Stay at home, engage at home: extended performance engagement in the time of COVID-19

ABSTRACT

This article examines how Theatre for Young Audiences practitioners innovate in terms of deepening young people’s experiences of recorded performances in the digital space. It defines extended performance engagement, mapping the current context of pre- and post-performance interventions connected to professional theatre in the USA and Europe. The article questions the potential for growth and expansion of awareness of extended performance engagement in a world affected by COVID-19, and how this field values the overall experience of engaging with live performance, even when streamed at home. The investigation questions how we measure the successes of this engagement and its afterlife following on from the live, and now digital, space.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the theatre educators that responded to my email inquiries, specifically Fiona Ferguson at Imaginate. This article could not have been completed without the mentorship of Dr. Charlotte McIvor and the many inspiring webinars offered by TYA/USA throughout the pandemic.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Research findings stating time and budget as biggest challenges can be found in O’Sullivan, Schoenenberger, and Kingston (2017, 11).

² The differences between TYA and TIE are debated by many, see (Wooster 2007). However, common among them is the option to engage with resources, discussion, and/or workshops afterward.

³ TIE has been known to pose social questions that deepen a child’s understanding of the self rather than the former goal of introducing young people to theatre-making or talking about form, which is often explored in TYA programs (Nicholson 2009, 41).

⁴ Initiatives such as TYA@Home (USA) and Super Happy Fun Times at Home (Ireland) provide a platform for schools and families to access arts-based activities oftentimes connected to recorded performances.

⁵ International examples of TYA companies/festivals who have shifted to a digital space include, but are not limited to: Safe Place Festival (Israel), Windmill Theatre Company (Australia), Young People’s Theatre (Canada), ASSITEJ Korea International Summer Festival, National Arts Festival (South Africa), Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust (India), The Theatre Practice (Singapore), Center Gabriela Mistral/GAM Productions (Chile).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship, GOIP/2019/1188.