Theatre and Social Media by Patrick Lonergan

Author:Patrick Lonergan [Lonergan, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Performing Arts, Theater, General, Dance, Classical & Ballet
ISBN: 9781137463708
Google: zr9srgEACAAJ
Publisher: Macmillan Education UK
Published: 2015-11-03T20:23:57.570170+00:00

Social media in theatre: formal innovations

If the plays I’ve just discussed seem thematically similar to well known dramas such as Hedda Gabler or A Doll’s House, they are also formally quite conventional, comprising linear narratives that proceed realistically in self-contained dramatic worlds, with the fourth wall largely in place. Both Closer and The Nether attempt to find ways to theatricalise social media, with Marber’s play putting a computer screen onstage, and Haley’s switching back and forth from the virtual to the real world in ways that cause us to question which is the more authentic, and which the more valuable. Generally speaking, though, those four plays consider social media through the development of theme rather than through the exploration of form.

There are, however, some examples of performance practices that seek to use theatrical form to respond to issues raised by the emergence of digital social media. For example, the Personal Trilogy (2004–13) by the Belgian company Ontroerend Goed is not explicitly or directly about social media, but it does develop formal and thematic strategies for exploring themes that have become more urgent due to the impact of social media: our shifting understanding of privacy, the blurring of boundaries between real and virtual worlds, the apparent normalisation of narcissistic forms of behaviour, and what Sherry Turkle in Alone Together has identified as a loss of intimacy in many aspects of our lives. An exploration of that company’s work allows for an outline of the kinds of approaches that could be more directly applied to a theatrical investigation of social media.

In the trilogy’s first part, The Smile Off Your Face, the lone audience-member (called a ‘visitor’ in the published performance text) is blindfolded and seated in a wheelchair, and will eventually be placed on a bed and caressed by the performers – challenging our understanding of the agency (or passivity) of the audience, while raising questions about intimacy and the body. The performance ends with one of the actors bursting into tears before the visitor. The published performance script offers an imagined rendition of the thoughts that might go through the audience-member’s mind: ‘He [the performer] starts crying. I don’t know why. The tears are real. I don’t know how to react to this’. (All Work and No Plays, p. 53, emphasis added).

The company co-founder Joeri Smet explains that many audience-members will begin to weep along with the actor. ‘I can [understand] that The Smile Off Your Face makes you cry’, he acknowledges:

It probably would make me cry as well. It’s about being taken care of physically and being on that bed and having a very intimate conversation. I have to say that many people go and say ‘I haven’t been touched in this way physically, intimately, in so many years’ and sometimes I find it a bit sad to hear that. There are a lot of people who have a lack of intimacy in their lives. (Alex Needham, ‘Touch-Sensitive Theatre’, 2013)

Also covering the subject of intimacy, the Trilogy’s third part (A

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