A theatre researcher (and Chekhov lover) discovers the derelict cloud server where the lost theatre productions from the pandemic era have been languishing for nearly a century. Before they were saved, these video and audio plays–countless in number and primarily recorded on a primitive platform called Zoom–were threatened by mass digital extinction. The researcher examines the salvaged recordings, arguing that they, as the veritable subatomic particles of the New Theatre, are more than worthy of our exploration.
Here is an audio entry from her field notes:
Masha
(Echos of a Cherry Orchard that never was, a Seagull that never was, and other performances lost to the pandemic all meet in an uncertain future.)
Love of mine, someday you will die.
A respiratory disease, maybe.
A train.
We could have been two women sitting at the edge of a lake
Looking at dead seagull.
Which one of us killed it?
Or we could have been two women,
One in black smoking a joint and
One with a water bottle and a ukulele
Waiting for the show that’s about to start.
One lady in black.
Or one woman, an actress, playing another woman –
Another woman just returned from Paris.
She ate alligator there; she is bad with money.
She sounds like a child nesting in the bottom of a well.
She teases a young schoolteacher for being too romantic.
She wants to be the girl out of time with the invisible dog.
2020 we could still be there.
We’d have to be outside, though.
We have to wear masks and only one of us can touch the gun
Between bouts of disinfectant.
2120 we could still be there.
But the audio would be decayed.
A broken string, maybe.
And the technology to play it would be lost.
And I might not remember your name anymore.
Or the name of the person who wrote that beautiful program note.