{"id":122,"date":"2021-10-19T15:56:11","date_gmt":"2021-10-19T15:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/24\/?p=122"},"modified":"2026-06-19T09:59:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T09:59:33","slug":"on-false-intimacies-and-anti-cathartic-modalities-of-being-in-the-digital-performances-of-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/24\/on-false-intimacies-and-anti-cathartic-modalities-of-being-in-the-digital-performances-of-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"On False Intimacies and Anti-Cathartic Modalities of Being in the Digital Performances of Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yana Meerzon<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

I propose a paradox: the novel experience of the COVID-19 induced digital spectatorship re-enforced the fundamental laws of live theatre viewing, although it proved to be utterly anti-cathartic. This experience revealed that despite its digital mode of transmission, theatre can foster affectual (co)presence of its viewers, our sense of community and our need for ritual. At the same time, watching theatre on a computer screen created a series of false expectations and beliefs: such as feeling intimate with a streamed performance (being close to the action and to the actors), an illusion of control (being able to tune in and out) and a deceitful impression of an understanding of your subject\u2014the personal, cultural, economic or political context, in which this work has been made. What this experience really proved is that theatre\u2014live or digital\u2014always operates within multiple binaries and pluralities. Watching theatre on screen\u2014participatory or immersive\u2014brings us into emotional immediacy with strangers. For a minute, we form an imagined community anew and share a ritual: together we cross the digital threshold, create the limen of a performance and exit back into the everyday. This homecoming is emotionally traumatic. It produces the ontological loss of self and re-enforces our sense of loneliness; and thus, it is anti-climactic and anti-cathartic. To illustrate my argument, I examine chekhovOS\/an experimental theatre game<\/font> produced by Boston\u2019s Arlekin Players Theatre<\/font> and Zero Gravity Lab<\/font> in 2021.

Keywords: <\/strong>Digital spectatorship, false intimacy and anti-catharsis  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this article, I argue a paradox: the novel experience of digital spectatorship, into which we were plunged in the spring of 2020, has re-enforced the fundamental laws of live theatre making and reception, although it also proved to be anti-cathartic. It revealed that despite its mode of transmission, digital theatre can foster affectual (co)presence of the participants, our sense of community and need for ritual. At the same time, watching theatre performance on a computer screen created a series of false expectations and beliefs: such as feeling intimate with a streamed performance (being close to the action and to the performers), an illusion of control (being able to tune in and out of the action) and a deceitful impression of a profound understanding of your subject\u2014personal, cultural, economic or political context, in which this work has been made. What this experience has proved is that theatre\u2014live or digital\u2014often operates within multiple binaries and pluralities. Watching theatre on screen\u2014even if it is not designed as participatory or immersive\u2014brings us into an intimate proximity to the actors, who can \u201cinvade\u201d our private space, and into a dense immediacy with strangers, who might be watching this performance together with us. As a result, we might feel intimately connected to these invisible and impossible to reach bodies and energies, and at the same time be estranged from them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To speak of digital theatre, I propose, we need to re-focus our critical attention onto the work of digital audiences and seek new models of analysis to theorize their (dis)engagement with\/from the action. Much like watching theatre live, when we attend theatre online, be it participatory or not, we share in making and observing a ritual. Together with the actors and other viewers, we cross over the threshold of the digital, create the limen of the experience and exit back into the everyday. However, unlike watching live theatre, in the presence of other physical bodies in a designated physical space, exiting the space of the digital can be traumatic. Instead of catharsis or emotional release, this exit into the physical realm can produce ontological loss of self and re-enforce our sense of loneliness; and thus, it can be anti-climactic. This paradox, I argue, can characterize our engagement with the action on screen both when we watch an archival video of a theatre play, which was not intended to be broadcasted, and when we follow a theatre work produced during the pandemic specifically for online streaming. This paradox can also define an interactive digital event, designed to solicit our intellectual and emotional participation. It proves that digital theatre operates within similar affectual frames of collective action and belonging as live performance.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u03a4he company of chekhovOS <\/em>inside the virtual cherry orchard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Watching theatre online re-enforces Erika Fischer-Lichte\u2019s argument on the performative power of theatre and its transformative aesthetics<\/em> (Transformative Power<\/em>, \u201cTransformative Aesthetics\u201d), and it stipulates audience\u2019s autonomy similar to what they might experience when attending a durational performance. Digital theatre, I argue, evokes the viewing conditions of relational dramaturgy, <\/em>the ways it solicits our engagement with and allows our disengagement from the action. In the following, I will briefly discuss how false intimacies and anti-cathartic modalities of digital theatre correspond with the frames of relational dramaturgy; my case study is chekhovOS\/an experimental game<\/em>\/, produced by Boston\u2019s Arlekin Players Theatre and Zero Gravity Lab. I attended several online performances of this work in the spring\/summer 2021. chekhovOS<\/em> was directed by Igor Golyak. It featured Jessica Hecht, Anna Baryshnikov, Anna Bortnik, Darya Denisova, Jeffrey Hayenga, Melanie Moore, Nael Nacer, Mark Nelson and Mikhail Baryshnikov as Anton Chekhov. I could also argue that the online audience of this production constituted an important element of its creative team, which helped this experiment come to life.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The company of chekhovOS <\/em>makes a direct appeal to the audience. Left to right: Jeffrey Hayenga (Firs), Anna Baryshnikov (Varya), Jessica Hecht (Ranevskaya), Melanie Moore (Anya), Nael Nacer (Lopakhin), Mark Nelson (Gaev)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

