Toward a Future Theatre: Conversations during a Pandemic

This collection explores the innovations in digital theatre during the Covid-19 lockdown, featuring conversations with theatre makers in the US and UK. It highlights the challenges and opportunities for theatre to evolve, address social inequalities, and create new ways of working and reaching audiences.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 256 pages
\n Publication date: 16 December 2021
\n Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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This collection, featuring conversations with theatre makers in the US and UK during the first 8 months of the Covid-19 lockdown, delves into the innovative developments in digital theatre as artists, companies, and theatres adapted to the restrictions and sought new ways to work and engage audiences. Beyond documenting the work that was created, this book captures the artists' dreams for a new post-Covid reality, where theatre is reimagined and issues of racial and economic injustice are addressed.

The conversations are organized under 5 broad areas, allowing theatre makers to candidly discuss the present and future of theatre:

R/evolution: How can theatre evolve rather than merely re-set? What kind of field could this be if the arts sector is to survive in the US and UK, and if white supremacist, classist, ableist, and patriarchal structures are dismantled, and acts of regeneration and reformation occur?

What does theatre look like at the local and hyper-local level, and when working with young people and communities at risk?

What are the challenges of creating work in the digital realm and/or exploring socially distanced performance in new ways?

How can theatre address social inequalities and be a place for acts of political and artistic resistance? How has the pandemic galvanised their commitments to communities, arts advocacy, use of languages on the stage and page, and considerations of the living archive?

Acts of communion with audiences, readers, fellow artists, students, and within ensembles and collectives. How do we find new ways to gather and make when liveness and the shared experience are challenged?

These conversations offer valuable insights into the creative processes, challenges, and opportunities that emerged during the pandemic, as theatre makers adapted to the changing landscape and sought to redefine the art form for a new era.

\n Weight: 328g\n
Dimension: 216 x 138 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9781350241053\n \n