Reviewed by:

• It's True, It's True, It's True: Artemisia on Trialby Breach Theatre
• Ellen Mackay

The last time I attended a live, in-the-flesh theatre production was March 4, 2020, a mere two weeks from Illinois's Disaster Proclamation and three from its Stay at Home Order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. As I entered the auditorium, I found that the ordinary sights and sounds of a winter matinée audience—the heads clustered over programs, the low din of sniffles, coughs, and crinkling lozenge wrappers—did not settle into the background of my playgoing experience but hammered away at my amygdala, each registering as a cause for alarm.

What possessed me, I now wonder, to keep going? Without letting American leadership off the hook for the public's poor safeguarding of its health, I find that my heedlessness sheds some light on what might be called the bioticside of theatrical liveness. The revelation is twofold: COVID-19 confronts spectators with the virality of a play's spoken matter, as well as the peculiar unaddressability of that condition. To be sure, the failure to track the rising unwholesomeness of a changing environment is not specific to the stage. But the cognitive incapacity to apprehend what our senses cannot casually detect is exacerbated by the theatre's evergreen assurance that nothing happens there. The pledge of harmlessness built into the notion that plays are designed to vanish, as Prospero says, "into thin air" has resulted in the view of performance as a state of being that is brought to a halt by conditions that matter, even as "thin air" has lost its former sense of an empty and inert domain.

If "attending" streamed plays during the ongoing pandemic means asking what can be seen and what should be said about the theatre in its absence—while it is a signal without a medium—then my answer is that COVID-19 has made it impossible to overlook the fact that things happen to us as we watch a play, and not just in the cerebral sense that thoughts are sparked, but also in the molecular sense that we are moved and acted upon; as spectators, we make ourselves susceptible to its under-the-skin machinations. Of the many productions I watched during the cornucopia of streamed theatre last spring, none was so alive to this condition as Breach Theatre's It's True, It's True, It's True: Artemisia on Trial. A digital vestige of a palpable hit, it served up a needed reminder that if sometimes to our peril then certainly also to our gain, the theatre's shaping fantasies remake us as we watch them. [End Page 509]

As those who are familiar with the short roster of seventeenth-century female artists may already suspect, the Artemisia in question is Artemisia Gentiles-chi, the first woman admitted to Florence's Academy of Fine Arts, and a painter whose remarkable professional achievements have become ineradicably entangled with the history of her rape. It's True, It's True, It's Trueis devised to animate and investigate that entanglement. Originally commissioned by the New Diorama Theatre, the play premiered at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe, where it returned the following summer as a British Council Showcase. It toured the UK throughout 2019 and was set to be performed at the Pit, the Barbican's studio space, last March when COVID-19 brought the season to a standstill. In lieu of the live production, the Barbican streamed a filmed version that had been commissioned and broadcast on BBC Four as part of the channel's special programming on the nude in art (anchored by Mary Beard's two-part series, "Shock of the Nude"). By popular demand, the online run was extended from the original production period through late May, which is when I got the message to tune in...

审核人：

• 是真的，这是真的，这是真的：Artemisia在Breach Theater的审判中
• 艾伦·麦凯（Ellen Mackay）

我上次参加现场直播的现场剧院演出是2020年3月4日，距伊利诺伊州的《灾难宣告》仅两周，而距其《在家待命》仅三周，以缓解COVID-19的传播。当我进入大礼堂时，我发现冬季马提尼舞观众的普通视线和声音-头顶聚集在节目上，低沉的鼻息，咳嗽和起皱的菱形包装纸-并没有融入我的游玩经历的背景中，但是锤击着我的杏仁核，每一个都引起了警报。

我现在想知道什么让我继续前进？在不让美国领导层摆脱公众对公众健康的不良保障的情况下，我发现我的疏忽大意揭示了戏剧性活动的生物方面。启示是双重的：COVID-19面对观众的是戏剧话语的病毒性，以及这种情况的特殊无法解决的问题。可以肯定的是，未能跟踪不断变化的环境中日益严重的不道德感并不是特定于该阶段的。但是剧院的常青树保证，那里什么也没发生，加剧了无法理解我们的感觉无法随便发现的认知能力。。正如Prospero所说，无意识的承诺已根植于游戏的设计中，正如Prospero所说，“陷入困境”已将表演视为一种状态，这种状态因重要条件而中止，即使是“稀薄的空气”已经失去了它以前对空旷和惰性区域的感觉。

如果在持续的大流行期间“观看”流媒体播放的剧本意味着询问在没有剧院的情况下可以看到什么以及应该对剧院说些什么（虽然这是没有媒介的信号），那么我的回答是COVID-19使得不可能忽略了一个事实，即我们在观看一场比赛时事情发生在我们身上，不仅在思想产生的大脑意义上，而且在我们被感动和行动的分子意义上；作为旁观者，我们很容易受到其皮肤下阴谋诡计的影响。在去年春天流媒体剧院聚宝盆期间我看过的许多作品中，没有一个能像Breach Theatre的《It's True》，《 True》，《 True：Artemisia on Trial》那样活着。。触手可及的数字痕迹可以提醒我们，如果有时对我们造成危险，那么当然也对我们有所裨益，那么剧院的幻想会在我们观看它们时重现我们的幻想。[结束页509]

正如那些熟悉17世纪女性艺术家短名单的人可能已经怀疑的那样，所讨论的蒿是Artemisia Gentiles-chi，是佛罗伦萨美术学院的首位女性，也是一位画家，其杰出的职业成就已成定局纠缠了她的强奸历史。是的，是的，是的被设计为动画并调查这种纠缠。该剧最初是由新西洋镜剧院（New Diorama Theatre）委托制作的，并于2018年的爱丁堡边缘（Edinburgh Fringe）首演，并于次年夏天作为英国文化协会（British Council）展示柜返回。它在整个2019年都在英国巡回演出，定于去年三月COVID-19使本赛季陷入停顿时在巴比肯的工作室Pit进行演出。Barbican代替了现场制作，转播了一部电影版本，该版本已委托BBC四播出，并作为该频道关于艺术裸体的特别节目的一部分（由Mary Beard的两部分电视连续剧《 Nock of the Nude》所锚定） ）。受到大众需求，在线运行时间从最初的生产期延长到了5月下旬，那时我收到了需要调整的消息...