It’s an odd bit of coincidence that Kieran Hurley’s new play Bubble was released online in the first week of the UK’s coronavirus lockdown. This collaboration with Theatre Uncut was planned long before the pandemic, but its experimentation with online performance could have been made for this moment, in which theatres are being forced to turn to the internet.
The drama of Hurley’s play takes Facebook as its stage. After a university professor calls a group of his female students “giggling sluts” IRL, the online reaction snowballs. The student feminist society takes a stand, followed by the inevitable backlash. A male would-be ally cries, “Not all men” and a spurned loner turns to incel and “alt-right” rhetoric. Other lecturers wade into the mire, defending free speech and open debate.
Written as comment threads, in Emma Callander and Hannah Price’s film of Hurley’s play these typed reactions are delivered direct to camera. It’s a device that takes a little getting used to, but the text and emojis that splash across the screen help to situate us in the world of social media. If anything, there could be more playful exploration of the intersection between text and speech – especially in a piece that references free speech debates and asks how seriously we can take comments written online in haste.
The play’s points can be a little on the nose, unnecessarily driving home connections with the populism of figures such as Trump. But, as even more of our daily life migrates online, Bubble poses important questions – about how theatre might use the space of the internet and how online discussion can escalate at a terrifying rate.
• Bubble is available to stream on YouTube until 23 April.
