Lisa-Maria Meier

Contemporary theater is undergoing a transformation. Digital formats, in which audiences and performers are no longer necessarily present in the same place at the same time, demonstrate that the practices and rules governing theatrical performance have changed. Consequently, the very concept of theatrical performance has evolved as well. Drawing on a socio-ontological approach, this essay proposes a way of theoretically accounting for these changes. It argues that certain digital formats continue to exhibit synchronous co-presence despite the absence of physical co-presence. Live streams or virtual reality performances should therefore not hastily be classified as mere film, video, or video game events. A concluding taxonomy aims to provide an overview of the multitude of digital formats and shows that contemporary theater no longer exists in a single performance form, but in varying degrees of synchronous co-presence. mehr