Date:
Location:
RCC is pleased to announce this event, featuring RCC Fellow Borja Manero, .
"In Western countries, young people are losing their interest in drama. According to several studies, overcoming the gap between young people and theater will require creating a new future for theater. Young people’s lack of interest (and especially towards classical theater) contrasts with their enthusiasm for video games. I strongly believe that video games could help students build a more reflexive and personalized understanding of drama and improve their attitude towards theater-going."
"I present two projects: La Dama Boba (“The Foolish Lady”), in which we explored the possibility of using video games as tools for motivating audiences towards classical theater, and La Cortesía de España (“The Courtesy of Spain”), our last video game, in which, in collaboration with the Spanish Classical Theater Company, we analyzed ways to create a graphical adventure from a classical text."
Borja is currently a Visiting Scholar in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. He has a PhD in Computer Science from the University Complutense of Madrid (UCM). He received bachelor’s degrees in Physics (majoring in Computer Science; 1999) and in Dramatic Arts (2007) from the UCM. After two years at CERN (Geneva), he began to combine his work as an associate professor at UCM with his passion, the theater. He has participated in more than 50 theater plays, films, and TV shows as a professional actor, and he directed “Combat de nègre et de chiens” (Black Battles with Dogs), by Bernard-Marie Koltés. Since 2010, he has been researching the possibilities for using interactive multimedia (video games) as motivators in theater-going. His main goal is to fill theaters with young people.