‘Curtains, music and stages’ in Zoom theatre: framing devices in Coney’s Telephone

ABSTRACT Coney’s interactive digital piece Telephone, created and performed by Tassos Stevens, was premiered in April 2020 amidst the first lockdown in England. Performed via the videoconferencing platform Zoom, it employs conventional framing devices such as a prologue, opening music, a surrogate stage curtain and a virtual theatre bar. This paper intends to examine the functions of these theatrical conventions in the Zoom production. The author argues that these devices are used not only for their usual dramatic purposes, but are also adapted with new functions for digital media and the special circumstances of the pandemic. They inform the spectators of the dramatic situation and the contextual situation of lockdown, in order to provide crucial technical instructions, to frame the performance within familiar domestic spaces and cyberspace, and to seek their understanding of the unusual form in which the piece is made. By the explicit and emphatic use of these conventional framing devices, the production activates the audience’s consciousness of the theatrical dual orders of presence and representation, so as to construct a live theatre experience and senses of co-presence and togetherness, which are all the more significant during a time of theatre closure and social distancing.


Introduction
Shortly, we are going to magically transport from here the Zoom bar into the theatre … through some imaginary wall. And we know we are in the theatre because there will be a curtain in front of us. The curtain will rise as the music [plays], and you will see me on stage in front of you. That's basically how theatres work: curtains, music and stages. (Telephone 2020) This is Tassos Stevens from the British theatre company Coney explaining to the audience what to expect from the Zoom show entitled Telephone. After this short prologue, he takes out a wipe cloth, which he says is going to be the curtain, and covers the screen with it. Accompanied by a vaudeville-style opening tune, it slowly rises till Stevens is revealed. As the music fades out, the play formally begins.
Written and performed by Tassos Stevens, Telephone is an online theatre piece presented via the videoconferencing platform Zoom. It was premiered in April 2020 during the first lockdown in England and has had a number of runs since then thanks to its popularity, including a recent performance in September 2022. I watched the performance that Stevens delivered from the office of Coney HQ 1 on 4 August 2020 as part of the Electric Dreams Online festival, on which the analysis in this article is based.
Labelled as 'a live and gently interactive storytelling performance' on Coney's website, 2 the three-act play interweaves the history of telecommunications with personal anecdotes related to telephone. Spectators are encouraged to turn on their cameras and contribute to the performance, although they can opt out any time they want. In the first act, Stevens presents a telephone directory of exchange codes for audience members to choose from. Each number corresponds to a short story which Stevens narrates or invites the audience to participate in, such as re-enacting historical telephone calls and doing trivia quizzes. In Act Two, the audience are split into small groups in breakout rooms to share their own stories about important telephone calls in their lives. The last short act consists of a few small pieces to wrap up the play.
An interesting feature of Telephone, as the beginning excerpt shows, is that this Zoom piece utilises a number of traditional theatrical framing devices such as a prologue, opening music, a surrogate stage curtain, and a virtual theatre bar. I argue that these devices, outside of the conventional in-person theatre space, are used not only for their usual dramatic functions, but also to evoke the theatrical mechanism which is adapted with new purposes for digital media and the extraordinary circumstances of the coronavirus lockdown.
To define the situation: to persuade and inform A rather common framing device found in online theatre during the pandemic is a prologue or introduction. Some take a deliberately conventional form such as Creation Theatre's The Merry Wives of WhatsApp (September 2020), which opens with a performer in a black leather jacket 3 playing the role of Prologue against a virtual backdrop of Shakespeare's Globe. Others are simpler and more straightforward like the one in Telephone in which Stevens explains what to expect in the performance, how to participate (or not to), how to use Zoom functions such as viewing options, camera, and chat, how the show was created, and so on. It is likely that the transformation to digital media and the circumstances of Covid-19 account largely for the use of prologues/introductions in online productions of this period. For example, there is no prologue in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Winsor, but Creation Theatre's digital adaptation feels the need to add one. These introductory elements, based on traditional usage of prologues, are adapted to the changed context.
