Public Sphere vs. Domestic Sphere in Online Theatre
I have spent a good part of 2020 watching online performances as theatres are closed all over the world. In the a-hundred-or-so pieces of Covid theatre there emerged three sets of spatial relationships that are particularly interesting: · - Imaginary space and real space · - Virtual space and physical space · - Public space and domestic space In the previous entries, I attempted to explore the issue of theatrical duality, which mainly deals with the first relation between the imaginary and the real. Digital theatre, however, because of the use of media, is much concerned with the interplay between the virtual and the physical. Pre-Covid online performances often explore possibilities of theatricality and interactivity in the virtual space. An early practice is Desktop Theatre’s waitingforgodot.com (1997) which ‘stages’ Beckett’s story in a chat room. RSC’s Such Tweet Sorrow (2010), a twitter version of Romeo and Juliet is composed of tweets by actors