🤷♀️Where Do We Go From Here?
Wayfinding: Conclusion > Where Do We Go From Here?
during the height of Covid lockdowns: ‘After the pandemic finally ends, it will become clearer which theater companies are committed to online streaming of their work and which view it as a stopgap in a time of crisis’. Nathan Leigh said during our interview about the ‘abandonment’ of second wave digital theatre: ‘Suddenly, I feel like there's a playfulness that hasn't been since the earliest days of the pandemic … Suddenly we're back to a place of, “Let's play and see what we can do”’. Michael Deacon agreed, noting that, as Creation Theatre continues to make digitally-native live performances, ‘some of the shows we did sort of reached, technologically, the high point of what they could achieve, and what we could achieve with our resources. But it's interesting that, not necessarily from a technological perspective, but from a creative standpoint and a theatre-making, a sustainability, and an accessibility standpoint, actually, that there's still digital theatre to make’.
I’m glad I am not the only theatre maker asking what will happen in the ensuing years to this fascinating new theatre form. One of digital theatre’s most ardent practitioners and supporters, : ‘I’m baffled how saying “digital performance is a kind of theater” is heard by so many as “digital theater will replace in-person theater” and that rhetoric then creates binaries, which creates a road to delegitimize one over the other. Why can’t they be scene partners?’ Digital theatre encompasses several new, unique, exciting, and entertaining methods of making performance that should coexist with traditional theatre.
So why should theatre makers continue to experiment with digital tools, hybrid productions, and online methods despite the previously discussed downsides? : ‘Perhaps the most significant reason for the continued existence and development of digital theatre post-pandemic, though – and the factor that will ensure it is part of the performing arts industry from now on – is the simple fact that it is now a genuine possibility for more artists and organisations than it has been in the past’. To me, this suggests that second wave’s ongoing popularity signals a return to some of first wave digital theatre’s simple curiosity, a desire for the new and unexplored.
This makes dramaturgical consideration even more important, though, to avoid the gimmicky or spectacular. that theatre makers should consciously decide to produce multiple types of media amidst their hybrid theatre media:
… on an organisational level, hybridity should perhaps be seen not as the option to choose between forms and technologies, but as the practice of working across as many forms and technologies as possible, in tandem. For organisations, the answer to the question of whether to provide live performance or online performance, live streams or on-demand videos, online-native performance or digitally augmented venue-based performance, is to do both, all six, and more besides.
This multimedial praxis keeps theatre makers aware of technology trends [Spotlight-Fast Prototyping] with potential uses both onstage and offstage [Spotlight-Tech Use Behind the Scenes]. This suggested approach potentially keeps theatre makers aware of their choices, too, avoiding gimmicky marketing-based mixtures of digital and in-person, but instead focused on creative experimentation and exploration of affordances and limitations with tools.
Ultimately, the dramaturgy of second wave digital theatre comes down to the simplest questions: does a digital tool serve the conveyance of your show to your audience? This communication can be in addition to in-person performance, instead of in-person performance, or as an adaptation of an in-person performance. Whether it is theatre, or whether this new wave of digital performance-making will come up with a new name (, films were originally called ‘photo-plays’, indicating their relationship to theatre), we cannot predict. The 21st century has been defined by many upheavals, but these times of chaos and questioning can be fruitful for creative workers integrating new methodologies and tools to their practice. Go forth and experiment!
Last updated