New Forms of Communities? The Constitution and Performance of Audiences in Digital Theater during the COVID-19 Pandemic

• Authors: Padberg Kai
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The Covid-19 pandemic plunged many theaters around the world into a temporary crisis and favored the rise of digital theater forms. This article investigates how the reception of theater changes in the digital space and, above all, how audiences as a social dimension of theatrical performances must first be constituted separately there. Based on performance analysis of the digital theater productions Homecoming and Sterben from Germany, the significance of the digital infrastructure for the assembly, performance, and action repertoires of these theater audiences is discussed. The author examines how audiences can be formed into different temporal communities in the digital space. These temporal communities are characterized by hybridity and have the potential to enable intense theatrical encounters across spatial boundaries.

Keywords

EN

audience; pandemic; German theater; community; reception; performing arts; digitality; hybrydization

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Sztuki PAN
• Journal: Pamiętnik Teatralny
• Year: 2021
• Issue: 3(278)
• Pages: 145-163

Contributors

author

Padberg Kai

• Freie Universität, Berlin

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Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.36744/pt.861