Featuring conversations with theatre makers in the US and UK during the
first 8 months of the Covid-19 lockdown, this collection reveals the
innovations in digital theatre as artists, companies and theatres had to
adjust to the restrictions and formulate new ways of working and
reaching audiences. Besides documenting in their own words the work that
was generated, this book captures the artists' dreams for a new
post-Covid reality in which theatre is reimagined and issues of racial
and economic injustice are addressed.
With conversations grouped under 5 broad areas, a host of theatre makers
candidly discuss the present and the future of theatre:
* R/evolution: How should theatre evolve rather than re-set? What kind
of field could this be, if the arts sector is to survive in the US and
UK and if white supremacist, classist, ableist, and patriarchal
structures are dismantled, and acts of regeneration and reformation
occur?
* What does theatre look like at the local and hyper-local level and
when working with young people and communities at risk?
* What are the challenges of creating work in the digital realm and/or
exploring socially distanced performance in new ways?
* How may theatre address social inequalities and be a place for acts
of political and artistic resistance? How has the pandemic galvanised
their commitments to communities, arts advocacy, use of languages on the
stage and page, and considerations of the living archive?
* Acts of communion with audiences, readers, fellow artists, students,
and within ensembles and collectives. How do we find new ways to gather
and make when liveness and the shared experience are challenged?
