Nottingham Collaboration Unleashes Digital Theatre’s Infinite Possibilities
A Nottingham-based theatre company is collaborating with the University of Nottingham on an exciting series of experiences and creative projects to push the boundaries of immersive theatre production.
Chronic Insanity is led by University of Nottingham graduate and Artistic Director Joe Strickland, along with co-founder Nat Henderson, who challenge every element of theatre making, from the inception of the idea to after the final performance. The company creates and facilitates live events in a variety of traditional, found and digital spaces, and focuses on making the work accessible, affordable, sustainable and inclusive, while seeking to change the definition of what theatre can be by playing with form, genre, medium and technology.
Joe is now collaborating with the university’s Virtual and Immersive Production (VIP) Studio in a series of residencies. With one every few months, until the end of 2025, they hope to develop the projects with the support of the VIP Studio, which will result in five to seven new creative projects all working within the parameters of immersive production, mixed reality, spatial audio and digital theatre.
By telling pertinent stories about the online world to audiences within that world, and in ways that allow them to be in some modicum of control, allows the user to choose the direction their experience can take them. Current plans for experiences include a disability art piece about AI involving drones and robot dogs, as well as an immersive audio experience about training tooth fairies and an adaptation of A Doll’s House set in the world of The Sims.
“As technology innovates, partnerships like this are increasingly important to make sure that multi-disciplinary creatives can be kept in the loop with those innovations, understand where the future of creative arts might lead, and start developing their craft to be part of that future today.”
The projects will also explore the ethical creative uses of AI to help empower artists, especially those who identify as disabled, deaf or neurodivergent, and look through the lens of accessibility and sustainability as two key focus areas.
Joe says the collaboration will also allow the team at Chronic Insanity to learn how to work with all the immersive production equipment in the studio and teach other artists how to use it.
The theatre maker added: “We’re in a very fortunate position where we can access and experiment with all the wonderful technology in the studio, and we want to ensure that we use our time to thoroughly understand the potential of telling stories with this technology. Then we can share that knowledge with other artists to allow for more frequent and successful digital theatre creation in the future.”
The university’s VIP Studio is a specialist production facility which incubates innovation in film, TV and performance arts production and audience engagement. It supports and enables collaborative research and experimentation to contribute to the growth of the creative and digital talent and business in Nottingham and addresses the national need for new skills within these industries.
We are absolutely delighted to be working with Chronic Insanity and their network of artists and creatives. We are particularly pleased to have them support us in achieving our ambition to reach and develop a wider and more diverse community of practice around the immersive technologies we are advancing in the studio. As Joe evolves and develops their own expertise with the storytelling capabilities of these technologies and techniques, they will also be sharing that learning and helping us to engage and support the development of a wider network of artists capable of working with these powerful technologies.”
Joe’s journey in arriving at the residency with the VIP Studio has travelled full circle. They graduated in 2022 after completing their PhD thesis in Future Experience Technologies and Storytelling, based at the University of Nottingham’s Mixed Reality Lab. Specialising in using traditional theatre making techniques and applying them to entertainment technology, such as virtual and augmented reality, as well as recreating physical presence using these technologies.
We’re thrilled to be working with Joe Strickland and Chronic Insanity. I was lucky enough, along with Sarah Martindale, our other Creative Director to supervise Joe through their PhD, which gives us a unique perspective on the research behind their artistic process. Since then, we have followed Joe’s practice and have been hugely impressed with the variety of their explorations. To have Joe as a resident in the VIP studio not just for one project but for a whole series seems like the perfect fit for a studio that has an explicit research-through-practice focus. It’s going to be an adventure!”
At only five years old, Chronic Insanity already has a series of awards under its belt. In 2022, the company won the Off West End Award for Best Audio Production for Red Breast by Lotty Holder; in 2023 they won the VAULT Origin award for BATMAN (aka Naomi’s Death Show) by Naomi Westerman. That same year, Joe won the Digital Culture Network Award for Digital Transformation, as well as being nominated for the Digital Ambassador Award; and for the Off West End Award for Best Director for their work on 24, 23, 22 by Doug Deans.
Joe hopes that this latest residency with the VIP Studio and the emerging creative projects will tie into the theatre company’s other digital arts schemes, running the UK’s first digital theatre literary department and curating their data driven arts festival Puncture the Screen.