The Medium is the Message, or Digital Spectatorship in the Time of Covid
Have you watched a Zoom play yet? How did it feel? When I watch theatre on a screen, it feels unimportant. By this I mean to refer to the medium, not the content, as I have seen some wonderful work presented digitally.
(N.B. I want to say right off the bat that I love what the prospect of digital theatre means for people who cannot normally attend, such as people who are differently abled in a way that makes theatre-going difficult. Although I am not in love with how this could segregate them in a potentially harmful way from interacting with the crowd that is easily able to attend live events. This subject deserves its own post, but the topic here focuses on the broader effects of digital theatre on the spectator in general, regardless of ability. I also want to point out how much I love and appreciate everyone who is keeping things alive right now and keeping people employed with digital theatre.)
So, how does digital theatre feel unimportant to me? When I am sitting in a performance venue, there are others around me (Is someone wearing too much perfume? Can I hear people chuckle at the wrong time? Sniffling? Is there a standing ovation? Is my arm touching the arm of the person next to me? Are they cute? Are the people behind me talking about the program? Is everyone older and Caucasian or more diverse? Do people stare at their phones during intermission or enthusiastically discuss the first act?), there’s a lobby (What was it like? Clean? Crowded? Did I bump into an old friend? Was the bartender kind? I know a bartender who’s a brain surgeon by day and works at the theatre to interact with people in a more positive setting. What is everyone’s story?), I had to travel to the theatre (Was it raining, so am I damp and uncomfortable? Sunny and perfect? Everyone there has been similarly affected by the weather, including the actors. How will this minor shared experience bring us all together? Was it a magical walk from my nearby apartment? Was the traffic heavy and am I now a bit worked up? Did I carpool with someone I’m there with, and did we have a pre-discussion of the play?), I share local knowledge with most of the audience (Knowles 74–75), and so on for pages and pages.
When I sit at home, these experiences don’t exist. The simple act of going to and being at the venue imbues the experience with importance. You have to make an effort, pay money, dress appropriately, be in the gaze of others attending (theatre is famously not only about seeing but about being seen). As someone who is highly self-aware, I may be more attuned to this, and I feel it in any public place. I enjoy the sensation of being kind of propped up by those around me. It actually helps me to get outside of my head when I’m thinking about everyone else’s head (like the opposite of social anxiety). And I think, for me possibly quite specifically, this helps me to focus on the performance: my co-spectators prep me by getting me outside of my head, and this prep does not happen at home; I am left inside my head while I try to take in the performance. This leads to a wildly difference reception of the piece, which is arguably better or worse, and even I haven’t decided yet as I haven’t seen enough digital theatre. (Note that it is my intellectual or emotional reception of the ideas in the performance that I haven’t yet decided on. The entire experience of digital theatre, for me, is decidedly negative.)
How is this different from a film though? Film was made to be watched alone and for me to receive while I’m still inside my own head. The makers are aware of their medium and how its spectators will be situated. Theatremakers used to be aware too, but of course that’s different now. So how does watching from home actually affect us? And how do we affect it?
Dominantly, there is almost no control over the spectator’s experience outside of what they see onscreen and hear over their speakers. Time itself is out of their control; even if it is a live performance, seen globally it could take place in the middle of the night for some and mid-day for others. Personally, even a regular matinee is too early, so the idea of tuning in to watch a piece of theatre in the morning doesn’t feel right. This is a very basic control that producers usually have that no longer exists, and this layer of informality is one of many that serves to strip the perception of importance from the theatrical event.
This, to many, is not a bad thing. Why put theatre on a pedestal? I think having theatre on a pedestal makes it magical. It makes us pay attention as though what we’re about to see and hear and feel are important and worth our attention. Some people may not need the frame around the experience that all these external factors provide, but to me, the more and more we let things slide into obscurity, especially at such a basic level as going to the theatre to see theatre, the magic will be lost. I fear this. When we can look at our phones while we watch a show, walk away from it at will, talk over it, divide our attention, turn it off, the experience is less intense. Live performances is one of the final vestiges of where we must pay undivided attention and not be staring at several screens. Go ahead, call me a traditionalist! There’s no space here for me to defend the fact that I adore experimental theatre, but I will say that I need to be outside my own house for the experiment to work.
Let’s look at something else, another way things are changing. Not only are we affected, but we affect theatre in return. This in itself is the magic of live theatre; it’s a feedback loop, or more of a giant feedback tangle, really (spectator-actor, actor-actor, actor-character, character-spectator, spectator-venue, character-character, venue-actor, spectator-spectator). Everyone is being variously affected and it creates a complex web of experiences. This is almost entirely lost when theatre becomes digital, but the relationships that remain are being reshaped. We are building new conventions: Now, we understand that the people in the boxes are understood to be in the same room. We understand that the mise-en-scène must almost entirely be imagined (the bedroom becomes the cathedral, the home office becomes the city park). We understand that you have to click on a certain link to be taken to the performance space. And so on. I don’t think these new conventions are harmful, but I do wonder how they will live on past this temporary (knock on wood) period of banishment. Will this new digital awareness of theatres help people in the sometimes-prohibiting stage of simply looking up performances and buying tickets? Will we be better equipped to imagine the mise-en-scène in a minimalist design? Will we forget not to mess with loud candy wrappers in the middle of the show? Will we find our attention spans have shrunken?
Will more people have been exposed to the idea of theatre in a way that makes them want to see the live version? Combined with what I’m hoping will be an overpowering desire for people to gather with others and witness live performance once it’s safe, this could be a rebirth of sorts for theatre! For me, the experience of digital theatre is negative enough to make me ache for the live version. This buildup of desire, in me and other theatre people, will help to propel us into venues once we can attend. And hopefully we’ll bring some newbies with us!
Works Cited:
Knowles, Ric. How Theatre Means. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Image: Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/621707923540415507/. Accessed October 2020.