The conventional functions of prologues have been closely studied especially on the early modern English stage when they were most prevalent. In Theatricality: A Study of Convention in the Theatre and in Social Life, Elizabethan Burns coins the term 'rhetorical conventions' to describe theatrical conventions that are employed to define the dramatic situation, i.e. to establish 'the boundary between the fictive world presented through the stage actions and the world of social reality ' (1972, 40). These conventions include presentational devices, such as prologues and inductions, and expositional devices such as asides and soliloquies. The term 'rhetoric' is used in its original meaning as communication between the orator and the listener. Extended to theatre, 'rhetoric' refers to the communication between performers (as well as other theatre makers) and audience members, encompassing both verbal and non-verbal means. Burns chooses this word to stress the 'persuasive intention' (41). That is to say, playwrights, directors, actors, etc. employ these theatrical 'rhetorical' techniques to persuade audiences to accept the make-believe world created onstage. Also, though not explicitly stressed by Burns, 'rhetoric' in the sense of communication also conveys an informative connotation. Although there were free-standing prologues (and epilogues) in early modern theatre with no reference to the plays to which they were attached (Schneider 2011, 6), '[d]ramatic prologues traditionally provided information about the plot, theme, genre, and location of the dramatic story, and sought the goodwill of the audience', according to Bruster and Weimann (2004, 10).
The persuasive and informative purposes are also evident in prologues/introductions in the Covid online theatre, though more than on the dramatic level. Not necessarily giving away the plot like the prologue in Elizabethan drama, the introduction of an online production usually provides practical information about how to watch and participate in it, as audiences are required to operate digital technology on their own such as streaming services, video conferencing software, mobile phone applications. Compared to earlier experimental practices, online theatre has entered the mainstream since the coronavirus outbreak, it thus is reaching much wider audiences, whose digital skills and prior knowledge of online platforms can vary greatly. In the case of Telephone, it was first performed in April 2020 at the early stage of the pandemic, a time when the now ubiquitous Zoom was 'obscure' (Associated Press 2020). An audience survey of Creation Theatre's Zoom Tempest reveals that some viewers had never used Zoom before watching the production which premiered around the same time as Telephone in April 2020, while some were very familiar with this software for remote working (Aebischer and Nicholas 2020, 117-118). Therefore, for this interactive piece where audience members need to operate multiple functions on Zoom, it is essential to specify beforehand these technical details as well as the rules of participation in order to reassure and encourage them for interaction.
The traditional function of prologues to define the situation as per Burns finds its echo in the Covid online theatre in another way. Burns points out that the presenting devices were especially necessary for medieval drama, as there were no specifically built playhouses at the time. The dramatists thus had the problem of 'defining the play as a play, of separating it from the current of ordinary living ' (1972, 41). Though persisting after theatre venues became common, such devices 'in the overt, manifest sense can be dispensed with … in the orthodox theatre ' (1972, 46), and are thus much less frequently used now. Zoom theatre is to some extent comparable to medieval drama in that there is no theatre building to frame the occasion for audiences who watch the performance at home. Without a designated space or the usual experience of theatre-going such as travelling to the venue, and entering the auditorium, a Zoom performance like Telephone needs to bracket the event as a theatrical performance separate from the spectator's domestic space, and from other activities in the virtual world e.g. strolling on social media, checking email, etc.
Besides the need to define the dramatic situation in terms of framing the performance event, there is another kind of situation that many pandemic productions try to explain; that is, the situation in which they were made. In Telephone, Stevens tells the audience that he wrote this play about the history of telecommunications within a few days at the beginning of lockdown, and that he was still 'tuning' it. The piece is about the 'fragility of our technology to make connection across distance' which speaks to our time (Telephone 2020). He also explains that the performance is delivered from Coney's office, as we can see shelves and cabinets in the background. Apart from its traditional purpose to inform audiences what the play is about, the prologue also presents the socio-historical context of lockdown which dictates this form. Of course, it is not likely that the viewers are unaware of the pandemic. Yet this information indicates a persuasive intention, not so much in the sense of persuading audiences to accept the fictional dimension that is about to unfold onstage as a traditional prologue does, as asking them to understand the unusual form of the work, i.e. a makeshift performance delivered from an office to spectators via the screen. For audiences who are used to in-person theatre, there is possibly the need to persuade them to acknowledge the virtual version, which entails a different viewing experience and relation with the performance and other audience members. As I will argue in the following part, the framing devices are employed to establish audiences' connection remotely in this interactive piece. It also implies a certain degree of entreating the 'goodwill of the audience' in the tradition of prologues according to Bruster and Weimann (2004, 10), in this case to understand the imperfections of the work made under extremely limiting conditions. Some other online productions even have made a more explicit appeal for spectators' goodwill by means of financial support during the period of theatre closure.
