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Meet the editor of the exciting essay collection Digital Performance in Canada and its companion anthology Long Live the New Flesh—David Owen!

Describe yourself in one sentence.
Excited by ideas and innovation, I am a part-time scholar, part-time rock star, accidental intellectual, and child at heart.

Tell us a little bit about your new book.
These two anthologies on digital performance complement each other in theme but also stand on their own in content. The essay anthology comes at a time when similar collections on the topic of digital performance are emerging in the UK and the US and specifically focuses on the Canadian experience and context. The play anthology represents a sample of recent highly innovative digitally informed performance events being created in Canada for Canadian audiences; the first collection of its kind.

What’s something unique about you or something you like to do?
I have been playing keyboards in various bands since the late 1980s in various genres of industrial, electronic, goth, and rock. I am a synesthete in that I can see sound (sound provokes images, colours, and textures in my mind). My next music project will explore dark ambient music mostly to play with the textures and colours to create sound paintings.

What is something that you enjoy doing, and why?
I enjoy hiking in both natural and urban environments. Exploring unfamiliar space both refreshes and energizes me mentally and keeps me fit.

What are some of your favourite plays?
The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco, Endgame by Samuel Beckett, Don Juan in Chicago by David Ives, Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights by Gertrude Stein, My Head was a Sledgehammer by Richard Foreman.

What are you reading these days?
Paradise Lost by John Milton and The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey

What’s something that makes you laugh?
This isn’t new but it is seasonally appropriate.  

Learn more about David Owen:
David Owen holds a Ph.D. in Performance and Theatre Studies from York University, and an M.F.A. in Directing from the University of Calgary, and an M.A. in Dramatic Theory and Criticism from the University of Alberta. He is an award-winning scholar, a theatre director, and a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. His current research focuses on the intersection of performance, game structures, and digital technology. He has written on a range of related topics such as LARP, burlesque, roller derby, and ideology embedded within planned communities. His book Player and Avatar: The Affective Potential of Videogames was published in 2017. He resides in Edmonton, Alberta.