William Shakespeare’s Much A-Zoom About Nothing

Abstract

The undergraduate production of Much Ado About Nothing by Lord Denney’s Players, the theatre company of the Ohio State University department of English, was originally scheduled to run 26–29 March 2020, but OSU’s move to remote learning on 12 March 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic prevented the live show from occurring. A combination of dramaturgical and technological innovation saved the day: the production’s emphasis upon Much Ado’s surveillance culture readily translated to a film built using Zoom, the same social meeting software that enabled OSU to move its educational mission entirely online. This article details the way that in navigating the challenges of digital performance, LDP was able to re-dramaturge and convert a nearly finished live production to film in order to take advantage of the affordances provided by social media, and, so doing, provide a solution to the vexing interpretive problem of Shakespeare’s character of Margaret.