Adapting Performance Between Stage and Screen

These are interesting times for stage-to-screen adaptations, and for their creators, critics, and consumers. With theatres closed for well over a year, we have lived through an efflorescence of stage works appearing, for free or for modest fees, on televisions, laptops, and tablets. Many of these have been screen versions long preserved in the archives and released only fleetingly by broadcasters and cultural organizations. Companies large and small have also wrangled the technologies of Zoom, Teams, and more into digital-native approaches to theatre on screen. Hybrid performance forms have been forged to offer elements of virtual liveness, communality, and participation to isolated individuals everywhere. Two personal highlights from this world of wonders were the momentary availability in May 2020 of the 1957 recording for television in the GDR of the Berliner Ensemble’s original 1949 production of Bertolt Brecht’s Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children)...