Postdigital Performances of Care: Technology & Pandemic

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This is a timely examination of the survival instinct of practitioners and audiences engaged in theatre-making and theatre-going a cultural activity that has been deemed among the riskiest in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This crisis has brought issues of care and public safety to the foreground, which in turn has seen theatre practice necessarily adapt into a variety of remote forms of engagement. Postdigital Performances of Care explores care as a relational concept that is defined by either action or disruption. It considers how the notion of performative acts of care can be seen to include and impact us all. Rethinking the focus on care as an interpersonal and Levinasian face-to-face dynamic, this study takes as its central area of investigation a paradoxical tension that has emerged between a growing postdigital attitude of disenchantment with digital technologies and the increasing reliance on online modes of practice at a time when physical distancing is vital. Liam Jarvis and Karen Savage explore aspects of care in relation to technology, spectacle and facilitation, and how new modes of delivery and repurposing of theatre spaces have been enabling as well as controversial. A series of case studies assess performances from emerging theatre-makers and participatory online theatre productions; performances discussed include Thaddeus Phillips Zoom Motel, Handle with Care by Central School of Speech and Drama students and Tania El Khourys As Far As Isolation Goes.

Author Bio

Liam Jarvis is a theatre-maker, practitioner-researcher, Co-director of the Centre for Theatre Research (CTR) and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex, UK. Karen Savage is a scholar, practitioner-researcher, Associate Professor and the Head of School of Fine & Performing Arts at the University of Lincoln, UK.