| Popis: |
The pledge of harmlessness built into the notion that plays are designed to vanish, as Prospero says, "into thin air" has resulted in the view of performance as a state of being that is brought to a halt by conditions that matter, even as "thin air" has lost its former sense of an empty and inert domain If "attending" streamed plays during the ongoing pandemic means asking what can be seen and what should be said about the theatre in its absence—while it is a signal without a medium—then my answer is that COVID-19 has made it impossible to overlook the fact that things happen to us as we watch a play, and not just in the cerebral sense that thoughts are sparked, but also in the molecular sense that we are moved and acted upon;as spectators, we make ourselves susceptible to its under-the-skin machinations In lieu of the live production, the Barbican streamed a filmed version that had been commissioned and broadcast on BBC Four as part of the channel's special programming on the nude in art (anchored by Mary Beard's two-part series, "Shock of the Nude") To the sounds of girl-group punk and amped-up Baroque sacred music, the actors don multiple roles and slip into a variety of mimetic and surreal registers, each change of scene a glimpse into the mechanics of patriarchy's production |
