An international research collaborative mapping opportunities for performance spaces in a hyperconnected world
The futureStage Manifesto offers a vision of performance as a human right, intimately entangled with all the stages on which contemporary life is performed, and offering global society new skills, sensibilities, and points of view.
futureStage is a global research project dedicated to investigating current challenges and future prospects for the development of opera houses, theatres, and performing arts centers.
With new expectations for media, culture, and presence in a hyperconnected world, the civic stakes of the performing arts are shifting. In a series of convenings, an international, interdisciplinary team of scholars and experts are collaborating to identify and map these shifts, seeking both the problems and opportunities that arise with new configurations of stages, cities, and publics. Comparing and analyzing best practices and key ideas across a variety of areas, the group aims to produce an annual manifesto/report as reference and inspiration for governments, cultural institutions and arts organizations worldwide.
The project is coordinated by Jeffrey Schnapp and Paolo Petrocelli.
Members of Research Group:
Matthew Battles (USA)
Director of Scholarly Initiatives, metaLAB (at) Harvard
Cathie Boyd (Ireland/Scotland)
Founder & Artistic Director, Cryptic
Marc Brickman (USA)
Managing Director, Tactical Manoeuvre
Paolo Ciuccarelli (Italy/USA)
Founding Director, Center for Design, Northeastern University, Boston
Wesley Cornwell (USA)
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Lins Derry (USA)
Principal, metaLAB (at) Harvard
Evenlyn Ficarra (UK)
Associate Director, Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre, University of Sussex
Mariana Ibañez (Argentina/USA)
Chair and Associate Professor, Architecture and Urban Design, UCLA; Co-founder, Ibañez Kim
Simone Kim (USA)
Director, Immersive Kinematics Research Group; Co-founder, Ibañez Kim
Mohammed Obaidullah (Saudi Arabia)
Producer
Jay Pather (South Africa)
Director, Institute for Creative Arts, University of Cape Town
Paolo Petrocelli (Italy)
Research Affiliate, metaLAB at Harvard
Cui Qiao (China)
President, Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation
Magda Romanska (USA)
Associate Professor of Theatre Studies and Dramaturgy, Emerson College;
Research Affiliate, metaLAB at Harvard;
Chair, Transmedia Arts Seminar at Mahindra Humanities Center and metaLAB;
Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief, TheTheatreTimes.com
Adama Sanneh (ITA)
Co-Founder and CEO, Moleskine Foundation
Anthony Sargent (UK)
International Cultural Consultant
Jeffrey Schnapp (USA)
Faculty Director, metaLAB (at) Harvard
Shain Shapiro (UK)
Founder & CEO, Sound Diplomacy
Sydney Skybetter (USA)
Founder, Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces
Jean-Philippe Thiellay (France)
President, Centre national de la musique
Shahrokh Yadegari (USA)
Director, Sonic Arts Research and Development group at the University of California San Diego; Director, Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences at the Qualcomm Institute
