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ABSTRACT
During the COVID-19 pandemic, pre-recorded and recorded videos were extensively live-streamed or displayed on online platforms, usually as a substitute for the “real thing”. Online theatre became an ambassador for theatre performance, remaining selectively oblivious to theatre’s innovative digital paths of the past. The synergy between theatre and the digital was significantly reconfigured and its intermedial dimension escaped our collective attention, despite a silent process of media translation and appropriation (or even total transformation) unfolding. A comparative approach based on Lars Elleström’s (Citation2021, Citation2010) media modalities model suggests that a video recording of a theatre performance destined for the web differs from the actual theatre performance in terms of its material, spatiotemporal, sensorial and semiotic modalities to such an extent that it constitutes a different media type. An online video of a live theatre performance emerges as an intermedial phenomenon with a strong transmedial dynamic and is found to belong to the sphere of media transformation. This new media type of “video theatre/drama” may acquire artistic value per se, when it develops self-awareness, addresses aesthetics and establishes its own poetics.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Live theatre performances have, of course, been live-streamed or recorded and shown in cinemas and online well before the pandemic, e.g. NTLive (National Theatre Citation2020), but mostly as a form of supplementary income and marketing strategy for the promotion of a live performance (AEA Consulting Citation2016).
2 According to Schrum’s taxonomy, a spectrum ranging from completely analogue theatre performances to hypothetical interactive holographic theatre allows us to situate distinctly each theatre performance case. For example, “webcam drama” (Moss Citation2020) would have come under Schrum’s category of “computer-mediated performance” (Eaket Citation2010, 41).
3 For example, the musical Hamilton; One Man, Two Guvnors, produced by the National Theatre at Home scheme or Bartlett’s Albion staged at the Almeida Theatre, which was filmed by the BBC to be broadcasted and then became available on iPlayer (Akbar Citation2020). Such examples conquered the web via several platforms accessible worldwide.
4 See, indicatively by Timplalexi Citation2020; Ball III, He, and Tassinary Citation2020.
5 The term “video” is preferred to the term “film” here because an online theatre video is destined to be shown online on a hypertextual webpage, not in cinema halls; is made for individualized spectatorship in personal study rooms/living rooms; has voluntary or significant potential breaches of the spectating experience; is really a set of digital images, captured most likely via a digital camera. Hence, its qualifying aspects differ considerably from those of the “film” media type. From the perspective of intermedial studies, Jensen and Salmose (Citation2022, 28–41) discuss in detail the modalities of film, while Brunow (Citation2020) introduces us to new forms of virtual community engagement due to the pandemic context.
6 Recently, Timplalexi (Citation2023) challenged the notion of transfer in communication by questioning a media product’s capacity to act as a “cognitive import/load/content battery” in the case of absent producer(s) and/or perceiver(s), and denoted “media product” as a role attributed potentially to any entity/action by the perceiver through a “theatrical gaze”.
7 Social media, such as Facebook, usually draw videos from such online video platforms and broadcast them in an embedded form. However, theatre on social media may offer more cyberformative experiences, with interaction between participants. For example, in “Parting is such a tweet sorrow” (Papagiannouli Citation2016), a collaboration between the RSC and Mudlark, the actors improvised around a prepared story grid, and reacted to followers, fans, real events and comments via Twitter.
9 For example, https://get.broadwayondemand.com/
10 https://zoom.us/
11 For an understanding of such creative artistic instances, See CyPosium – The Book (Citation2014).
12 Brecht, for example, quite often used films in his theatre performances (Brady Citation2006). For a better understanding of the use of film and video in theatre, see Giesekam (Citation2007).
13 “Live” actually became an artistic connotation with the emergence of the “recorded” (Auslander Citation2002).
14 Nowadays, the theatre stage receives new spatialities with the use of digital technology, with projections, 3D mapping, VR or AR applications, ascribing to it endless shape-shifting virtual spaces with striking potential.
15 Attempts to simulate theatrical temporality by offering live streaming or even mixed pre-recorded and recorded videos at a specific time and on a restricted basis, have not been rare. See, for example, Camden People’s Theatre Sprint Festival (Citation2021), which combined in-person spectating mode with live streaming and on-demand options.
16 Several channels on Youtube offer theatre performances for free and on a permanent basis, such as the Onassis’ On Stage. Also, numerous platforms provide access to permanent videos. See, for example, those mentioned by Lukowski, McCabe, and Johnstone (Citation2021).
17 For a thorough understanding of the term “ergodic”, see Aarseth’s Cybertext: Perspectives on ergodic literature (Citation1997).
