Thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Professor of Theater and Dance Sarah Bay-Cheng will be heading to the campus of the University of Georgia next June to teach other theater professors how to get the most out of digital technologies.

Bay-Cheng and her colleague from UGA, David Saltz, have been awarded a grant to co-direct the NEH Institute on Digital Technologies in Theater and Performance Studies. The two- week program will introduce theater and performance faculty to the ways in which digital culture is transforming their field, and help them expand their knowledge and expertise.

“I’m excited about this grant because it speaks to the growing significance of digital scholarship in theater and performance studies and I believe it will help to enhance and expand research in this area.” said Bay-Cheng.

Combining lectures, seminars and workshops, the institute devotes the first week to the impact of digital technologies on performance scholarship, while the second week focuses on digital performance practices. Bay-Cheng and Saltz will be joined by twelve visiting scholars and practictioners in digital humanities and performance from across the country. The institute will also be livestreamed by HowlRound, an online theater commons based at Emerson College in Boston, which, according to the grant proposal, boasts more than 50,000 unique monthly visitors.

“My hope,” said Bay-Cheng, “is that this institute will make digital methodologies more accessible to interested faculty, who can then take this work back to their institutions to include in teaching and mentorship of the next generation of scholars.”