Lockdown Theater

Abstract

This chapter uses examples of theater produced under conditions of lockdown in North America and the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic to trace shifts in creation, reception, and theorization of theater and its essential qualities. Public health directives requiring social distancing resulted in an array of creative theatrical outputs, spanning various forms and media from theater-via-telephone, to theater in virtual reality, livestreamed theater, and theater-by-mail. Rapid digital innovation especially prompted intense debate about the necessity of a physically co-present and temporally simultaneous audience. This chapter argues that the development of particular aesthetics, forms, and dramaturgies, as a direct result of the science community’s efforts to minimize the spread of COVID-19, ushered in a necessarily audience-centric theater during lockdown despite the impossibility of physical copresence. Trends toward metatheatricality, audience participation, and interactivity reify the central role of audiences in co-creating theater through the production of felt experiences of liveness and connection.