Absenz und Isolation

In the year 2020, between lockdowns and social distancing rules, Rimini Protokoll designed their audio walk Black Box – Phantom Theatre for 1 Person. Five years later, the aim of this work is to explore the experience of 'eeriness' in the deserted spaces of the theatre. To describe the absences on stage, Henryk Götze combines a phenomenological analytical approach with Mark Fisher's media philosophical concept of hauntology. Media and pandemic-related discourses are used to show how working under pandemic conditions shaped theatre performances. It also becomes appararent how the closures have highlighted the urgency of questions about the digitalisation of theatrical phenomena.