Unlimited Theatre: Digital Playscripts

In this report we present the findings from the Nesta funded Digital R&D project “Make Some More Noise”. The findings from this research follow two interlinked strands of activity. The first of these strands of activity is the research and development of a novel digital playscript reading experience where for the first time, a digital platform for translating stage directions (lighting and sound) are translated into a digital content experience to support the digital reading of playscripts. The second strand of activity relates to the development of a new co-design methodology based on collaborative community making events, which we have named as ‘Community Labs”. A process of Insight Journalism (Rogers et al 2011) was applied to reveal original findings on these two strands. These include the necessity for digital standards for encoding playscripts (there is currently no universal standard for this); the effect of sound on the reading experience; the design of Community Labs, and the necessity for new models of collaborative, community-based IP agreements.