{"id":182,"date":"2020-05-04T07:57:49","date_gmt":"2020-05-04T07:57:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/21\/?p=182"},"modified":"2026-06-22T10:43:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T10:43:13","slug":"paradigm-shift-making-theatre-with-social-media-in-the-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/21\/paradigm-shift-making-theatre-with-social-media-in-the-21st-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Paradigm Shift: Making Theatre with Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Danielle Le Saux-Farmer<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In The Society of the Spectacle<\/font>, first published in French in 1967, Guy Debord has a sense that “the show is not a collection of images, but a social rapport between people, mediatized by images.” While his observations certainly ring true in the internet age, it is unlikely that Debord could have envisioned the extent to which mediatization has transformed the making of theatrical work. Social media, being at the heart of everyone\u2019s day to day experience, is a central part of the two works under discussion here: Semblance<\/font> (2013) and La fin de la fiction<\/font>, which is currently in development and scheduled for production in 2022. This paper focuses on these two experiences of professional theatre-making and explores the distinction between creating work with social media and making work about social media, given how the complexities of it proliferate and change so rapidly.
Keywords: <\/strong>social media, theatre creation, process, product, collective<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In The Society of the Spectacle, <\/em>first published in French in 1967, Guy Debord argues that  “the show is not a collection of images, but a social rapport between people, mediatized by images” (10).[1]<\/sup><\/a> While his observations certainly ring true in the internet age, it is unlikely that Debord could have envisioned the extent to which mediatization would have transformed the making of theatrical work. Over the past eight years of creating new work as a theatre maker, I have experienced directly the intensification of the use of social media in collaborations with the theatre company Les Nuages en pantalon (founded in 2001), with whom I have worked closely. This company has a reputation for working with diverse artists to produce works that bear witness to contemporary cultural concerns facing humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by the Cycle Rep\u00e8re method, made popular among French Canadian theatre makers in 1980, members of Les Nuages en pantalon devise theatre through a creation process of using material objects as “sensitive resources” through which they explore the relationship between the actor and the stage. Working with Les Nuages en pantalon, each artist participates in the writing, staging, set design and performance. Because of this creative method, all aspects of the production develop simultaneously, organically and over a long period of rehearsals, as opposed to more traditional approaches in making theatre work, often condensed to a few weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under discussion here are two projects on which I have collaborated that include an exploration of social media: Semblance, <\/em>in 2013 and La fin de la fiction<\/em>, which is currently in development and scheduled for production in 2022. Focusing on these experiences, this paper explores the distinction between making theatre work with <\/em>social media and making theatre work about <\/em>social media. I am particularly interested in three aspects that have emerged in these collaborative theatre projects: how social media has influenced the creation process, specifically within the context of collective creation; how social media influences the themes of our relationship to reality and fiction; and how social media foregrounds issues of time-sensitivity and relevance with respect to the use of such technology as a tool for making theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Jean-Philippe Joubert. Photo: St\u00e9phane Bourgeois<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
The Creation Process \u2013 Integrating Social Media as a Scenic Metaphor<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The Semblance<\/em> project began its development in 2010 with the graduating class of the Conservatoire d\u2019art dramatique de Qu\u00e9bec. As a class, we worked under the direction of the founder of Les Nuages en pantalon, Jean-Philippe Joubert, improvising and writing for three months, until opening of the production in December 2010. The creative process for this piece unfolded in a very short and intense time frame. It was based on collective improvisation and inspired in part by the Cycle Rep\u00e8re method. The fundamental question we discussed was: what is loneliness?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result was a constellation of characters and situations dealing with different types of solitude and disconnectedness we encounter in a very digitally connected, but superficial, modern world. The central character, a commercial photographer in search of truth and authenticity, foregrounded a poetic shift from digital to film photography. When we reworked the piece in 2013 at the P\u00e9riscope Theatre in Qu\u00e9bec City, we had to reflect the changes in social media usage, and thus we rewrote certain characters to demonstrate how their dynamic online presence was in stark contrast to their real-life situations of being alone, lost and disconnected from others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Integrating social media in the reworking of the play had profound effects both on the final performance, in terms of writing and staging, and on the creative process. One of things we realized early on was that we could no longer continue to improvise the development of new character arcs. As a group, we were accustomed to using active ways of developing scenes and dialogues. For example, we used improvisation to explore the story\u2019s possibilities; a rule of thumb in the process was always \u201cdon\u2019t talk about the idea\u2014do it.\u201d Yet, expressing a character\u2019s inner life through social media, such as improvising someone scrolling through their Facebook feed, proved to be quite uninteresting to the performance we had in mind. However, when we staged the act of scrolling, with a projection of the content visible to the audience, the scene became dynamic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thinking about staging became a main focus of the process, which developed simultaneously with the writing of the scenes. In terms of process, then, we had to rethink how we were developing the stories. We were trying to remain instinctive, to avoid being too analytical, while, at the same time, the members of the creative team were exploring various social media platforms, quite disconnected from each other. Ironically, as artists of a collective creation, despite our best intentions, we often found ourselves becoming disengaged from the work and one another; a theme that developed further as the piece evolved.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Danielle Le Saux-Farmer as Sophie Lalancette, Maxime Robin as Paul. Semblance <\/em>by a collective of authors. Directed by Jean-Philippe Joubert. March 18, 2013. Th\u00e9\u00e2tre P\u00e9riscope, Quebec City.  Photo: Vincent Champoux<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Within this context of developing the 2013 version of the work, we used the same characters, but now they were much more connected to their social media profiles and were experiencing various forms of loneliness, grief and emptiness, desperately searching for human, real-life, connection. There were employees of a communications agency, for instance, who were in the process of launching the website of a self-help power couple. Indeed, in this version of Semblance<\/em> the focus on photography really evolved into a theme of the tyranny of the image we project of ourselves, especially on social media platforms. Thus, social media was not only present in the production as a subject in certain storylines, but also as a scenic language. Different social media platforms were projected onto the walls of the space, allowing the audience to experience the characters’ sincere quests for meaning and connection in the face of loss and emptiness. As theatre critic Alain-Martin Richard put it, \u201call the characters in this multiplatform theatre are searching for their own identities, torn between a world of appearances and a world of flesh\u201d (2017).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Video 1<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
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