In this damned COVID world of ours it has become a mission of theatre to adapt to the world of technology to the expense of actually BEING with people. We have Zoom and Teams and one hundred others tools that can fake the experience but never deliver it. If the thing in front of you is a screen and not a real person, it isn’t theatre no matter how expensive your laptop is. It is not just how immediate your response is to what you see. It is not the clarity of your vision of the person – it is that they are dead on arrival. The speed of technology can never be “here”. It is always then!
And, while I am hating on Zoom, I would also like to spread some hatin’ for all the lame attempts of various theatre companies to present pre-recorded versions of past productions or readings of plays where a stack of faces all fit into boxes like a bad remix of the Brady Bunch. This is not and will never be theatre! It is nice they are keeping the spirit alive but please don’t go fooling the audience that theatre is taking a new turn and putting on a new face. It sucks and it will suck until those damned lobby doors open and we get back to business.