Postdigital Performances of Care

Liam Jarvis is a theatre-maker, practitioner-researcher, Co-director of the Centre for Theatre Research (CTR) and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex, UK. Karen Savage is Head of Arts, Culture and Heritage for the College of Arts and Professor of Creative and Collaborative Arts at the University of Lincoln, UK.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsSeries Editors’ PrefaceOpening Provocation: Soft Spaces; Hard EdgesBy Proto-type TheaterIntroduction: A ‘Postdigital Pandemic’?Chapter 1: Spectacles of Resilience: PostdigitalOnline Theatre & Mid-pandemic ResilienceA Postdigital Attitude: Blind Spots in Digital CultureVacant Theatres as Nightingale CourtroomsTheatre as Social Services: Slung Low & Holbeck Food BankChapter 2: Theatre’s ‘Loss of Face’: The Levinasian Problem of Face-to-Face Encounters Mid-pandemicAmbivalent Otherness: Face Ethics Mid-lockdownPatching into the Past: Coney’s TelephoneLockdown as a Hotel Room Without a Door: Thaddeus Phillips’ Zoo MotelChapter 3: The Spectacularization of Care OnlinePerforming Handshakes: From Defiant Gestural Retail Politics to ‘Bioweapon’Performing Applause: From Doorstep Clapping to Anti-Hero WorshipResilience Optics: Surveillance Technologies as Care Symbols in ‘Drone Captain Tom’Chapter 4: Digital Care & PandemicCare Ethics in Post-internet Cultures: ‘Caring about’ & ‘Caring for’‘Caring About’ Expanded: Webs of InterdependenciesWhat Counts as ‘Digital Care’?Care as ‘Virtue Signaling’ on Social Media?Detached Touch: ‘Posting About’ as ‘Caring About’?Care and Memory in Miguel Angel Muñoz and Luisa Cantero's 100 Days with TataRegressing in Care: Russell Howard’s Home TimeTheatre as Care Package: Nightcap’s Handle With CareChapter 5: Digital Twins, Avatars & the MetaverseAI-generated Avatars on LensaAvatar Band Members in AespaThe MetaverseConclusion: Meta-Resilience & the ‘New Normal’EndnotesReferencesIndex

As theatre and performance struggle to emerge in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Postdigital Performances of Care provides a distinct lens through which to review our collective experiences and to reimagine possibilities for the future. Critical, insightful and compassionate throughout, the book reflects on the many meanings of care and challenges us to reconsider the "new normal". The authors present a compelling provocation for the field and how we might rethink performance itself in the current context.