Imagine a man at the end of his rope. Imagine someone says to him: “Here, put this virtual reality headset on; it will help you.” The software in the headset transports the man to the edge of a cliff. Near Dover maybe. The immaculately rendered landscape overwhelms his senses: the surge of the sea far below him, a boat in the distance, the vertigo. Imagine that some part of the man is healed by this immersion. He takes the headset off and returns to reality with renewed resilience and hope.
Shakespeare pulls a version of this trick on the Earl of Gloucester in King Lear. Not with VR but with words. The blinded Gloucester is made to think he’s a footstep away from oblivion – rocks beneath him, birds wheeling below. He’s taken over the edge of despair and back again. And the lesson he learns from the experience is to endure. And yes, the lesson we all learn from watching him is also to endure. But we also learn a thousand other things about ourselves, there in that audience, watching that play, at that moment.
Why do I prefer the Shakespeare? It speaks to words and to the infinite faculty of human imagination. It respects our mental capacity to be in two places at once; to overwhelm our own senses without technological intervention or hardware. Also there are witnesses to it: us, the audience, making sense collectively as watchers. It’s a communal experience, which has meaning in itself. With VR the lessons learned are solipsistic, unaccompanied – like they were when our computer screens became our stages during lockdown, remember?
There was a community of sorts in that new state – all of us at our desks or our kitchen tables. This, we were told, was live digital theatre, a form that overcame the limitations of real time and space. And anyway, real time and space didn’t exist then – we were rule of six or tier 4 or whatever the new term was. With lockdown this was all we could do, but the digital emanation continues to hold as we plot our way back to a new normal. I’m all for technological and digital progress but don’t call it theatre. Find a new name. “Live theatre” is a tautology. Theatre is only live.
The Dover cliff moment appears in my play, Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel. In performance, I watch that scene from inside an empty VR headset: an image of virtuality that threatens things I hold dear. Theatre took a battering during lockdown and theatre-makers did all they could to survive – Zoom plays and livestreams and online festivals. Or, as so many did, they left the business.
My protagonist is the character of the Fool in King Lear who abandons Shakespeare’s play halfway through. Or rather my protagonist is me. Or rather my protagonist is a live performer who finds themselves in the middle of the trainwreck of a divided country that no longer has use of their skills, so they leave. The Fool’s next job could be in cyber (they just don’t know it yet).
One argument for the digitalisation of theatre is that it addresses barriers to inclusion – people living in far-flung places; people unable to afford ticket prices; people with disabilities which limit access. As someone with a background in community arts, I challenge the notion that productions need be made available anywhere in the world. Instead, support your local theatre. Regional theatres are on their knees while the latest celebrity shows from London get streamed around the world.
There are other ways of addressing access barriers while still retaining liveness and a sense of community. Just before lockdown, Battersea Arts Centre (where Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel opens this month) brilliantly bucked the digital trend and launched itself as the world’s first Relaxed Venue, embedding access and inclusivity across all its activities. It also established a universal Pay What You Can pricing model across its programme. Its mission statement is to be “a home to radical artistic ideas”, and that radicalism also includes offering warm space to anyone who needs it, free refreshments to local residents, artist accommodation, chill-out rooms, quiet space. Rather than moving more of its platform online and tapering live interaction into a more controlled and privileged sphere, BAC is making theatre more theatre – more local, more responsive, more empathic, more embodied, more affordable, more democratic, more analogue. More human.
• Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel is at Battersea Arts Centre, London, 28 February to 18 March.
