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 Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Series Editors’ Preface

Opening Provocation: Soft Spaces; Hard Edges
By Proto-type Theater

Introduction: A ‘Postdigital Pandemic’?
Chapter 1: Spectacles of Resilience: Postdigital
Online Theatre & Mid-pandemic Resilience
A Postdigital Attitude: Blind Spots in Digital Culture
Vacant Theatres as Nightingale Courtrooms
Theatre as Social Services: Slung Low & Holbeck Food Bank
Chapter 2: Theatre’s ‘Loss of Face’: The Levinasian Problem of Face-to-Face Encounters Mid-pandemic
Ambivalent Otherness: Face Ethics Mid-lockdown
Patching into the Past: Coney’s Telephone
Lockdown as a Hotel Room Without a Door: Thaddeus Phillips’ Zoo Motel
Chapter 3: The Spectacularization of Care Online
Performing Handshakes: From Defiant Gestural Retail Politics to ‘Bioweapon’
Performing Applause: From Doorstep Clapping to Anti-Hero Worship
Resilience Optics: Surveillance Technologies as Care Symbols in ‘Drone Captain Tom’
Chapter 4: Digital Care & Pandemic
Care Ethics in Post-internet Cultures: ‘Caring about’ & ‘Caring for’
‘Caring About’ Expanded: Webs of Interdependencies
What 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 Tata
Regressing in Care: Russell Howard’s Home Time
Theatre as Care Package: Nightcap’s Handle With Care
Chapter 5: Digital Twins, Avatars & the Metaverse
AI-generated Avatars on Lensa
Avatar Band Members in Aespa
The Metaverse
Conclusion: Meta-Resilience & the ‘New Normal’

Endnotes
References
Index