young people aged 13-22 in different ways. These case studies engage with everyday postdigital theatre across five mechanisms: networks, replication and simulation, real and virtual, time and space and glitches and mess. These mechanisms are traced across an examination of changed approaches to storytelling, aesthetic innovations and theatre’s technical reconfiguration within larger networks of information and image production. The central contribution of this thesis is that theatre involving young people highlights fundamental shifts that are currently underway in the relationship between digital culture and theatre. These shifts point to how the digital is an increasingly everyday aspect of the way we perceive and realise theatre rather than a spectacular feature in its own right. This study is significant because it recognises that theatre ‘post’ the digital does not negate digitality but rather acknowledges that theatre is now made with reference to, and by often seamlessly integrating, the everyday digital environment surrounding it. The thesis provides concrete examples of successes in navigating contemporary digital manifestations by focusing on young people. It is a close reading of the subtle pervasiveness of the digital beyond overt mediation and argues for the realness of the everyday digital in theatre.
Masters by Research Thesis
“Being With:” establishing co-presence between multimedia images and performers in multimedia performance (2016)
Interactivity between the mediated and the human on the theatrical stage is well documented; less critiqued is the interactivity available to live mediated elements, and the mechanisms of its production. Founded in theatre studies, computer human-interaction (CHI) studies, new media studies and studies in presence, this thesis aims to extend our dramaturgical understandings of the mechanics of interactivity between live integrated digital and human entities on stage through the lens of co-presence. It prefaces the extended experiences available for audiences of integrated multimedia performance in the face of Peggy Phelan’s call for an “ontologically unique performance event” (146).
In order to negotiate the relationship between the digital and the human, I ask how one balances the liveness and nuance of live performance with the preparedness of choreography, computer programming and cue building in stage-based performance with live multimedia elements. Focusing on the mediated image as an embodied agent, this study advocates a series of processes by which a live multimedia image operates in an interactive relationship with its human co-performers: integrated into the fabric of the performance, developed and implemented in a real-time interactive system; actively contributing to the dramaturgical development of the production; engaged in each performative moment with nuance, intimacy and spontaneity; and developed with a balance of liveness and preparedness. Using co-presence as a lens to analyse The Table of Knowledge (2011) by version 1.0 and Encoded (2012) by Stalker Dance Theatre, this thesis will consider how multimedia images interacted with the humans on stage in each performative moment. By deepening our understanding of interactivity in the relationships between the digital and human in our mediatised society, this thesis scrutinises the ongoing dramaturgical implications of multimedia performance for theatre scholars, practitioners and audiences.