ABSTRACT
Cyborg theatre is an art form that uses cybernetics as part of its method and practice. Although the relationship between theatre and the machine is well established, this use of cyborg technology, in which the machine and the human cohabit, is new. Cyborg theatre is primarily concerned with the modification and augmentation of the human, yet is also about the enmeshing of the human with the environment, whether in the ‘real’ world or in the simulated world of the World Wide Web. Furthermore, cyborg theatre is about communication and control, expansion and conscription, freedom and imprisonment. Finally, cyborg theatre always takes place through and on the body of the performer, where the body itself becomes both the laboratory and the theatre of the piece. In this context, cyborg theatre not only allows viewers the possibility of entering the work of art, which coincides with the performer’s body, but offers them the disturbing possibility of interacting with this body. As a consequence, even when cyborg theatre is not overtly ‘political’, it inevitably raises ethical and political questions reminding the viewer that ultimately they are responsible not only for the interpretation but also for the actualisation of the work of art. In cyborg theatre the viewer is drawn directly into the performance and thereby becomes the last prosthetic component, both literally and metaphorically, of the performer’s modified body.
