# Sharing is Caring
Online content, unlike traditional television, [offers the possibility of two-way communication](#user-content-fn-1)[^1]: ‘Telematic collaboration can equally involve partnerships with audience members as well as with other artists or remote company members’. I define Televisual Theatre by its liveness and temporal co-presence, but some theatre makers needed proof of this togetherness. It becomes a significant dramaturgical choice whether to integrate an audience chat, how the performers ([or an unseen chat or stage manager](/flinders-phd-research-project/spotlights/preshow-set-up/be-sure-to-prepare-staff-and-tech-crew-to-help.md)) might interact with the chat stream, and how much influence the audience will have over the narrative. Livestream content creators talk directly to their audiences through a live chat feature, but these performers rarely respond to every single written sentence, and often chats are audience members talking to each other as much as to the performer. [T.L. Taylor writes](#user-content-fn-2)[^2] that ‘a fast-scrolling chat window, filled with text that wasn’t conversational but full of excited exclamations, repetitive emoticons, and memes, could be seen as akin to the cheering one would find in a sports stadium’. [Brendan Bradley](/flinders-phd-research-project/appendices/research-participant-information/interviewees/brendan-bradley.md) agrees, noting that his audiences for [*Non-Player Character: The Musical*](https://brendanabradley.com/npc) remediate the online gaming chat experience back into live, in-person experiences: > If we returned to the idea that this was all, early on, trying to embody a chat, they \[the audience] basically become a Twitch chat in a room, all shouting out whatever they want to shout out and doing whatever they want to do, and being very excited and laughing at the participants and making fun of us, and it becomes its own version of the show. [In *Viral Shakespeare,* Pascale Aebischer suggests](#user-content-fn-3)[^3] that ‘online streams afford a mode of spectatorial engagement which, while distracted, may also be more responsive, response-able and responsible than the absence of physical and temporal co-presence in the context of online streaming might suggest’. When I asked [Natasha Rickman](/flinders-phd-research-project/appendices/research-participant-information/interviewees/natasha-rickman.md) of Creation Theatre what online theatre components she wanted to keep in her practice, she wrote: ‘Connection with an audience, by performers being able to speak to them direct to camera and to respond to their suggestions or in conversation depending on the show’. So, how have Televisual Theatre makers used platform tools for audience engagement? [^1]: Dixon, S. (2007). *Digital performance: A history of new media in theater, dance, performance art, and installation*. p. 429. MIT Press. [^2]: Taylor, T.L. 2018. *Watch Me Play*. 1st ed. Location 822-3. Princeton: Princeton University Press. [^3]: Aebischer, Pascale. (2021). *Viral Shakespeare: Performance in the Time of Pandemic*. p. 152. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://secondwavedigitaltheatre.gitbook.io/flinders-phd-research-project/taxonomy-of-forms/televisual-theatre/sharing-is-caring.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.