본문 바로가기
  • Home

Groups of Ten or More People (2020): The Post-COVID-19 Era, Zoom Theatre, and Shakespeare

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2022, 35(2), pp.189-208
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama
  • Received : July 16, 2022
  • Accepted : August 14, 2022
  • Published : August 31, 2022

Yuri Ji 1

1한국외국어대학교 외국문학연구소

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study analyses Groups of Ten or More People (2020) by Littlebrain Theatre, a Zoom performance presented on Facebook and YouTube on 11 July and 6 August 2020. Director’s introductions of Groups of Ten or More People tell us that it is a Zoom play staged within the proscenium arch of computer screens. It inherits some basic tenets of physical stage, and whether it is a play recorded in single long takes (Act I) or a real-time reading performance (Act II), it leads the audience to the uninterrupted experience of theatrical liveliness. Internet-based Zoom theatre actually extends the ephemeral concept of here-and-now into an affective one. Even though people are physically distant from one another, Zoom theatre connects them in the virtual theatre and helps to create a sense of a community. Groups of Ten or More People especially makes the audience respond to and contribute to the social issue of LGBTQIA+. By having a gender diverse cast for its retelling of William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, it makes Shakespeare live as the adaptation. Zoom theatre is a useful way to make theatre alive during the pandemic. It makes the live and collective aspects of the theatrical experience remain for the audience in quarantine. I hope that this study on a Zoom play by a young American local theatre can contribute to the democratization of Zoom Shakespeare studies as well.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.