Like a traditional prologue, the introduction in Telephone serves the purpose of defining the situation, but with modifications for new circumstances of the pandemic. It is used to demarcate the performance from the non-theatrical space as well as cyberspace, provide technical information and social context, and seek audiences' understanding and support. Interestingly, Stevens has also adapted other traditional framing devices by substituting the 'real' things with symbolic stand-ins, such as a virtual bar and a wipe cloth stage curtain, to evoke a live theatre experience and sense of connection in this digital telematic performance.
To recreate the social experience of theatregoing As places of public gathering, theatres have been greatly affected by the pandemic. In the UK, most conventional indoor theatre venues were closed from March 2020 at the onset of coronavirus outbreak to July 2021 when nearly all social distancing measures were lifted in England (and later in other parts of the country). Perhaps, the most apparent reason to use familiar theatrical conventions is that they are reminiscent of the inperson theatre-going experience, and the social connection that it entails.
For example, similar to Telephone, a virtual bar is also featured in Pitlochry Festival Theatre's audio play platform Sound Stage launched in March 2021. The bar is set up on Wonder, a web-based networking platform where participants can move their avatars around and chat with each other. As the Stage editor of the Guardian Chris Wiegand observes, it provides a digital space for audience members to chat over interval drinks and interact with front-of-house staff, and where the 'buzzy atmosphere' in a theatre is reproduced. Its aim, in short, is 'to recreate the social experience of theatregoing' (Wiegand 2021). This attempt to replicate the experience of bar-going, a crucial element of the Western theatre tradition, is a response to audiences' longing for live theatre, and as Pitlochry's artistic director Elizabeth Newman suggests, to their need for connection with each other in the time of isolation (Newman quoted in Wiegand 2021).
Likewise, Telephone's Zoom bar gives audiences an occasion to relax and socialise. We 'arrive' at the bar before the show formally begins, and are encouraged to turn on our cameras and do some 'chair dancing' with music in the background. At the interval, Stevens welcomes us back to the bar to have a drink before entering breakout rooms. After the show ends, we are invited to stick around and chat for another round of drinks. Moreover, interaction among audience members is not only facilitated by the platform of a virtual bar for them to gather and chat online, but is deeply embedded in the dramaturgy of this piece. The bar, as well as other framing devices, is a crucial element to achieve such connection.
While the configuration of the virtual bar of Pitlochry Festival's Sound Stage on Wonder is visually analogous to the venue space, the bar in Telephone is temporal and symbolic, given that Zoom does not enable participants to virtually move around and interact with whoever they want as the Wonder interface affords. Instead, Coney's bar is bracketed periods of time, i.e. before and after the performance as well as between the first two acts. The viewers are told by Stevens that they are at the bar, also indicated by the title 'Coney Zoom bar' at the left bottom of the screen where usually the attendee's name is displayed. If Pitlochry Festival's bar is more like a digital replication of the theatre bar, then Coney's is a conceptual substitute which activates the function of the bar as a transitional device.

As a transitional portal
A number of theatre scholars have remarked on the transitional function of framing conventions. For example, Steven C. Young points out that inductions, epilogues and other embedding structures mark 'where life ends and illusion begins' and lead 'the spectator into and out of the dramatic experience ' (1974, 7). Theatre bars, though normally not a dramaturgical device, can have a similar function. According to Marvin Carlson, theatre bars, foyers and lobbies are transitional spaces for audiences to prepare for their 'roles' in the auditorium, just as backstage spaces are for actors to prepare for theirs (1990,44). In this sense, the theatrical frame can be regarded as not just an instantaneous mechanism, but a process and a portal from everyday reality to the make-believe dimension onstage.
