{"id":70,"date":"2020-05-05T09:20:37","date_gmt":"2020-05-05T09:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/21\/?p=70"},"modified":"2023-03-15T11:34:12","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T11:34:12","slug":"making-community-in-the-age-of-migration-what-is-the-role-of-social-media-in-contemporary-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/21\/making-community-in-the-age-of-migration-what-is-the-role-of-social-media-in-contemporary-theatre\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Community in the Age of Migration: What Is the Role of Social Media in Contemporary Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Janne Cleveland<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

In thinking about the aspects of staging that mediate performance, I turn to my experience of seeing the 2018 Stratford Festival production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus<\/font>, directed by Robert Lepage. What stood out to me, in one scene, was how texting on a large screen conveyed dialogue to the audience, inserted humour and signaled the ways that communication takes place as much (if not more) through technology than in person in the twenty-first century. Given the plethora of technologies, both on our stages and in our lives, this paper explores, through a close examination of the use of media in this production, how the \u201csocial\u201d aspect of social media brings us together (if it does), and what happens to our notion of community in a time of massive migrations resulting from the proliferation of social upheaval and unrest.
Keywords<\/strong>: community, social media, staging, civil unrest<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nuse of technology in making theatre is certainly nothing new. With the rapid tech\nadvances in recent years, it’s now unusual to attend a production that doesn’t <\/em>incorporate various types of projections,\nspecial lighting effects, extra-diegetic sound elements or other trendy tech\naspects as part of the audience experience. Given the plethora of technologies,\nboth on our stages and in our lives, this paper will explore, through a close\nexamination of the use of media in Robert Lepage’s 2018 production of Coriolanus<\/em>, how the \u201csocial\u201d aspect of\nsocial media brings us together (if it does), and what happens to our notion of\ncommunity in a time of massive migrations resulting from the proliferation of\nsocial upheaval and unrest. What, in other words, does staging our relationship\nto social media, through narratives that reflect contemporary conditions and\nrelations, do to mark our interconnectedness in a world that feels more and\nmore the disconnections of a trash fire? <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Director Robert Lepage. Photo: Wikipedia<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I was initially struck by the idea of these connections\/disconnections through media, and in particular social media, while attending a performance of Robert Lepage’s 2018 modern dress production of Coriolanus <\/em>at the Stratford Festival. The connections between Shakespeare’s last Roman play and the sense of political betrayal and distrust in the contemporary world are exceptionally clear, and Lepage is only the latest performance practitioner to recognize and make use of this text to comment on class relations in a fraught socioeconomic landscape of deprivation.[i]<\/sup><\/a> At stake in the play is the very integrity of the Republic, where the Constitutional demands of “balancing rituals of trust and obligation” are dependent upon “a legislative structure vested uneasily in both the citizen assembly and the patrician senate, a dual executive of two elected consuls with reciprocal powers of veto over each other, and tribunes to make representations from the people to the senate” (Carver 177). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within this uneasy setting of a sociopolitical landscape threatened from within by civil war and from without from one of its warring tribes, the Volscians, current interest in this play is understandable. From Trumpian theatrics in the U.S., Brexit in the U.K., the civil wars of Yemen, Syria and South Sudan, as well as the continued onslaught against public services in Ontario, to the recent election of Jason Kenney’s right-wing UCP in Alberta, Shakespeare’s Coriolanus<\/em> seems like it was written for our own time and global location. What is most interesting to me in Lepage’s treatment of this play is how the use of media frames the animosity between the ruled and ruling classes, provides commentary on who should enjoy the rights and privileges of community and draws focus to these relational conflicts through its staging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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