Research focuses on how material and materiality and critical theories of digital technology function epistemologically in digital humanities and education.
Research method combines dramaturgy with practice-based investigation into materiality, digital surveillance and technology.
Exploring new forms of theatre-making for sustainability to respond the age of digital surveillance.
Practice as Research Workshop of Diffraction Theatre have explored how theatrical practice can be used as a tool for the critique of digital technology, exploring the pressing issues raised by digital technology in everyday life through audience participation. This workshop explored dramaturgy, scenography, spectatorship, and the body as a sensor-alongside digital sensors- through AI teddy bear. It acted as a form of green theatre, mixing material and discursive practices, and offers a space where theory and practice meet-linking seminars, rehearsals, and education.
The workshop included three sessions: Half hour introduction, three-hour session, and a 30-minute break. Participants have engaged in hands-on sitespecific theatrical exercises to critically explore hidden sensors and digital data collection embedded in everyday objects-such as toys, smart home items. Together, we have examined how surveillance capitalism operates through these ordinary items, turning human behavior into data for prediction and profit. Through this process, participants have discovered how theatre can be used as a powerful tool to question and reflect on the role of digital technologies in our lives.
16.00-17.00 Part 3: Performance/ Storytelling
Participation in this theatrical experience requires a signed consent form.
Please note that photos and video will be taken during the workshop/performance. All photos taken during the event will be used solely for academic purposes: associated academic publications, lectures, conference presentations, academic website dissemination related to this work.
If you do not wish to be filmed, please contact to Jing (jw2223@cam.ac.uk).
What methods of Diffraction Theatre have unfolded in this workshop?
Surveillance capitalism unliterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioural data. Although some of these data are applied to service improvement, the rest are declared as a proprietary behavioural surplus, fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as “machine intelligence”, and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later. (Shoshana Zuboff, 2019, p8)
After behavioural surplus was discovered, surveillance capitalism was born. Behavioural data, currently preserved for conversion, far exceeds the data needs for improving service quality. This surplus has become the fodder for machine intelligence, with behavioural prediction products built from this new production method.
Materials: Stage-model materials from the model kit.
Scenography is an art form that drives emotional responses through the arrangement of numerous elements such as space, matter, sound, and the body. Scenography is not just about seeing, but also about perception (JWT, 2026).
Stage models as an active agent: How do stage models work as epistemic tools? (Brejzek & Wallen, 2018).
What the actor has never seen- the director never envisaged (Ralph Koltai, 2009).
Scenography is … the art of creating a dynamic space for performance. (Bob Crowley, 2009).
The multiple ways that performance space generates meanings, referring to how design is performed, and the way staged events are shaped, including the space, text, performers, spectators, and direction (Howard, 2002).
Dramaturgy, in short, is the art of storytelling.
Dramaturgy is a theatrical framework that is assembled through the configuration of materials. It involves a process, a relationship, a way of working (Trencsényi, 2015).
Dramaturgy is a rendition from investigation to performativity (JWT, 2026).
Dramaturgy is a creative practice that, through critical observation, curiosity, question, reflect and a process integral to the origination, development, production and reception of plays and theatrical performances with the creative team (Hamilton & Chon, 2022).
Surveillance capitalism is not just sensors, data, but infrastructure.
Written by Jing Wang Thomas, jw2223@cam.ac.uk, 2026-07-03
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0