New Forms of Communities? The Constitution and Performance of Audiences in Digital Theater during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic plunged many theaters around the world into a temporary crisis and favored the rise of digital theater forms. This article investigates how the reception of theater changes in the digital space and, above all, how audiences as a social dimension of theatrical performances must first be constituted separately there. Based on performance analysis of the digital theater productions Homecoming and Sterben from Germany, the significance of the digital infrastructure for the assembly, performance, and action repertoires of these theater audiences is discussed. The author examines how audiences can be formed into different temporal communities in the digital space. These temporal communities are characterized by hybridity and have the potential to enable intense theatrical encounters across spatial boundaries.
Supporting Agencies
Keywords:
audience, pandemic, German theater, community, reception, performing arts, digitality, hybrydizationReferences
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Authors
Kai Padbergkai.padberg@fu-berlin.de
Freie Universität Berlin Germany
From 2010 to 2015 Kai Padberg studied theater and media studies and sociology at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in his bachelor's degree. In 2019, he completed with a thesis on audience protests his master's degree in theater studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. During his bachelor's and master's studies, he was also involved in various committees of the academic self-administration and was a scholarship holder of the Hans Böckler Foundation. Since October 2019, he has been working in the research project "Extended Audiences: Audience Performances and Public in Transition" in the Cluster of Excellence Temporal Communities at Freie Universität Berlin. Since then, he is also member of the Friedrich Schlegel graduate school of literary studies at Freie Universität Berlin.
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