Ecologies of Care in a Digital Age: What Remains After Viral Theatre?

Abstract This article thinks about the connection between the digital – in conversation with the analogue and after COVID-19 – and care, and reflects on how “viral theatre” has stayed with audiences and scholars. It explores, first, how the pandemic has changed the way we conceive of the potentials and drawbacks of the digital within performance practices; second, how incorporating (or rejecting) the digital can be a form of care; and, third, what will remain, for audiences and for theatre-makers, after forms of “viral theatre” have receded into the background. After providing an overview of recent societal discourses on resilience within the theatre industry especially in the UK but also with reference to Germany, I use the concept of care, informed by the Care Collective’s Care Manifesto , as a cultural framework to engage with performance. The final part of the paper presents the American playwright Caridad Svich’s recent work as a case study. Svich has been producing theatrical work since the 1990 s and is one of the key practitioners and scholars when it comes to critically assessing the role of the digital within a more accessible theatre space. Stressing the potential of the digital to reflect on practices of care within theatre also post-COVID-19, the article opens up an avenue for further research to ask to what extent the heightened implementation of the digital in the years 2020 to 2022 has invited a turn to the anti-digital in recent performance, turning instead to the instability of spectatorial presence and a renewed attention to the potential for failure and disruptions that unite both the digital and theatre.