On 16 and 17 July 2020, we produced and performed the short online theatre production Dr Tulp and the Theatre of Zoom. The piece was performed 16 times, online via Zoom, to audiences of 4 at a time, which we followed with a Q&A workshop for an audience of c. 80 people on the opening night, also on Zoom. The experience of making this piece raised challenges and questions that endure beyond the live performances, particularly against the background of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns of 2020-2021, which relegated much, if not most personal and professional communication outside of narrow domestic groups to online spaces. Questions of embodiment and space, presence/absence and the role of framing and occlusion in the creation and experience of meaning insinuated themselves in the process of making the work and took centre stage in the writing as well as the production of Dr Tulp and the Theatre of Zoom. The processes of making the piece, including the perversity of connecting, in such a sterile environment, with a cast and production team that never met in person, became an exploration of a particular failure of representation that is most salient to theatre, but also relevant to the wider discourses of mediated performance and mediatisation.
- 4 views