In Telephone, as short periods of pre-show and interval warm-up, the bar, along with other framing devices, helps audiences to enter the dramatic worldthough not necessarily fictional in this case. Also importantly, it prepares them for the role as spectator-participants in this interactive play. In my interview with Stevens,4 he said that the format of this play was borrowed from an earlier in-person storytelling show of his called Solo Two, which is also an interactive piece about connection and friendship. Act One takes place in the theatre bar, and Act Two moves into the theatre where audience members are divided into small groups to make conversations and share stories. The setting of the first act is crucial because, according to Stevens, 'being in the bar warmed the audience up' (Stevens 2021). Similarly in Telephone, the warm-up, in terms of getting relaxed and opening up, prepares for the intimate second act, where audience members are asked to confide private stories to each other. One of the participants from my group, for instance, described an emotional phone call with her sister where she announced the news of her engagement. In Exeunt Magazine's review of this piece, Hannah Greenstreet comments that she 'really liked the virtual bar set up at the beginning, with Tassos welcoming everyone, playing music', which she suggests eases things up for audience participation, something that she usually dreads (Greenstreet and Saville 2020).
To conjure theatre in non-theatrical space While the bar in this Zoom production is an abstract concept, the stage curtains have an analogue substitute. When Stevens tries to 'conjure up' the curtains, he takes out an orange wipe cloth and unfolds it up close to the camera. Among an assortment of words printed in white is the phrase 'RECREATION CLOTH' in the middle. Bought at a small coffee house as he explains, this cloth 'has been playing the curtain every night and will do again today' (Telephone 2020). It is worth noting how explicitly Stevens articulates his use of the wipe cloth as a replacement for the curtains as a theatrical convention. Such frankness is consistent with the way he narrates the story. He tells the audience that he is still 'tuning' his performance and will be reading his notes and script on the side of his screen. In fact, one can tell it from his eyes moving constantly from side to side. Yet his performance feels candid rather than underprepared or inadequate. Through this kind of candid style, he is in effect showing audiences the very fact that he is telling stories. To put it in another way, he lays bare the two levels of his performance: the story being told, and the act of storytelling, and the two worlds of theatre: the imaginary story-world, and the reality in which he is telling the story. In Stevens' (2020)  Steven's idea of the two spheres of 'what if' and 'what is' has been given a number of names in theatre studies, usually discussed from the perspective of audience perception, from 'deux pensées' (Marmontel (1787) 1867, 260), 'double vision' (States 1985, 31), 'double recognition' (Bennett, 1997, 249), 'double game of illusion' (Pavis 1998, 178), to 'double-edged gaze' (Féral 2002b, 100), among others, while Erika Fischer-Lichte describes them as the 'perceptual order of presence' and the 'perceptual order of representation' (2014, 40), echoing States' term of the 'two orders of signification'-'external (or workday) signification' and 'internal (or illusionary) signification' (States 1985, 36).
Though sometimes the representation mode can be very powerful, many scholars argue that it cannot completely subjugate that of presence, and that audiences take pleasure in perceiving the dual orders. Frederick Burwick stresses the 'willingness' in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous term 'the willing suspension of disbelief'. He maintains that for the spectator/reader, the 'real pleasure derived from knowing the scene represented was unreal and merely an imitation' (Burwick 1991, 212). Likewise, for Josette Féral, theatricality is born from audiences' perception of 'a series of cleavages' between the two orders, and that is the 'most profound pleasure' of theatre-going (2002a, 10-12).
