Liveness: Phelan, Auslander, and After

Abstract

Live-cast and recorded theatre (LCRT) such as NT Live has expanded rapidly into a major industry since its launch in 2009. In academic terms, this development has been discussed predominantly in the context of audience demographics. The development merits, however, a reassessment of the liveness debate launched with the seminal contributions by Peggy Phelan’s 1993 book Unmarked: The Politics of Performance and Philip Auslander’s 1999 study Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. There are clear and undeniable differences between live performance, simulcast, cinema screening and TV broadcast in terms of creation and reception. These differences do not imply value judgments, and the different art forms or media do not represent threats to each other. Consciousness studies, in this case the Vedanta model of consciousness, enables an enhanced understanding of experiences reported by spectators in relation to liveness, and further enables an appropriately new context for understanding the new phenomenon of simulcast. This enhanced understanding of liveness for the theatre and simulcast opens up many opportunities for further cross-disciplinary dialogue and research.