My son sits at the desk, knee propped on its edge, keyboard in lap. Nearby, a television bolted to the wall displays a high-definition humanoid, clad in luminous armor inscribed with obscure heraldry, dancing with ecstatic abandon. Were it not odd enough that they are dancing in the lugubrious depths of a biomorphic dreadnaught inhabited by a terrible and hostile alien race intent on destroying the earth and everything upon it, the dance they dance is the “Carlton,” made famous by actor Alfonso Ribeiro on the 1990s sit-com The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. As his avatar frolics, the boy’s eyes focus on a second screen, his computer’s monitor. I move in closer to take a peek. He is posting a comment to a Reddit discussion board, so I lean in a bit closer. Reddit is a user-moderated web-content aggregation and rating website; it has a well-earned reputation for free-wheeling expression. Along with Twitter, 4chan, and 8chan, Reddit was one of the social media platforms weaponized to harass and threaten feminist and queer game critics and designers during the so-called “Gamergate” controversy of 2014–15. But it’s difficult to be a serious player of video games—or scholar, for that matter—without participating in online communities like Reddit. I see he’s adding comments to a thread about recent changes made to weapon ranges by the developers of the game he’s playing. There’s some salty language here and there, but by and large, it’s mostly technical stuff.

The theatre only has one chance, when it understands itself as an instrument of deceleration against the general acceleration of life, information and perception. Theatre is the Stone Age, but it can teach you how to see. —Heiner Müller

It was her mouth, and not yet she, that cried. It was that shadow cried behind her mouth;