Reviewed by:

• Stumped by Shomit Dutta
• Annette Balaam

On screen, a box set opened the play slowly spinning on its axis in a void of black space, exposing its sides, roof and base before temporarily settling in the frontal perspective characteristic of conventional theatre. In a boundary-breaking hybrid live/online production of Shomit Dutta’s new play Stumped, Original Theatre Online displayed other three-dimensional viewpoints of the moving image in a methodology that not only explored the digital screen as a liminal zone with no fixed or determined a priori conditions of space, time and causality, but also reconceived, repurposed and politicized the ontological instability of the in-screen viewer within this liminal landscape between the live and the online, opening up new discursive and political possibilities for the digital screen.

Stumped is a darkly comic play that imagines the two cricket-obsessed Nobel Prize winners Samuel Beckett (Stephen Tompkinson) and Harold Pinter (Andrew Lancel) as waiting batsmen in a brilliantly witty spin on Waiting for Godot and The Dumb Waiter. Act One is set on the balcony of the pavilion, and Act Two finds them on the village green drunkenly waiting for a lift from a stranger called ‘Doggo’ who may never come.

Filmed live from the home of English cricket—Lord’s—Stumped was originally meant to have been filmed in front of a live audience and simultaneously live-streamed from Lord’s on September 10, 2022. But due to the national event of Queen Elizabeth II dying on September 8, 2022, a pause was placed on the presence of a live audience and the live streaming from the real Lord’s Cricket Ground. Notwithstanding the cancellation of the live event, the ghostly presence of the real Lord’s and the echoes of a live audience and live streaming shadow, haunt and frame the reality of the play. [End Page 362]

The cast of Stumped by Shomit Dutta, produced by Original Theatre. Photo: North South.

Insisting on the presence of the real to act as a counterbalance to the hegemony of the virtual, Stumped’s proscenium arch was constructed as a dark, heavy wooden picture frame encircling and framing the set of an English cricket pavilion drenched in the vibrant color palette and design of René Magritte’s blue skies and white clouds, reminiscent of the very pompier trompe-l’oeil backcloth to Beckett’s play Happy Days. On the back wall hung another three-dimensional picture that framed and contained a 3D model—the front of which opened to remove real props—of the pavilion. This literal picture framing of a representation of the real, made visible to the viewer that this play is a picture of the real, which consequently emphasized the artificiality of the reality seen.

Original Theatre Online also made the constructed nature of reality visible to the audience in a less literal and more mechanical way, by oscillating the viewer’s perception and sense of being through a palimpsestuous layering of the real and unreal realms in the planes of the digital screen. At the end of Act One, the audience saw Beckett step through multiple real and unreal planes in the digital screen; as he stepped off the stage, out of the picture frame, into the void, into the live audience, onto an imaginary cricket pitch to play imaginary cricket at the real Lord’s Cricket Ground. The viewer could choose between any combination of the real, unreal, or imagined realms in which to place their own Beckett in space and time. In making visible the ontological instability that characterized the piece, Original Theatre turned an existential no-man’s-land into a possible playground for an audience to explore other spatial and temporal geographies.

This existential playground was also maintained by alternatively reversing, revolving, or dissolving the fourth wall. In Act One, the live/online audience watched the characters on stage watch a cricket match played in the auditorium, and simultaneously the characters watched the audience...

审阅者：

• 被肖米特·杜塔难住了
• 安妮特·巴兰

在屏幕上，一个盒子布景打开了戏剧，在黑色空间中缓慢地绕其轴旋转，暴露了其侧面、屋顶和底座，然后暂时定居在传统剧院的正面透视特征中。在 Shomit Dutta 的新剧《Stumped》的突破性现场/在线混合制作中，Original Theater Online 展示了运动图像的其他三维视角，其方法不仅将数字屏幕探索为没有固定或确定的阈值区域。空间、时间和因果关系的先验条件，但也重新构思、重新调整了屏幕内观众在现场和网络之间的界限景观中的本体论不稳定性，并使其政治化，为数字屏幕开辟了新的话语和政治可能性。

《Stumped》是一部黑色喜剧，讲述了两位痴迷于板球的诺贝尔奖获得者塞缪尔·贝克特（斯蒂芬·汤普金森饰）和哈罗德·品特（安德鲁·兰塞尔饰）在《等待戈多》和《愚蠢的侍者》中以精彩诙谐的方式扮演等待击球手的故事。第一幕发生在凉亭的阳台上，第二幕发现他们在村庄的绿地上醉醺醺地等待一个叫“狗哥”的陌生人搭车，而这个陌生人可能永远不会来。

《Stumped》原本是在英国板球之家 Lord's 现场拍摄的，并于 2022 年 9 月 10 日在现场观众面前拍摄，并同时在 Lord's 进行直播。但由于英国女王伊丽莎白二世去世的国家事件， 2022 年 9 月 8 日，现场观众和真实的罗德板球场的直播暂停。尽管现场活动被取消，但真正的领主的幽灵般的存在以及现场观众和直播阴影的回声，困扰并框定了戏剧的现实。[完第362页]

由 Shomit Dutta 制作的《Stumped》演员阵容，由 Original Theatre 制作。照片：南北。

Stumped 坚持以真实的存在来平衡虚拟的霸权，Stumped的台口拱门被建造成一个深色、沉重的木制相框，包围并框定了英国板球馆的布景，该馆浸透在充满活力的调色板中雷内·马格利特的蓝天白云的设计，让人想起贝克特戏剧《快乐时光》中非常浮夸的错视画背景。后墙上挂着另一幅三维图片，其中包含展馆的 3D 模型（其正面打开以移除真实的道具）。这种真实再现的字面画框，让观众可以看出这部剧是一幅真实的图画，从而强调了所看到的现实的人造性。

原创在线剧场还以一种不那么直白、更机械的方式让观众看到了现实的构建本质，通过数字屏幕平面上真实和虚幻领域的重写分层来振荡观众的感知和存在感。第一幕结束时，观众看到贝克特在数字屏幕中穿越了多个真实和虚幻的平面；当他走下舞台，走出相框，走进虚空，走进现场观众，走上想象中的板球场，在真实的洛德板球场上打想象中的板球。观众可以在真实、虚幻或想象领域的任意组合之间进行选择，将自己的贝克特置于时空之中。为了使这部作品所具有的本体论的不稳定性变得可见，原创剧院将一个存在的无人区变成了一个可能的游乐场，供观众探索其他时空地理。

这个存在主义游乐场也通过交替翻转、旋转或溶解第四堵墙来维持。在第一幕中，现场/在线观众观看舞台上的角色观看礼堂中进行的板球比赛，同时角色也观看观众……