Stevens revealed in an interview with me that he discovered the power of the theatrical dual orders in his earlier work entitled Jimmy Stewart, An Anthropologist from Mars, Analyses Love and Happiness in Humans (And Rabbits), in which he plays the Martian version of the film actor Jimmy Stewart: 'it kind of came alive as soon as I stopped trying to act and I can just basically talk to the people in the room'. He added that this piece was performed in many non-theatre places, and when it was performed in the theatre, he would try to make it feel informal. He found that 'my favourite way to perform it is to perform it in somebody's living room' (2021). In Jimmy Stewart, Stevens employs the same candid acting style as in Telephone. He does not delude spectators into believing in the illusion, but by plainly displaying the double levels of the real and the imaginary, he tries to evoke the imaginative power in audiences to conjure the make-believe world by themselves.
When Stevens brings the mechanism of dual orders from his early work to Telephone on the digital platform, he makes use of extra theatrical techniques. It is not a coincidence that in Telephone Stevens replaces the stage curtain with a wipe cloth he bought from Indiana, Pennsylvania, the hometown of the real-life Jimmy Stewart, as he explained in the introduction. Besides the candid acting style, he has added framing devices such as the substitute bar and curtains, using the same principle that lays bare the theatrical dual orders of presence and representation. In fact, the wipe cloth was a decision that Stevens made just five minutes before the first show: I had my wipe cloth and … then thinking this is going to be ridiculous, but I was also thinking … it's transparently ridiculous. We're going to pretend this is the curtain, but then by committing to ridiculousness and also acknowledging it, and then it kind of actually becomes something magical. (2021) It turns out that this last-moment instinct was quite a success. According to Stevens, in an informal survey of Coney's audience in December 2020, around 10% of the respondents replied that the wipe cloth/curtain in Telephone was their favourite moment from Coney's work (Stevens 2021). Considering that Coney has produced a large number of projects, 5 the figure of 10% is rather impressive.
One might question why the spectators embrace this theatrical device that almost feels like a makeshift substitute, or why Stevens does not conveniently take advantage of the virtual background function of Zoom to simulate curtains as well as a theatre bar with photos as some other productions did. Instead, he uses the idea of a bar, and an object that only bears a very remote iconic resemblance to stage curtains. One is a small piece of orange cotton cloth with random printed words, and the other (conventionally) luxurious red velvet drapes. That is because comparing to a convincing simulation, the gap between the signified and the signifier can intensify audiences' perception of the cleavages between the order or presence and the order of representation.
In a way, the wipe cloth can be regarded as a stage prop in place of the real object, only the stage curtain that the cloth represents is a synecdoche for theatre itself. To make the theatrical mechanism even more explicit, Stevens spells out that he is using the cloth for curtains, and concludes the prologue, as quoted in the beginning of this essay: 'That's basically how theatres work: curtains, music and stages' (Telephone 2020).
Telephone's metatheatrical techniques are consistent with Coney's fundamental approach. Play is at the heart of Coney's work, in many senses of the word. 'Coney … makes all kinds of play spark change … the different nouns, different formats of play', Stevens (2021) explains. For him, theatricality is also a kind of play. He is playing with the audience a simple game of 'let's pretend': let's pretend that Stevens is an anthropologist from Mars, let's pretend that ordinary audience members are Bell and Watson making the very first telephone call in history; let's pretend that the wipe cloth is the stage curtains. Once the game is on, then anything is imaginable, even theatre itself. 'We are conjuring theatre. We're not here together, but let's pretend that we are, like, let's pretend that we're in the theatre', he said in the interview (2021).
To conjure presence on screen These theatrical techniques brought from the play Jimmy Stewart suit well the unfortunate situation of the pandemic. Like many performances of the earlier play, Telephone takes place in non-theatrical locations, i.e. delivered from an office and viewed from homes across the Internet. It adopts a metatheatrical approach to arouse audiences' active theatrical imagination in order not only to conjure the dramatic world, but also the experience of being in the theatre at a time of theatre closure. Moreover, what differs from the in-person piece is that spectators watch Telephone via the screen, physically separate from the performer and each other. As the performance wants to offer a sense of togetherness, especially during its first run amidst lockdown and isolation, it asks audiences to imagine face to face proximity via the screen. This involves another layer of imagination than just acknowledging a dramatic story onstage. In her book Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief, Lindsay Brandon Hunter investigates the relation of theatricality and mediatisation. She identifies the two levels of representation in intermedial theatre as 'mediatized mimesis' which 'is doubly defined through its relationship with verity' (Hunter 2021, xvii). A Zoom production, for example, is twice removed from the real 6 through theatrical representation and mediatisation by technological media, in this case including the Internet, the screen, the videoconferencing platform, etc.
