This PhD project investigates the latest developments in digitally site-specific theatre: digitally-mediated performance that is tailor-made for a chosen digital space (i.e., social media site, video game, social VR site, mobile app), or vice versa.

Whilst an onrush of online theatrical content followed Covid-19 Pandemic lockdown restrictions, in actuality, digitally site-specific theatre has been attaining popularity since the early 1990s, when digital sites (i.e., The Palace, Jennicam) began offering infrastructures to support networked performance. In recent years, the proliferation of livestreaming infrastructures on digital platforms, leading to a massive growth of digital ‘content’ (Elsden et al., 2021), and subsequently, digital audiences has carved out a new cultural arena for performance makers to produce and disseminate theatrical productions.

Against rising techno-fascism (Chayka, 2025), techno-feudalism (Varoufakis, 2023), and a reactionary conservative turn (British Theatre, 2024; Theatre Village, 2025) within the theatre industry, digitally site-specific theatre holds appeal because of its apparent democratic participatory structures and open access pathways toward the production and distribution of new work. Additionally, this body of work has proven its ability to usher in new audiences that may not typically engage with this historically ‘exclusionary’ (O’Brien, 2020) art form, to traverse the confines of geographical distance (Fuchs, 2021; Misek et al., 2022), to confront urgent techno-historical issues (Ferdman, 2024), and to welcome forms of liveness and presence commonplace to digitally-engaged audiences that challenge long-held conceptions of theatre (Bay-Cheng, 2023; Hawthorne, 2022).

In partnership with the Traverse Theatre, this PhD research will provide a valuation of digitally site-specific theatre, asking, why should theatre makers engage in the creation of this body of work? And, how is this body of work situated within the perceived ‘theatre and performing arts’ sector at large?