Remediations of the theatre in the Zoom works end meeting for all and The Apple family: A pandemic trilogy

Abstract

This paper focuses on the theatrical remediation of a specific digital genre, the online (Zoom) meeting, in contemporary Anglophone lockdown pieces. Taking Forced Entertainment’s End Meeting for All (2020) and Richard Nelson’s The Apple Family: A Pandemic Trilogy (2021) as examples, the two works are united across space and time by their interest in experimenting with the online format of the Zoom meeting at a time when theatres were closed during the worldwide coronavirus lockdown. Rather than primarily exploring this thematic aspect, however, my paper, first and foremost, takes an interest in how the medium of the theatre is remediated through the format of the online meeting and how the theatrical and the digital interact to form a hybrid new mode of representation in these two works. Adopting an intermedial approach, I will demonstrate how End Meeting for All and the Pandemic Trilogy make use of the online format but opt for markedly different styles. While Forced Entertainment’s take on the online format results in a highly absurdist and metatheatrical reflection of (stage/online) acting, embodiment and storytelling, Nelson’s trilogy clearly subscribes to a realistic agenda. As the paper will demonstrate, the remediation of the theatrical through the digital shapes theatrical storytelling in both works, enabling their creators to experiment with ways of showing, telling and viewing that the online medium in general as well as the specific genre of the Zoom meeting afford, while the re-entry of theatre into the digital realm also attests to the pervasiveness of the theatre as medium of human expression, not just in terms of social roleplaying but also as a way of modelling artistic exchange, at a time when both human connection and the theatre itself were at risk.