ASSEMBLY IN ONLINE THEATRE Replacement and Renovation of Theatre as a Space of the Social for the Digital Assembly in Pandemic Times

Abstract

Online theatre has received great attention in European theatre discourse in the wake of the worldwide Corona pandemic, which severely restricted physical assembly in terms of shar-ing the same time and place. Particularly considering this societal context, online theatre challenges our understanding of theatre and the social since both are still largely associated with encounters of bodily co-presence in daily language use but also partially theoretical discourse. Based on the virtual theatre lab of the Dutch collective Nineties Productions tak-ing place in March and April 2021, this master thesis explores assembly in online theatre as a staged social practice through digital ethnographic fieldwork. The research basically asks how to assemble in online theatre and explores this alongside participatory observation with theories from sociology, theatre, and media studies. Through applying above all Judith But-ler´s research regarding the performativity of the assembly, as well as Erika Fischer-Lichte´s phenomenology of theatre and Steve Dixon´s exploration concerning digital per-formance, my findings allow for new perspectives on concepts of publicness, interfacing, liveness, and presence regarding theatrical assembly in online theatre. At the same time, they reveal new staging strategies for facilitating up to evoking assembly in digital realms in terms of translating phenomena of corporeal co-presence. In this way, this exploration char-acterizes online theatre as an exciting field for reflecting on and experimenting with forms and phenomena of public assembly and socialising in distance.