Pandemic playmaking: The Mermaid’s Tongue is an immersive online drama
Medical emergency has caused cultural convergence, with multi-media pieces a Darwinian tactic for survival. Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre put an Alan Ayckbourn audio play on its website; London’s Donmar Warehouse reopened with a sound and light installation.
The Mermaid’s Tongue
www.themermaidstongue.com
Medical emergency has caused cultural convergence, with multi-media pieces a Darwinian tactic for survival. Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre put an Alan Ayckbourn audio play on its website; London’s Donmar Warehouse reopened with a sound and light installation.
As reported in this column over the last six months, online drama has been the most rapid creative growth area. A company well placed to prosper was Swamp Motel, founded four years ago to blur the boundaries between film, theatre, and video or “escape room” gaming.
Pre-lockdowns, some productions took place in physical spaces, but the accumulated cross-genre thinking has resulted in the most inventive and pleasurable digital entertainment of Covid culture so far.
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