To Erika Fischer-Lichte, making and experiencing theatre is rooted within a self-referential <\/em>and ever-changing (aesthetic) feedback loop<\/em>: the performers \u201celicit[t] response from the spectators,\u201d who in their turn produce emotional reaction and impact on the action on stage; so, the performance itself \u201cremains unpredictable and spontaneous\u201d (Fischer-Lichte, Transformative Power<\/em> 38). Role reversal (actor vs spectator) (40\u201351), creation of temporal utopian communities (51\u201360), and interplay between proximity and distance within a single theatre space (60\u201375) constitute three constants of a live theatre work and its self-referential feedback loop<\/em>. Speaking of how these constants aid mobilizing transformative power of performance, Fischer-Lichte turns to Nietzsche, who in his own reading of the tragedy and the tragic, connects any \u201caesthetic activity to a liminal state\u2014intoxication\u2014and to processes of transformation triggered and performed by this state\u201d (Fischer-Lichte, \u201cTransformative Aesthetics\u201d 1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transformative aesthetics<\/em> is rooted within collectivity and simultaneity of group experience. Like Viktor Turner\u2019s liminality, <\/em>it is both a state in-between and an act of immersion and ritual. \u201cIt is liminal insofar as it presupposes a phase of separation in which the participating subjects leave behind their daily contexts, as is also the case with rituals. The participants undergo a liminal phase . . . in which they are transferred into an extraordinary state that allows for new and potentially disturbing experiences\u201d (Fischer-Lichte, \u201cTransformative Aesthetics\u201d 2). These transformative processes approximate what Aristotle understood as catharsis<\/em>. To Aristotle, Fischer-Lichte writes, the impact of theatre and specifically tragedy refers to the experience of \u201cexcitement,\u201d including pity and terror, which can \u201ctransfe[r] [spectators\u2014YM] into an exceptional affective state that is articulated physically and can transform the person concerned\u201d (\u201cTransformative Aesthetics\u201d 3). Catharsis is the goal of tragedy\u2014it functions as \u201ccleansing of these affects,\u201d it \u201cbrings about the actual transformation,\u201d and it \u201cconstitutes a liminal and transformative experience\u201d (3), which we can undergo together as a group and individually. This view of catharsis as transformation influenced many historical debates and contemporary discussions on the functions of performance, including its opponents, who warned about the dangers of theatre, potentially harmful to \u201cspectators\u2019 spiritual health\u201d (\u201cTransformative Aesthetics\u201d 3). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving theatre into a digital realm makes it necessary to rethink these postulates; because, despite its insistence on our collectivity, simultaneity, (co)presence and immersion, watching theatre online often emphasizes the opposite. Because of its ability to collapse hierarchies of making and spectating live theatre, digital theatre democratizes our experiences. It provides us with many possibilities to engage with it collectively as a group but also at our individual pace and comfort. It claims no control over our actions and reactions, and thus it invites a rhizomatic co-presence and co-actions of the participants. Digital spectators can join and leave a broadcast as they wish. They can turn the sound of their computers on and off, as they need it; and they can hold exchanges with fellow spectators, without being concerned of disturbing the others. And thus, in this democratisation of our experience and modes of engagement with the work of art, digital theatre approximates durational performance<\/em> and relational dramaturgy<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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