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Theater of Zoom: Women of Trachis for Frontline Medical Providers

            As the pandemic in 2020 shut down public gatherings, Theater of War events migrated to Zoom webinars, a process which spotlights the priorities embedded in earlier live events. While Theater of War migrated a number of events to Zoom, the focus here will be on their use of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis to facilitate comparison with the other Zoom presentations of the play analyzed in this panel. On the one hand, these events engage individuals and communities not necessarily reached by other performance events, but on the other, Classicists and theater professionals are likely to query the limited role left for the plays themselves.

            For more than a decade, Bryan Doerries has been facilitating Theater of War events for audiences who need occasions and venues to discuss issues painful for their community, such as trauma, violence and abuse (the early years of these events chronicled in Doerries 2015). Abbreviated dramatic readings from an ancient Greek tragedy are a fixture of these events, which provide focal points for ensuing conversations by panelists and audience members. Doerries has published a complete translation of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, an excerpt from which, along with an excerpt from the Philoctetes, constituted the dramatic readings for Zoom events in October and November 2020 “For Frontline Medical Providers.”

            The transfer of live events to Zoom involved Doerries, actors and panelists being in their Zoom windows rather than seated on tables on stage. Discussion with audience members involved promoting one or more attendees to the screen for questions, comments and responses. In terms of the performed reading and the talk back, migration to Zoom was arguably less disruptive or transformative than for the other events analyzed in this panel. Attendance via Zoom may well have reached attendees who would not have been able to attend such an event in person. Conversely, interaction among hundreds of Zoom attendees does not necessarily match what happens at live events.

            More generally, the Zoom format may make it clearer how the translation, selection and contextualizing of the ancient plays interacts with the goals of the event as a whole and how those differ from the choices made by Classicists and theater professionals in delivering performances across a range of platforms, physical and digital.