In Telephone, the theatrical mechanism that evokes spectators' imagination is extended to the media level to conjure presence out of absence on the virtual platform. At one point, Stevens asks the audience to imagine a friend 'you wish were there but isn't' sitting on the empty chair beside him. He goes on to tell them that they can write the friend a message or imagine writing the message. 'Every time you see this chair', he says, 'you can imagine they are sitting on it'. At the end of the performance, Stevens shifts aside and reveals the empty chair again, but this time with fairy string lights surrounding it.
Tomorrow, your friend steps out in the sun. Their phone buzzes and they pull out and glance and they are about to put their phone away in their pocket and they pause. They smile. I'm sure you can imagine them smiling. They are scrolling through their phone. There's a message they received a while ago. Just remembered it and they want to read it again. Tomorrow wherever they are, they have just remembered this message because today right here right now you are thinking about them smiling. And that is actually how telephone works. (Telephone 2020) Stevens then moves out of the screen frame, leaving the empty chair shining alone.
The devising of the empty chair is interesting on multiple levels. To think of a friend who is not there undoubtedly deepens audiences' emotional engagement, particularly in a time of separation and loss in the pandemic. Talking about this in the interview, Stevens explained that by imagining the absent friend he wanted the audience to construct something personal: 'I think that often moves people a lot if they have invested in that' (Stevens 2021). But the aim is not to secure spectators' emotional investment through exploiting lack and loss. Instead, the absence is accentuated only in order to conjure presence. While audiences are given verbal cues to envisage their friends, the only thing they can see is an unoccupied chair on the screen, the emptiness of which is even more highlighted by the shining festive lights in the last scene. This technique of widening the gap between the absence and the imaginary presence works under the similar principle of the 'pretend game'. Having activated audiences' consciousness of the theatrical dual orders by adapting conventional framing devices, the same theatrical mechanism also invites them to imagine their friend sitting beside the performer on the computer screen. It is a kind of make-believe presence that is in a sense doubly removed from actual presence, i.e. on the real and fictional level and on the physical and virtual level.
Recent discussions on the debate of liveness and presence tend to shift from the perspective of ontology and media specificity to audiences' perception and experience. When revisiting the issue, Auslander points out that we should think of 'the audience's experience rather than the properties of the thing experienced as the locus of liveness' (Auslander 2012, 6). In a conference entitled 'Liveness Symposium' in 2021, Reason proposed the notion of 'relational liveness', referring to a sense of co-presence and closeness, a sense of here and now experienced during the audience's encounter with the performance, and not necessarily with actual physical and temporal proximity (Reason 2021). This speech is largely based on the book Experiencing Liveness in Contemporary Performance (2016) Reason co-edited with Anja Mølle Lindelof, a collection of analyses of live experiences as a result of immersive, visceral, interactive encounters in various mediatised performances. Similarly, Erin Sullivan turns to the experiential quality of 'liveness' and uses the term 'aliveness' 7 to denote 'a sense of shared occasion, affect and absorption' experienced by audiences in theatre broadcast in cinema and at home, thanks to state-of-the-art equipment and filming techniques, as well as post-event social media interaction (Sullivan 2018, 60).
This kind of relational, experiential feeling of aliveness is also found in Telephone's audience reception. Stevens revealed in the interview that the response to the show 'has been really strong'. 'The most common thing is like "Oh my God, I actually felt properly connected and I felt like I was in a theatre … "' (Stevens 2021). Of course, the participatory nature of this piece likely contributes a great deal to the sense of togetherness. Another crucial factor is the activation of the 'old-fashioned' mechanism of suspension of disbelief, not by deluding the spectators, but by exposing the illusion to arouse their willingness and power of imagination. Therefore, in addition to the many ways of constructing experiences of liveness as described in recent studies such as Reason and Lindelof's book and Sullivan's research, Telephone provides an example in which theatre-makers utilise conventional theatrical devices to facilitate a sense of co-presence and connection in mediatised performance.

