Theater of Lockdown: Digital and Distanced Performance in a Time of Pandemic

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Offering one of the first scholarly examinations of digital and distanced performance since the global shutdown of theaters in March 2020, Barbara Fuchs provides both a record of the changes and a framework for thinking through theater's transformation. Though born of necessity, recent productions offer a new world of practice, from multi-platform plays on Zoom, WhatsApp, and Instagram, to enhancement via filters and augmented reality, to urban distanced theater that enlivens streetscapes and building courtyards. Based largely outside the commercial theater, these productions transcend geographic and financial barriers to access new audiences, while offering a lifeline to artists. This study charts how virtual theater puts pressure on existing assumptions and definitions, transforming the conditions of both theater-making and viewership. How are participatory, site-specific, or devised theater altered under physical-distancing requirements How do digital productions blur the line between film and theater What does liveness mean in a time of pandemic In its seven chapters, Theater of Lockdown focuses on digital and distanced productions from the Americas, Europe, and Australia, offering scholarly analysis and interviews. Productions examined include Theater in Quarantines closet work in New York; Forced Entertainments (Sheffield, UK), End Meeting for All, I, II, and III; the work of Madrid-based company Grumelot; and the virtuosic showmanship of EFE Tres in Mexico City.

Author Bio

Barbara Fuchs is Distinguished Professor of Spanish and English at UCLA, USA, where she also directs the Working Group on the Comedia in Translation and Performance and its Diversifying the Classics project (http://diversifyingtheclassics.humanities.ucla.edu/). In 2013, she launched the Golden Tongues initiative, which adapts Hispanic classical theater to contemporary Los Angeles. She also directs LA ESCENA, Los Angeles first festival of Hispanic classical theater, founded in 2018. Recent scholarly projects include Knowing Fictions: Picaresque Reading in the Early Modern Hispanic World (2021); a collaborative translation of Ana Caro's The Courage to Right a Woman's Wrongs (2021); and 90 Monologues from Classical Spanish Theater, with Jennifer Monti and Laura Muoz (2018).