Episode 4: An edited version of the final roundtable discussion on „Post-COVID-19 Art Worlds: New Challenges“ with Lucy Askew, Anna Burzynska, Josh Edelman, and Cornelius Puschke, chaired by Eckart Voigts.

Episode 3: Jane Macnaughton presents her paper on „The Past, Present and Future of COVID-19: The Role of Medical Humanities“

Episode 2: Sarah Bay-Cheng presents her paper on „Theatre Without Theatre: Performance Transmission as Translation“. In her talk, she introduces the concept of translation to describe the adaptation of theatre for the digital medium and highlights the essential but often neglected work of the ’translator’ in digital performance. While digitalisation might be essential for theatre’s future, the translation of digital theatre is also characterised by what she referred to as “monstrous loss”: it highlights its own gaps and failures and what ‘gets lost in translation’ but also shows what labour and technology is needed to make it possible. Citing Erika Fischer-Lichte’s blatant rejection of digital theatre, Sarah Bay-Cheng‘s talk also asks two key questions for any study of viral theatre: “What is the relevance of liveness?” and “What are alternative ways and spaces in which liveness can be created?“

Episode 1: Heidi Liedke and Monika Pietrzak-Franger provide an introduction to the key concepts of viral theatre and talk about theatrical liveness and communality in times of social distancing.

Bibliography

Aebischer, Pascale. Viral Shakespeare. Performance in the Time of Pandemic. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2021.

Aebischer, Pascale and Rachael Nicholas. Digital Theatre Transformation: A Case Study and Digital Toolkit. University of Exeter, 14 Aug. 2020. Web. 28 Nov. 2020. <http://hdl.handle.net/10871/122587>.

Artaud, Antonin. „The Theatre and the Plague.“ The Theatre and Its Double. Trans. Victor Corti. Surrey: Alma Books, 2010. 9-20.

Auslander, Philip. Performance in a Mediatized Culture. London: Routledge, 2008.

Couldry, Nick. „Liveness, ‚Reality,‘ and the Mediated Habitus from Television to the Mobile Phone.“ The Communication Review 7.4 (2004): 353-361.

Felton-Dansky, Miriam. Viral Performance: Contagious Theatres from Modernism to Digital Age. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 2018.

Fischer-Lichte, Erika. Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual: Exploring Forms of Political Theatre. London: Routledge, 2005.

Hutchby, Ian, and Simone Barnett. „Aspects of the Sequential Organization of Mobile Phone Conversation.“ Discourse Studies 7.2 (2005): 147-171.

Klier, Helmar, ed. Theaterwissenschaft im deutschsprachigen Raum. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1981.

Liedke, Heidi and Monika Pietrzak-Franger. „Viral Theatre: Preliminary Thoughts on the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Online Theatre.“ JCDE 9.1 (2021): 128-144.

Liedke, Heidi. Review of Antony and Cleopatra (NT At Home). Shakespeare Bulletin 39.1 (2021): 151-155.

Meyer-Dinkgräfe, Daniel. „Liveness: Phelan, Auslander, and After.“ Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 29.2 (2015): 69-79.

Plato. The Republic. Trans. Desmond Lee. New York: Penguin, 1987.

van Es, Karin. „Liveness Redux: On Media and Their Claim to Be Live.“ Media, Culture & Society 39.8 (2017): 1245-1256.