Performance Lab

The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama has been awarded £1.37 million in investment from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to support the launch of Performance Lab, a catalyst for research and development in Theatre and Performance in immersive performance and digital technologies.

Performance Lab’s research is developed through Knowledge Exchange (KE) and impact with external partners across the theatre and performance industry and intersectoral partnerships that span areas from heritage and museum sectors to emerging technologies and medicine. We support research and development (R&D) projects that generate original creative approaches and new forms of immersive sound and XR (VR/AR/MR) for performance.

Performance Lab has three primary areas of current research:

• research examining the benefits and considerations of implementing immersive sound technologies in theatre and museums to experiment with spatial audio in performance, extending research into Headphone Theatre, sonicity and reparative practices, immersive sound installations, and site-responsive audio artworks;
• research investigating how techniques, including motion tracking and video annotation, can illuminate historical embodied knowledge and translate it into alternative formats to be analysed, interpreted, and communicated;
• research interrogating how VR and AR impacts on audiences’ embodied subjectivity and how sensory immersion relates to both that physical experience as well as the imitative representation of a fictional world.

Projects by Performance Lab Researchers

• ‘Wonder VR: Innovating Digital Dementia Care,’ funded by Research England and the Office for Students
• ‘Worli Koliwada: My Neighbourhood, My Responsibility’, funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)
• ‘Dunham’s Data: Katherine Dunham and Digital Methods for Dance Historical Inquiry’, funded by a Standard Research Grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
• Visceral Histories, Visual Arguments: Dance-Based Approaches to Data,’ funded by an AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship
• ‘The Rising Sun’, funded by Arts Council England (ACE)
• ‘New Beginning’, Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch
• ‘Staging Difficult Pasts: Of Narratives, Objects and Public Memory’, funded by the AHRC
• ‘Der Reisende’, Berlin Exilmuseum
• The Noise My Leaves Make: Black British Women and Surrendering to Belonging, CARICUK commissioned film
• ‘Digital Black Dance Ecologies’, AHRC funding from the Dance Research Matters
• Fevered Sleep, Associate Theatre Company

If you have any queries about Performance Lab or are interested in our R&D opportunities, please contact Prof Bryce Lease: Bryce.Lease@cssd.ac.uk

Performance Lab Partners include:

• Association of Sound Designers
• C&T
• Creative Comfort
• d&b audiotechnik                                                                 
• DARKFIELD
• Donmar Warehouse
• Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
• Queen’s Theatre – Hornchurch
• Theatre Centre
• White Light