Is “digital” a dreaded word?

As written for Theatre Passe Muraille blog, March 2022

I recently asked the following question on social media: 

Folks in the performing arts - going digital, yay or nay?

I'm mostly curious about the nay people - beyond, "it's just not the same", what stopped you from going online?

 (no responses at first… then I posted: )

 Part 2 - What keeps you from watching performing arts things online/digitally?

The first response was about wanting to be “far away from my computer screen” by the end of the day. (4 likes)

Oh yeah, I get this. I go to the computer for obligatory work meetings, to lightly doom scroll, to relax with a mindless show, to see my therapist. My laptop has a lot of baggage associated with it at this point. So, it takes *a lot* to get me to go to my computer for a digital performance. I’ve bought tickets with good intentions to see and support what my colleagues are doing, and just could not bring myself to do it at the end of the day. 

 The next response: “There are many things in terms of production that you can do with a produced, broadcast show that you couldn’t necessarily do with a live performance. That being said…there’s just so much of it”. (2 likes)

There is so much. And a lot of it doesn’t have the production quality of Netflix behind it, obviously, so it often doesn’t look or sound amazing (see next response). A lot of it was done because we had to, trying to keep people making and performing (even though I think many people just stopped), and there was a lot of learning on the spot about streaming technology.

Two more responses I’ll share: 

“Bad audio is a real joy killer for me...we are listening to music in such a compromised way often.” (1 like)

Yes! Sound quality. You don’t like watching a pixelated screen, do you? Let’s think about sound quality, people!

And finally - 

“i think this question is kind of like asking a generational hog farmer what they think of the synthetic lab-grown meat industry? yes, they both sell protein rich foods, but the approach, vision, skillsets, technology, temperament, etc are all completely different. This is the biggest thing I think people underestimate about digital. It is far more revolutionary a technology than just a different distribution platform. It has disrupted the very definitions of creation, creator, audience, performance, liveness, synchronicity, time, space, the list goes on....the majority of the performing arts industrial complex is a traditionalist community of people committed to practices that are several hundred to several thousands of years old. That has its value of course. On the other side with the emerging digital worlds, you've got an entirely new domain of possibility that is best explored by those who aren't trying to uphold any preconceived tradition of what their work is or how it should be done. also, bad audio is indeed a killer.” (1 like + 1 love + me replying with a cartwheel and hands up emojis)

This last response was from Owais Lightwala, who is currently Assistant Professor in the School of Performance at University X (Ryerson).

Having only gone digital once so far with Speculation (and only because I was initially forced to by the pandemic), I’m new to it like most performing artists. But, I ended up really enjoying working through all the challenges that people commented on above - being tied to the computer all day already, over saturation of similar, poorly produced content, and still holding on to the same ideas about what performing arts are and can be.

I really loved bringing on and learning from new collaborators from film and experience design, and asking a sound designer to please engineer a phone conference call for performance that we would test multiple times. Getting back to my core intentions of Speculation and re-thinking everything about the audience experience with new artists that were not from the performing arts, was extremely refreshing, especially after having done it within the traditional ways. 

The online space is still kind of the Wild West. There isn’t a long history and expectations about how one is going to attend a work online. So, that means,  the door is wide open. (Or, at least more open than spending $65-$360 to attend a performance in the core of downtown Toronto. ) 

If you need to unwrap a cough drop in the middle of the show, by all means. If you want to lie down on the ground because you’ve been upright in front of a laptop for 8 hours, but still want to  feel part of an event, let’s see what we can do. If your child needs to jump around because they can’t be confined to a venue seat for an hour, it would be my pleasure to still offer you a well-considered performance that you can experience from home. And that is the tip of the access iceberg. My personal interest is also in keeping the door open to people with blindness or low vision. 

There is so much possibility in new technology, but we’re still making things that rely so much on eyesight.  

Here’s another thing - a “live performance” does not have to mean live-video-stream-of-the-live-in-person-performance-that-you-were-going-to-do. This is a big one for me, and something I’m currently exploring with my new project, What Brings You In. What are ways of feeling another person’s presence when you’re not physically there or I can’t see you? I find these questions so exciting. 

I wonder when attending a digital performance work from home will feel culturally comparable to going out to see, for example, a play in a theatre. As a friend said to me last year, “nothing can replace live [and in-person]” - so don’t. You don’t have to, and that is liberating.