18 This interdisciplinary discussion revolved around Shakespeare’s plays on film (Shaughnessy Citation1998; Jackson Citation2007; Ball Citation2013; Buchanan Citation2014; McEvoy Citation2016). Shakespeare’s plays have also been discussed in relation to the screen in general, including television and video (Rothwell and Melzer Citation1990; Davies and Wells Citation1994; Holderness Citation2002; and Boose and Burt Citation2005).
19 Video characterizations such as “recorded” and “live-streamed”, or “canned” and “film-like”, as discussed previously in relation to semiosis, are just some tendencies to be read in the corpus of these videos, and are not necessarily the best nor the sole ones. However, hopefully, they contribute to the readings of the video’s contextual and operational qualifying aspects. More specifically, the term “canned theatre” was initially used in order to denote literal transcriptions of performances (Cook and Sklar Citationn.d.). If seen through the intermedial lens, these filmic transcriptions are intermedial media products and not solely “films”.
20 Or signs may, right from the start, adjust to camera strategies. For example, Station House Opera’s internet theatre pieces use “hybrid scenographies designed for framing by the camera” (Lavender Citation2017, 18).
21 All the videos discussed below as mere examples for the reader and not full-blown case studies. They come from a search on Youtube with the keywords “Hamlet 2020” (performed 30/12/2021). All of them were uploaded during the pandemic (March 2020-May 2021).
22 For example, the video by Thomas Aquinas College called “Shakespeare's Hamlet | Thomas Aquinas College, California Citation2020” was recorded with the rationale of being more or less a basic recording. The camera simulates a privileged spectator’s position, is overall steady and there are no extra-diegetic elements in the video per se.
23 But not to the subjective cognitive dimension of watching such a performance. For example, a close-up or a cut may serve differently the psychological necessities emerging. Hence, what may be literally and “objectively” closer, may feel subjectively over-distanced – however, this remains “uncountable”.
24 The video “Hamlet” by Bob Jones University (Citation2020) could be said to aspire to “canning” a theatre performance. Though it is rather simple, there are alterations in the camera angle to make it more “interesting” and “dramatic”.
25 Finally, the video by CSSD London entitled “Hamlet - MA Acting Classical 2020” consists of a film-video version. See also Nick The Poet’s (Citation2020) “Hamlet 2020: new trailer”. Trailers for theatre performances on Youtube very often follow this more “filmic” option.
26 However, with the establishment of modernism and post-modernism, theatre’s practices, discourses and conventions have been reconsidered, with a schism occurring between dramatic theatre and performance.
27 Nikolaidou (Citation2018) discusses, for example, how even journalism’s operational qualifying aspect is rapidly changing, as journalism seeks to be also aesthetically accredited.
28 See footnote 5.
29 The Jewell Theatre (Jewell Theatre Citation2021). https://secondlife.com/destination/the-jewell-theatre
30 For an introduction to telematic performance, see Pérez (Citation2014).
31 Although transmediality may be appealing as a satisfying facilitator for comparative intermedial analyses between media products and types, it should be noted that it is a metaphor, a theoretical tool. If it literally was at work, the materialities of media products would be unimportant vessels of meaning, rather than traces interpreted by thirsty meaning-making subjects (Timplalexi and Führer Citation2023). Transmediality can instead be understood as always anchored on specific media types.
32 If interested further in the post-pandemic perspective, see also Theatre Research International Special Issue (48.1) on Presence and Precarity in (Post-)Pandemic Theatre (Pietrzak-Franger et al. (eds.), Citation2023).
33 Sometimes, this indexical residue is further minimized by incorporating conventionally extra-diegetic elements in the video narrative, such as a title, an ad, or even a “filmic” scene informing us about a character’s past, for example. The concept of remediation may not suffice to capture emergent complexities and we may have to take a closer look at current developments within intermediality studies (Brunow Citation2015, 47).
34 When we watch a video of a live theatre performance on the web, we “read” the drama as we would in theatre. If a video on Youtube did not have a recognizable name drawn from the dramatic pool, nor was assisted by theatrical contextual elements such as actors’ names, the name of theatre stage and ideology, perhaps it would not be recognized as “theatre” but as a “video”.
35 This discussion cannot be further developed at this point, as it would require a thorough examination of the question “is there theatre without drama?”. The dual term “video theatre” / “video drama” is preferred, as it could also include videos of live theatre performances regarded as post-dramatic or non-dramatic.
36 For example, the 24 Hour Plays Viral Monologues ensemble (Citation24 HR. Plays Citation2021) uses a vertical video frame identical to that of a TikTok video.
37 There have already been sporadic characterizations echoing genre attribution ambitions to online videos of theatre performances, such as the “Pillow Period” or the “Monologue Age” (Clapp Citation2021).