“Necessity is the mother of invention.”  ... Plato

Digitalization of theater has evolved with advancing technology and the need to bring theater to a wider audience. The original intent to record the event for posterity, as with the video recorded plays of Sacha Guitry, in the 1930s, when talking films were a new art form.

Before Covid, some theater companies began using digitalization to create an interactive experience with a live audience. Belgium’s Ontroerend Goed theater company gave patrons hand-held devices to “vote” during a show about democracy (When theatre goes digital | The Space) Some theaters posted Twitter comments projected on a backdrop during performances to involve the audience in the show in real time.

As Covid closed theaters, presenting theater on Zoom became a necessity to reach any audience at all. For playwrights, Zoom readings, and even semi-staged shows from separate locations, became the primary vehicle to stay active and connect with a remote audience. It was not ideal, but it was the best solution t keep theater going during the crisis, for theater gets its energy from the interacting between actor and audience and from the shared experience between audience members. A hybrid of remote performance with a live audience is in cinema broadcasts of actors performing as a group to an empty house provided part of the solution addressing half of the equation—the audience has a shared experience with each other, but not with the performers who are spurred on by audience engagement.

During the pandemic, viewing theater on the screen of a device from any comfortable location served the valuable purpose of creating a vehicle for theater makers to maintain an audience. Now, we have an opportunity to take the tricks we have learned from producing works for online viewing to incorporate digitalization in promoting and staging theater for live and remote audiences.

Amy Drake