Katie Mitchell: Intimate Technologies in Multimedia Performance

Abstract

Many critics have had an extreme reaction to Katie Mitchell, finding the slicing and reassessment of classic texts and the use of technology (for example, in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, in … some trace of her based on Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, or in Crimp’s Attempts on her Life) troubling (de Jongh, 2008; Spencer, 2007; Tripney, 2008). We believe, however, that Mitchell’s use of technology, notably but not exclusively, in The Waves and … some trace of her, shows that she is one of the few directors in mainstream British theatre who understands how to creatively use available technology. It is often suggested that Mitchell’s interventions into British theatre-making, stage conventions and performance practices are heretical, the use of live filming and screen projection a mere distraction from the privilege of the written word (Bassett, 2008; Cavendish, 2008). Nevertheless, we will argue that Mitchell finds ways of operating in the ‘spaces between live action and close-up’, so that we do not only see ‘what is being created but how it is created’ (Mitchell, 2008b).¹