This post from the Guardian's theatre blog asks about the necessity for theatre practitioners to fully warn audience members about the physical effects of a performance. Interesting question, and something I had not previously considered; I've thought about the kinds of things audiences should be warned about before they engage in a performance, but never that there might be things that will happen as a result of a show and must be dealt with later. To a large extent, changing an audience member's life in some way is an ideal goal of theatre - a related question to the article might be considering how much of that change is deliberately physical, and how much is physical by default. (Again, something I'd never before thought to think about.)
My question for this format is: how might the idea of a physical shift be applied to an online theatre context? Has anyone had an Internet theatre experience that resulted in a recognizable physical response and lingers once the event has finished? How could that idea be incorporated as a target?
I'm thinking of movies and videos that leave me feeling good, energized; that induce a recurrence of that feeling whenever I think about it for next few days. There is a particular song I know that always makes me cry every time I hear it, commercials and video clips that consistently choke me up - the song always takes me by surprise, even when I know it's coming (the videos can at least sometimes be attributed to the fact that I'm a sap). There was a clip that circulated about a... er, 'medical' situation - it turned my stomach, and continues to give a twinge in memory. I think that the theatrical 'change' is ideally more complicated/complex, more intellectual, more interested in affecting behavior rather than triggering tear ducts or a gag reflex - how do those things happen in traditional theatre, and can the same principles carry over into the online performance space?
I'll start looking for Internet performances, and let you know what I find.
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