From Stage to Data: Historicizing Acting in the Digital Age through the Web Paradigm

Live acting in theatre and performance has undergone a significant evolution in the digital age. Drawing a parallel with the development of the Web — from Web 1.0 to Web 3.0 — this study proposes three corresponding conceptual models of the performer. Performer 1.0 is characterized by centralized authorship and the synchronization of stage action with predetermined multimedia content. Performer 2.0 operates within interactive and intermedial environments, engaging in modular and shared authorship while incorporating audience participation into the dramaturgical structure. Performer 3.0 primarily generates cultural data — gestures, movements, voice, or character traits — to be stored, processed, and reconfigured, including by artificial intelligence systems, in contexts that may be temporally and spatially removed from the original performance. By historicizing these practices, the study traces how media interoperability, algorithmic interactivity, semantic technologies, and AI reshape both the aesthetics of acting and the ontology of presence. Rather than marking the disappearance of the human performer, these developments call for new artistic competencies and critical perspectives, fostering hybrid human– machine collaborations in which embodiment, agency, and authorship are distributed between carbon-based and synthetic agents