The art of facing the net

Zoom Theater’s augmented reality creations

Abstract

Theater was forced to migrate from physical stages to digital environments due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has fostered the creation of new theater experiences around the world, as the social distancing measures have suspended the operation of in-person presentation spaces. In Brazil, more specifically, there was a fruitful experimentation of digital format theater through videoconferencing platforms, a phenomenon that we place under the theoretical umbrella of Zoom Theater and whose practical effects will be analyzed in this investigation through the case study of the play The Art of Facing Fear. Based on bibliographic review and document research, we intend to approach the play produced by the São Paulo theater company Os Satyros in 2020 to observe how Brazilian theater artists have seized the tools of a videoconferencing application to transform them into artistic resources. Giving special attention to the use of augmented reality in the play, through the Zoom platform’s virtual background tool, we aim not only to understand the position of the Zoom Theater phenomenon at the heart of the media ecosystem, but also to understand how the critical and aesthetic use of media can point out different paths for human habitation in a deeply mediated society.