“Survival Is Insufficient”: Ireland's Pandemic Performance

This chapter considers the absence of “in-person” physical audience attendance in the context of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in Ireland, examining the renegotiation of the audience-performance relationship considering the contexts of how audiences and artists sought out and facilitated the collective audience experience online. The events analysed in this chapter: Alison Spittle's #CovideoParty phenomenon, the Abbey Theatre's Dear Ireland, and Dead Centre's To Be a Machine (Version 1.0), it argues, provided audiences with a re-writing of what they were missing from in-person cultural events. This chapter considers a spatial and social shift that may have established a new relationship with how audiences and scholars perceive of and engage with performance practice.