By Matt McDermott

From March 6-11, 2007, Bradley University in Peoria was the place to be if you are interested in the future of theater. Elmer Rice's "The Adding Machine" was brought into the 21st Century by an able student and faculty group who integrated live theater, multimedia environments and actors performing from remote locations in Ontario and Florida.

"The Adding Machine" was an interesting choice for a multimedia theater production. While director George H. Brown partly chose the play for the adaptability of its dramatic structure to the project, the play was also author Elmer Rice's warning against the negative personal and social effects of technology.

Given the nature of the production, we decided that video interviews with some of the key participants would be a fitting approach to a unique event that, yes it's true, happened in Illinois but not in the city of Chicago. Directing and producing a play that had to integrate many non-traditional elements to enjoy any measure of success placed an extra measure of stress on the always heavy burdens of directing and producing.

Here director George H. Brown, Chairman, Department of Theater Arts, Bradley University, gives us his overview:

For Dave Look, acting in two different producing roles forced him to apply the skills he had learned as a student in an unfamiliar environment. The play was faculty-guided, but student-driven, which illustrates the school's laudable focus on producing students who can switch between the purer work of the imagination and applying that creativity to varied practical ends.

Jim Ferolo is the Director of the Multimedia Program at Bradley University. The breadth of his skills and knowledge is impressive. Having honed his talents at Northwestern before he took up the position at Bradley, Jim's areas of expertise include interactive media systems; computer based training application design and traditional/experimental audio, film and video production/post-production. In other words, he mixes the "fine" and "applied" aspects of his art to offer his students a program that suits, for example, the video artist as much as the film production specialist - with the goal to encourage the development of both in the same student.

This clip offers an explanation of how multimedia can be seen to fit within the theatrical experience.

In new media art (to which multimedia either belongs or is an interchangeable term) interactivity is a major theme. The idea is to enable the onlooker to influence the development or expression of the piece in some way. It's a flexible concept but adding an improvisatory or dynamic element is a key element in today's technology-based art. This production of "The Adding Machine" created a dynamic in which the actors could play against and within the multimedia framework, but there was not an interactive element: the actors could not notably influence the multimedia elements during the performance. Recognizing that this would be a potential criticism of the project, Jim argues for the special role that the multimedia elements played in the experience of the play.

Over 100 students participate in the development and production of "The Adding Machine." As Jim Ferolo noted in one of the video clips, taking talent and skill and ending up with a concrete, finished product was a major goal of the faculty when they designed this experience. This project required classroom skills to meet the real world where logistics, teamwork and leadership can prove as important to a contemporary artist's sucess as a contemporary financial or legal services professional's success. It is an area still growing slowly at many art programs, along with the often undertaught subject of the business of art. Again, the character of the Bradley program comes out in George and Jim's concern that their students not only have creative ideas, but can fully execute them in a variety of contexts. David Rogers talks now about the logistical challenges: including working with actors in remote locations.

Tracy Domeracki had the daunting role of stage manager - part of her stage was virtual, part was piping in live actors from hundreds of miles away, part had the usual unruly in-person actors. All of which had to be brought together into a performance where these different elements made their unique contribution while fitting into a cohesive, dramatic experience for the audience.

Lee Flayton had the crucial role of operating the software that created the multimedia sections of the play. The project gave him the opportunity to learn how to integrate a familiar multimedia software in an unfamiliar context; in this case the theater - another example of how the project challenged students' existing skills to grow them in new way.