Pandemic Play: Community in Performance, Gaming, and the Arts

When the arts, culture, and entertainment industries came to a halt in late winter 2020, many claimed this was the end of art as we knew it. Theatre managers, museum directors, performers, artists, and everyday folks had to figure out new strategies for living and thriving in a new world order. As the global pandemic and its consequences continue to play out, the question of how we have learned--as creators or consumers--to play, is far from settled. This collection addresses pandemic play in broad terms: how did creative industries adapt to a majority virtual world? How have our understandings of community and play evolved? Might new forms of art and play outlive the pandemic and supplant earlier iterations? Pandemic Play takes these questions as a starting point, exploring strategies, case studies, and effects of the arts worlds gone virtual.

Carolyn Ownbey (she/her) is Assistant Professor and Chair of English, Communications, & Literature and Faculty Director of the Degrees+ programs at Golden Gate University, USA. She works on anticolonial literature and media, law, and citizenship. She is published in Law & Literature, Textual Practice, Critique, and Safundi, among others.

Catherine Quirk (she/her) is a Lecturer in Creative Arts at Edge Hill University, UK. Her research focuses on women’s performance practices and their incorporation into narrative. She is published in Cahiers Victoriens et Édouardiens, Theatre Notebook, Victorians, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, and other venues.