Part II - Digital Technologies and Early Modern Drama at the National Theatre and the RSC

Summary

Whereas, at the SWP, the renegotiation of the relationship between performers and spectators involved a deliberate uncoupling from digital devices and nostalgic immersion in a sensory environment that accentuated socially differentiated modes of spectating, Britain’s National Theatre and the RSC, since the start of this century, have chosen to embrace digital technologies in a bid to widen their access and re-boot their relationship with core audiences in a seemingly more ‘democratic’ manner. In this, the two giants of British theatre were following in the wake of leading companies based in other countries such as the Berliner Schaubühne, Toneelgroep Amsterdam and New York’s Wooster Group, whose visiting productions over the past ten years have had a profound impact on mainstream UK theatres, not least because of the way they deployed performance technologies to reimagine the more fluid spatial dynamics and modes of engagement of the early modern stage. As a result, mainstream audiences came to expect similar ‘textual openness’, ‘multi-perspectivity in terms of presenting characters, situations, and themes; reflexivity …; and a direct relationship with the audience, along with responsiveness to current political, aesthetic, and technological tendencies’ from productions of early modern drama in Britain. For the National Theatre and the RSC, this necessitated a shift from seeing digital technologies primarily as a means of enhancing stage design, music and lighting to using them as an additional means of characterisation and of intensifying the spectators’ experience of co-creation, tying audiences affectively into the plays’ fictional worlds and ethical dilemmas.