Digital dramaturgy of cruelty: Antoine Artaud: Ludology and the plague metaphor in contemporary video games and new media

This article aims to trace the relationship between specific types of video games and digital media performances and the central theatrical concept of participation and plague introduced by Antoine Artaud, in his major and highly influential theoretical work Le Theatre et son Double/Theatre and its Double. The emphasis is on immersive, action, adventure and role playing games, especially combat, fighting, shooter games and survival horror, taking place in a digital 3D space. Relevant digital media performances like those introduced by Stelarc and Kac, among others, which incorporate an actual stage or real space, are also included in the discussion. Artaud’s ‘ludology’ and his metaphor of plague are directly applied as a conceptual reflection, an aesthetic model or a method of performance to the above digital media genres, to explore their function as participated, embodied and sensed experiences onstage and/or in virtual environments. The discussion takes the form of a comparative study of drama and new media concepts. This leads to the conclusion that a new interdisciplinary area exists between theatre/performance and digital new media. In this area, Artaud’s notion of plague is materialized and developed further with the aid of digital technologies. This happens in a manner that precisely follows Artaud’s fundamental aesthetics, principles and causes of his plague-like dramaturgic method, in a recent digital adaptation of his theatre of cruelty, introducing a novel type of dramaturgic realization.