Abstract

Cason Murphy "The Plague’s the Thing:
How a Modern-Day Pandemic Brought the Bard Online"

As quarantine guidelines began spreading across the world in 2020, most of the locations where theatre could be created became literal empty spaces. This is nothing new. History shows that plague has undeniably served as a major shaping force on theatre. With major plague outbreaks in 1596, 1603, and 1606, part of the blame of community spread of the Bubonic Plague were placed on theatrical audiences coming into the city proper.

The resultant lockdown of playhouses and other social institutions not only sounds eerily similar to our own situation, but asked our industry to reconsider the practical, technological, and moral quandaries of an art form that in its very definition violates the rules of self-isolation—much like Shakespeare and his contemporaries may have.

Live theatre, much preferring the creative spirit of practical effects, has never been an early adopter of digital technology. However, this pandemic has forced our collective hands, and technology has become a critical theatrical tool in a way it never has been before. Since Shakespeare’s death, his plays became a way to legitimize new technologies. And in place of old geographically-based theatre companies, new communities and practices in have been at the forefront of experimentation—and Shakespeare is providing the content.

Throughout 2020, several companies across the USA presented fresh ways to harness this rapid sense of change by adapting some of Shakespeare’s comedies into new digital settings, including but not limited to: Self-Isolated Shakespeare from Scenic City Shakespeare in Chattanooga, TN; a 16-bit- inspired As You Like It from Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival in Flagstaff, AZ; and A Midsummer Night’s Dream filtered through every social media platform imagined from The Back Room Shakespeare Project in Chicago, IL.

By examining these case studies of digital “Shakesperimentation” in the USA, this presentation aims to understand how each project reconsidered, writ large, how Shakespeare could speak so deftly to contemporary audiences across the digital divide in the times of a modern-day plague.

Cason Murphy is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Iowa State University, with his M.F.A. in Theatre Directing from Baylor University and his B.A. in Theatre Arts from UCLA. He is a rising voice in the field of “critical reinterpretation of the theatrical canon,” with special focus on contemporary approaches to the works of William Shakespeare. He has presented his scholarship at national and international conferences, and published in prestigious journals including Theatre Topics, Theatre Journal, Theatre Annual, Shakespeare Bulletin, Multicultural Shakespeare, Theatre/Practice, and the Journal of Film and Video.