📺Televisual Theatre

Wayfinding: Taxonomy > Televisual Theatre

I define Televisual Theatre as live performances that are livestreamed, or live broadcast, through a video-based medium online, typically with the option of some audience engagement (for example, in a live chat section, discussed later). Other names associated with this genre include , , , and . These shows are temporally live (synchronous, co-present), with performers and audiences sharing the same time, but not sharing the same physical space so they are not physically co-present. Plays are also not (typically) pre-recorded as with Cinematic Theatre, nor will the audience interact to the extent that they change the narrative, as with Interactive & Gamified Theatre.

The term televisual refers (obviously) to television: I chose this term as it relates to television’s early broadcasts, which were often broadcast live from studios. Although television has mostly relinquished its broadcast liveness, the feeling of collective experience remains integral to understanding the form's dramaturgy. When entertainment feels televisual, it creates intimacy between the performers and audience through a small or medium screen, shares a space with other domestic happenings, involves reduced visual attention (and, potentially, greater auditory attention), and a sense of togetherness usually due to sharing the same cultural experience with other audience members, i.e. 'watercooler conversations' [See also: Spotlight-Companion Screens]. the widespread use of digital streaming tools: ‘The allure of television has deep roots in the need for human contact and the maintenance of identity and for a sense of belonging to a shared culture, the very aspects of life that socioeconomic processes [in the mid-20th century] were undermining’. This undermining included families moving to the suburbs, longer commutes between home and work, and the destruction of centralised for community gathering; television filled in the gaps left by this cultural atomisation.

: ‘Whereas film and pre-recorded videos, for example, offer neither temporal nor spatial co-presence with the spectators, live video relays and television may provide instances of temporal co-presence in the sense of a simultaneity of production and reception, without involving spatial co-presence …’. This sense of temporal co-presence is a defining feature of online livestreaming content too, which evolved in the early- to mid-2000s, well after television shed its live ontology. Video platforms from YouTube to Twitch to Vimeo incorporated affordances for audience engagement into their platforms specifically to support these types of content creators. Directly engaging chat audiences created a greater sense of togetherness, both amongst the audience and between the performer and their viewers; livestreaming entertainment picked up television’s live ontology when television preferred higher production values through recording and editing.

Audiences craved live community across physical distance in March and April 2020. As theatre makers moved online in 2020, taking up these already-live and audience-engaging platforms made sense as theatrical gathering sites, since theatre’s live ontology was first taken by television, then by livestreaming; theatre could easily transition into live, online spaces as stages. of this emerging form in an article on pandemic-era theatre but criticised the perceived lack of imagination when using livestreaming tools: ‘Theatre absorbs and reflects everything the world has to offer; yet, when theatre moved online during Covid-19 we mostly witnessed performances akin to film and TV instead of shows encouraging a merger of living participation online with the presence of a theatre audience’. Vermy here calls for an even greater sense of togetherness in the online platform, which online tools can provide like in-person theatre does and as television never could.

Certainly, some theatre makers produced what Nathan Leigh called ‘sit down, shut up’ performances, remediating the in-person audience’s immersed silent attention into a one-way screen – a cultural trend that began in 19th century theatres, as , and which has ended in the evolution of the proscenium arch of screen-based media. However, the influence of livestreaming content and the affordances of different online video platforms demonstrate that we as an audience can now talk back to the performance, to the performers, ; this has influenced online theatre makers to engage with chats, audience video and audio, or other forms of interaction in unique ways. Early live television attempted to communicate directly with their audience but, like traditional ‘sit down, shut up’ theatre, could not incorporate the direct audience response; Televisual Theatre now has the opportunity with livestreaming platforms to reincorporate the and even engage them with certain rules in the UX design. The dramaturgy of audience incorporation into a televisual experience is discussed in the Sharing is Caring section.