the sceptical futuryst: Theatre in Pandemic

"Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next." — Arundhati Roy

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A group of Theatre in Pandemic participants test out a new streaming platform

This summer, together with my colleague Nica Ross from Carnegie Mellon's School of Drama, we staged an experimental research course called Theatre in Pandemic.

It took place against the backdrop of not only the COVID-19 crisis but also a national and global effort to confront police violence and structural racism.

Both call for radically different approaches to theatre, but seem to pull in different directions. The former made working in the same physical space impossible. The second demanded heightened attention to questions of power and consent; the terms of co-creation between artists as well as the terms of encounter between artists and their publics. In other words, one set of conditions militated against building the strong connections and trusting relationships that are central to theatrical art-making, while the other brought the importance of those same connections and relationships into the sharpest possible focus.

The result of our grappling with that challenging contradiction was one of the most experimental and exciting classes I've ever taught.

The syllabus started as a skeleton that we deliberately left under-specified so as to enable adaptation and emergence in the fleshing out. It included Fluxus scores, online larp, ritual design, transmedia ideation, critical examinations of media and their enabling constraints, and a whole lot of play.

That is, we put aside the temptations (and hazards) of trying to replicate on Zoom any kind of theatre as we knew it before. Instead, we set out in search of new possibilities through experimentation and games, resulting in a set of design briefs and performances for a pandemic-prompted "playable theatre".

An outline of our six half-day sessions or 'episodes' perhaps gives a sense of the arc.

Episode 1: This is Theatre Now
• In-Class Action: Pass Around a Shared Object
• Weeklong Action: Create a Score
Episode 2: Building Worlds Together
• In-Class Action: Play a Live Action Roleplaying Game
• Weeklong Action: Design a Ritual
Episode 3: Mediums and Media
• In-class Action: Research and Experiment with online tech/art projects
• Weeklong Action: 60 Second Play
Episode 4: A Play and a Project
• In-Class Action: The Thing From The Future
• Project Launch: The Final Action
Episode 5: Studio Time
Episode 6: Final Action

Gratifyingly, and as hoped, the three projects produced by our dozen participants were wildly different from one another.

Queerantine 2020 by Lyam Gabel, Lenora Gant, and Petra Floyd
A user-navigated web-based archive with mixed media content, both contextualising and telling the story of a triad of people trying to navigate the criminal justice system, queerness, academia, and life in a pandemic.

PBC by Zeja Copes, Sean Leo, Maggie McGrann, and Carey Xu
A live-streaming, 360-degree cut-up play incorporating the words of James Baldwin, Michelle Tea, Hua Chunying, and CNN to create a conversation at the intersection of diverse lives, conflict and care.

S.99520 by Davine Byon, Major Curda, Rachel Kolb, and Cynthia Xu
An online larp (or live action online game, aka ‘laog’) in which United States Senators and industry lobbyists persuade, bribe and cajole each other in the closing minutes before the crucial vote on the Bill for the Green New Deal. Hosted on the web-based virtual space and conferencing platform gather.town that stylistically emulates an 8-bit video game, the participants navigate their way around the game space to find each other, activate video chat, and engage in high-stakes negotiations.

Thanks in part to the interest that folks showed in what we were doing when I tweeted about the course a few months ago, we've open-sourced the Theatre in Pandemic syllabus, complete with all reading and media resources, in-class and weekly 'actions' or assignments, plus additional links and commentary, as well as a demo reel of the participants' efforts (see below).

My experiential futures practice and classes have for many years drawn on theatrical modes, including immersive theatre, live action roleplaying, and guerrilla performance –– and as it happens my first ever pay cheques, at 13, came from being in a professional production of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. But this was the first chance I've had to collaborate with the School of Drama. It was a blast.

Our hope is that others might find some leads or inspiration in these documents of our struggle to connect, co-create, and reimagine collaborative art in a very challenging time.

Meanwhile, much gratitude to Nica and to all our participants.

the sceptical futuryst

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Theatre in Pandemic

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