The coriolanus online project

The Coriolanus Online project began life as a virtual mobility project between Coventry University (UK) and the University of Tampere (Finland). This project explored international co-operation in acting in a foreign language within a system that promotes a more environmentally sustainable model, eliminating the need to move large groups of student actors across the globe for rehearsals, workshops and even performances. Since 1995, the degree programme of Acting in the University of Tampere has sought new ways of investigating performance through the use of foreign languages. Each year class has either produced an entire play or at least scenes from a play in a language that none of the performers were previously familiar with. This technique encourages actors to make conscious use of the body to communicate meaning and to focus on the materiality of the text and the physicality of the voice. It can improve articulation, adding energy to the act of speaking. It can also have a positive effect on body awareness. Using a foreign language may somewhat liberate the fixed subjectivity intertwined to the mother tongue. It can help to break away from some habitual ways of using and perceiving the body and thus even be the key for creating genuine presence on stage. Taking the text of Shakespeare's Coriolanus as a basis for study, students from both institutions worked on a small section of the script (3:3) in both Finnish and English. A 'virtual rehearsal space' was created in both locations through the re-purposing of H.323---videoconferencing technology and the use of large rear projection screens, high speed internet connections and unidirectional, hypercardioid microphones. Skype and Adobe Connect were also used for self-directed student rehearsal, peer to peer learning and discussion and were also used to provide a series of seminars and lectures contextualising Renaissance theatre, Finnish theatre culture and the theories underpinning acting in a foreign language. The scene chosen from Coriolanus also allowed the opportunity to investigate the concept of the citizen in the 'mobile' age, the relationship between politicians and the people and their ability to engage in meaningful political dialogue through computermediated exchanges.