Stephen A. Schrum

Stephen Alan Schrum (born June 24, 1957) is a theatre director and associate professor of Theater Arts at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. His most current research area being "The Perception of Presence in Virtual Performance". Schrum has created work on online based performance in virtual worlds, play writing and he has published a variety of books on theatre. Schrum currently teaches courses based on theatre and technology. Alongside lecturing over the past years Schrum has worked for Association for Theatre in Higher Education delivering conferences and workshops based on the topic Theatre and Technology. Prior to this, Schrum attended the University of California. It was there that he received his PhD in Dramatic Art. Alongside his PhD Schrum also has an MA in theatre from Ohio State University and a BA in theatre from Temple University (1981).

Awards

2001-2005: Academic Advisor of the Year, University of Charleston. 1983: Calendar Magazine's "Best Theatrical Production" award for The Importance of Being Earnest, York, PA

Online performance Schrum uses online virtual performance platforms to create performances one being ATHEMOO that "served as a virtual theatre for a fairly large number of online performances". It allowed a new platform for performances to be based rather than in the conventional setting of a theatre space.

Aliens and the Internet is the title of four plays written by Schrum. He created a performance in 1996 called Net Seduction this was one performance that was part of the series and was staged in ATHEMOO, the performance "is set in an Internet chat room and meeting place, with a bar, dance floor, and people to meet". speaking about this performance created in 1996 in relation to today's vast amount technology and new performance platforms that have been created to allow artists to further develop cyberformance's, that are no longer text based, but allow for the creation of avatars.

A new performance that Schrum is working on is a performance in Second Life in which Schrum aims to "model Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty" Schrum, A Stephen. Theatre in Second Life® Holds the VR Mirror Up To Nature, in Handbook of Research on Computational Arts and Creative Informatics. 2009 Schrum, A Stephen. Teaching in the Virtual Theatre Classroom in Teaching Through Multi-User Environments. 2010 Schrum, Stephen A. "Prometheus Bound Machinima." Virtual Education Journal, Volume 2, Issue 1 (July 2012), pp. 93–97. http://virtualeducationjournal.com/. Schrum, Stephen A. "Building a virtual reality model of Artaud’s theatre of cruelty," with Elliott Sheedy. Metaverse Creativity. II, 2 (October 2012), 205-ff. Schrum, Stephen A. "Steampunking Shakespeare: Selling an Apocryphal Play with Pop Culture" 2014. https://www.academia.edu/6214362/Steampunking_Shakespeare Schrum, Stephen A. "Digital Alchemy: On Transhuman Performance" 2016. https://www.academia.edu/25621517/Digital_Alchemy_On_Transhuman_Performance Schrum, Stephen A. "This Is Your Quest: How to Win Intro to Theatre Preamble" 2017 https://www.academia.edu/34326207/_This_Is_Your_Quest_How_to_Win_Intro_to_Theatre_Preamble_ Schrum, Stephen A. "How to Win Introduction to Theatre." Theatre Topics, Volume 27, Number 2, July 2017. Online. https://jhuptheatre.org/theatre-topics/online-content/issue/volume-27-number-2-july-2017/how-win-introduction-theatre

COLLAB-L COLLAB-L is a listserv that Stephen A. Schrum is the owner of, it has purposely been built to help bring theatre artists together and help form collaborations with each other. Also was created "in order to facilitate the creation of new texts and performance works directly through internet contact".