In 2020 UK based Organic Theatre started Digital HotSpot, a training and performance research incubator inviting a collective of practitioners and researchers to meet, work and explore the potential of online training and performance making through the Zoom platform.  

This collection of eight short videos has been edited from the extensive audio-visual documentation of the project, which is also part of an ongoing practice-as-research enquiry on the soft boundaries between performance, space and spectatorship on digital.

Each piece of footage links to and is embedded within the visual essay ‘Digital HotSpot: Virtual Agencies in Online Performer Training’ (Mastrominico, 2023). In this context both the video selection and montage exemplify aspects of performer training, which often led to organic shifts towards improvisation and devising performance material.

Bianca Mastrominico
is a performance maker and scholar. Since 2002 she has been co artistic director of the
performance laboratory Organic Theatre ( www.organictheatre.co.uk ). Bianca is Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Drama at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, where she is also co leading the Practice Research Cluster within the Centre for Communication, Cultural and Media Studies. She is active within the Magdalena Project network of women in contemporary theatre.

(Sequence of videos, in the same order as in the essay)

1. Zoomcraft – 2:45 mins

2. Moving in Relation – 3:22 mins

3. Triggering – 3:16 mins

4. Micro-choreography – 2:42 mins

5. Star Wars in a Cupboard – 2:08 mins

6. Living Solo – 3:24 mins

7. Changing Mood – 1:54 mins