🤳Companion Screens
Wayfinding: Spotlights > Companion Screens
The term companion screen is a softened marketing term applied to smartphones, tablets, some gaming devices (like the Nintendo Switch), and laptops which might be used simultaneously with other media. , this type of dual digital engagement comes up particularly , but also sometimes in theatre spaces, . Though some researchers promote the idea of companion screens as a way for TV viewers to ‘look up related information’ about what they are watching, typically, device use while consuming media is more distracted, .
By nature of its portability, the phone isn’t something you lose yourself in, but is a supplement to everything else. It’s increasingly common to watch a television show on a phone or tablet, while in line at the bank or on the bus commuting to work. (And when we do use a traditional television, we’re often on our phones at the same time, scrolling through social media or news, or even YouTube.)
Theatre makers have a fraught relationship between their work and their audience’s mobile devices. : ‘By far the most common misbehaviour was an increased reliance on digital connection, from taking pictures to texting to accepting calls. 112 of the separate imperatives within the 100 articles surveyed delimited the use of technology in general, with 87 texts specifically targeting “mobiles” or “cell phones” for disapprobation’. :
Kathryn Edney speculates that the use of technology tends to be seen as the most egregious offense because of how it detaches people from the moment of performance. And yet there is a conflict between this common claim [that technology or multitasking is a negative distraction] and recent studies of co-present versus dispersed participation, which have begun to demonstrate the productive potentials of mobile technologies within the live event. Spearheaded by the academic disciplines of fan studies and museum studies, this research is beginning to find that devices such as phones and tablets may actually enhance the viewing experience in a range of under-appreciated ways. Far from being atomised into individuals or absented into another space, audiences can … widen the connection produced by the live event beyond its limited viewing public.
Andrew Hungerford got to the heart of the problem in our interview: ‘How do we leverage the technology that people rely on in a way that – because they feel like they spend too much time staring at screens, yet still stare at the screens, so how do we leverage that in a way that is comfortable and not like, Oh, I shouldn't be doing this anymore?’. How can an audience trained in theatre etiquette learn they are allowed to use their devices in a show, and not feel ashamed? , regarding pandemic-era online and digital theatre: ‘Smartphones are the medium that audiences feel most comfortable using to engage with interactive digital theatre’. These digital devices have become extensions of many of us, and this should be integrated into theatrical work in some way.
Sometimes, as with the aforementioned ‘Tweet Seats’, theatre makers have attempted to incorporate devices into shows, but it was rare for theatre makers to more intentionally incorporate companion screens until the Covid pandemic. Many of the theatre makers I spoke with expressed excitement over the potentials of this form of ubiquitous computing. For example, Brendan Bradley posits that there will be a lot more theatre work involving companion screens, especially as more theatres are adopting digital playbills to resolve paper waste issues: ‘we have the playbill on peoples’ phones, and that play bill we can send signals to, so that they have buttons that allow them to actually spawn things or do things in the virtual world’ was one example he suggested. The following Spotlight examines some potential approaches theatre makers have tried when dramaturgically and practically incorporating companion screens into their work.
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