Predramatic or postdramatic
In the annual TaPRA conference in September 2022, Pascale Aebischer gave a keynote speech entitled 'Digital Shakespeare in the Pandemic: From Predramatic to Dramatic Performance' (2022), in which she argues that digital performance of Shakespeare shifted from the predramatic mode to the dramatic mode in the course of two years during the pandemic. She cites Greg Walker, who along with Eleanor Rycroft and Clare Wright, coined the term predramatic theatre 8 to describe the kind of late medieval and early modern performance which took place in market square, courts, dining halls, etc. when there were no purpose-built playhouses. The event needed to frame familiar places as a theatre space, and audience participation constituted an integral part of the performance. According to Aebischer, the Zoom production of The Tempest by Creation Theatre and Big Telly is a representative of early pandemic online performance in the form of predramatic entertainment in which audiences, situated in their domestic spaces, are part of the dramaturgical structure of the performance.
Interestingly, Barbara Fuchs in her newly published monograph Theater of Lockdown claims that lockdown online theatre is postdramatic. Quoting the characterisation of postdramatic theatre by Boyle et al. as 'formally distinguished by the insistent appearance of its own theatreness' (Boyle, Cornish, and Woolf 2019, 14), Fuchs points out that theatre of lockdown draws attention to its theatreness and form, as the Zoom interface and other digital platforms 'multiply the fourth wall and the opportunities to break it, adding new dimensions of reflexiveness (Fuchs 2022, 9).
Whether belonging to predramatic or postdramatic modes, the kind of lockdown online theatre defined by Aebischer and Fuchs clearly is not part of dramatic theatre, to be more precise, according to them, the type of theatre which adopts immersive and illusionist strategies to separate its audience from the performance. Rather, it exposes and embraces theatricality. Their descriptions of the pandemic digital theatre, though seemingly contradictory, reveal its position from the long lineage of theatre traditions. In fact, many of the works apparently are not direct descendants of experimental pre-Covid online performance with a history of over thirty years, 9 but are very much rooted in conventional inperson theatre, making an unexpected digital transition out of exigency.
Telephone is a typical example that can be categorised into both predramatic and postdramatic theatres, according to Aebischer and Fuchs' explanations. Created at the early stage of the first lockdown in England, the performance is framed within quotidian physical and cyber spaces. Its dramaturgy centres on audience participation, and highlights its own theatreness in that it makes no attempt to hide the use of theatrical devices and digital media to construct the imaginary and the virtual. It turns to traditional theatrical conventions and adapts them to the online platform to provide a sense of proximity and connectivity which is much needed in a time of social distancing.

Conclusion
Created and premiered in the Covid-19 lockdown, Coney's Zoom performance Telephone employs a number of conventional theatrical framing devices such as a prologue, a wipe cloth in place of stage curtains and a virtual theatre bar. These conventions serve their traditional purpose of framing the event as a theatrical performance as distinguished from everyday life and space, a function that becomes important again for the Zoom production performed and watched in non-theatrical spaces via the digital platform. These devices are also adapted for the new medium and the circumstances of lockdown. For example, the prologue functions to provide technical instructions and present the contextual situation in order to seek audiences' understanding of the play's unusual form. During theatre closure, the virtual theatre bar helps to recreate a social experience of theatre-going, and serves as a transitional portal to the performance to ease the way for the spectators to participation. Lack of the real objects, the performer has no intention to simulate them, but draws attention to the use of 'fake' substitutes, such as a small wipe cloth to stand for stage drapes. The explicit use of framing devices evokes audiences' awareness of the theatrical dual orders of presence and representation, in order to activate their 'imaginary puissance', as the Prologue in Shakespeare's Henry V entreats the spectators to wield. Telephone provides an example where the traditional theatrical mechanism is employed to help the audience to imagine live theatre, co-presence and connection, experiences that are particularly craved during lockdown and isolation.
Notes performances made during the Covid-19 pandemic. She holds an MA in Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies from the University of Warwick.