THE SPECTATOR IN THE DIGITAL PERFORMATIVE SPACE
THE SPECTATOR IN THE DIGITAL PERFORMATIVE SPACE

Summary/Abstract: The emergence of the Internet implies and activates a new relationship between theatre and technology, in which the technical inventions are not used only as an instrument for shaping the performance, but, also, as a basic platform enabling performance. This refers to the so called phenomenon of the internet/ digital/online theatre also known as cyber-performance. The focal question posed in the research is the position of the spectator in such a digital/virtual theatre experience. In order to answer the question, the study shall primarily aim to define and analyse the digital performative space. The new 20th century theatre tendencies have broadened the theatre field insisting on immediacy between the performer and the audience, as well as erasing the border between the auditorium and the scene. What happens to the performance–performer– spectator relation when the performance itself is screen mediated? Where does the performance actually happen? Where is the powerful here of the theatre within the mass communication network? How much of the energy interchange between the performer and spectator – the driving force due to which the theatre has for so long had the power to remain a medium par excellence in the cultural sense – is lost (or, if not lost, then, how is it transformed)? Based on the contemporary theatrical literature, the research analyses the position of the spectator in the digital theatre, using the traditional receptivetheory parameters as a reference basis and experimenting with their (in-) applicability to the new theatrical model. Thus, entirely unobtrusively, the paper aims at creating a new aesthetic perspective relevant to the digital theatrical practice.

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