PhD Thesis Defence of Taavet Jansen

On 18 May, 2026 Taavet Jansen, doctoral student of Art and Design curriculum, will defend his doctoral thesis „ Disembodied Presence: A Conceptual and Practical Mapping of Streamed Theatre“ („Kehata kohalolu: voogteatri kontseptuaalne ja praktiline kaardistus“).
The public defense will take place at 10.00 at EKA (Põhja pst 7), room A101.
The defence will be held in Estonian.

Supervisor: Dr. Anu Allas (Estonian Academy of Arts)
External reviewers: Dr. Ott Karulin (University of Tartu)
Dr. Raivo Kelomees (Estonian Academy of Arts)
Opponent: Dr. Ott Karulin (University of Tartu)

Thesis is available in EKA digital repository.

Theatre has long operated as an artistic practice grounded in the encounter of bodies within the same space. Contemporary culture, however, no longer limits itself to physical encounters, but extends its trajectories everywhere through digital means and virtual spaces. A large part of our communication, work, and self-expression takes place digitally, mediated through screens. In such a situation, a question has emerged: what new forms, spaces, and experiences can theatre create for itself in the digital sphere?

At the centre of this doctoral dissertation is livestreamed theatre, a form of performance in which presence, space, and audience participation function on different premises than in conventional theatre. Livestreamed theatre is situated at the point of contact between theatre, film, online environments, and interactive media, and is grounded in a real-time event in which performers and spectators share a common time, but not a common space.

How can one create an experience that does not appear merely as a transmission, but as an artistic encounter? What possibilities are offered by technology, dramaturgy, and the active participation of the spectator? And what does all this mean for theatre more broadly, at a time when art must increasingly relate to the possibilities offered by digital environments?

To open up these questions, the author employs a practice-led research methodology, drawing on three artistic experiments — Wolves, Memento, and Inimeses hoitud — mapping the modes of operation of livestreamed theatre, the possibilities of audience participation, and testing its limits. Through these three projects, the work moves from video transmission toward interactive hybrid spaces, observing how the role of the performer, the position of the spectator, the experience of space, and the participants’ understanding of presence shift.

“Disembodied Presence: A Conceptual and Practical Mapping of Streamed Theatre” approaches livestreamed theatre not as a peripheral phenomenon, but as a possible new form of theatre. The dissertation offers both a conceptual and a practical mapping of a field in which theatre seeks new forms of life in digital spaces and experiments with how to remain alive in a world that is increasingly at once material and digital.