The Pursuit of Liveness: Performing Arts and Covid
I look at the recent trends in Covid-19 theatre as a search for ‘Live’-ness. The concept of liveness takes from the word of experiencing a performance ‘Live’. This entails with the experience having to be immediate, to be in-person to experience the thing being performed. Most of the performing arts predicates on an audience member encountering the artwork in person. A theatre/dance piece is staged and blocked for where an audience sits, and even for music acts, the sound engineer takes into account the equalising of the sound for a curated experience of the music. The value of liveness is that it is the linchpin of the performing arts, and with Covid-19 unpinning that, the world is a tumble. A lot of us are now searching for new ways to make meaning with our craft, with the skills that promote and thrive on immediacy and liveness.
