#digitaltheatre

I deliberately kept quiet about this weekend's jitters.

Despite having a body so stunning it could probably halt traffic, Cucumber Cowgirl does not, in my humble opinion and with all due respect, resemble Hedy Lamarr. (This is not a criticism; I myself am light-years away from such a comparison 😉. And honestly, I know very few women who possess the perfect trifecta of an extraordinary body, a beautiful face, and a razor-sharp mind.)

In other words: I do not suspect Cucumber Cowgirl, again, with maximum respect for any allegedly spontaneous marketing stunt on her part (insert majestic facepalm), of acting entirely on her own, free from… shall we say… outside “encouragement.”

What I see is something closer to a “Hawaii during the pandemic, spring 2020” type of operation.

Because if someone hasn’t shown their face on Instagram since March 2022, and suddenly resurfaces in December 2025 just to drop THOSE Stories with THOSE tags, we can safely say it wasn’t RANDOM, SPONTANEOUS, born of sentiment, melancholy or a sudden wave of nostalgia for a faded "lover".

I’m thinking rather that this painfully embarrassing display (spitting water on yourself? sweet mother…) is meant to fit into something, to prove something.

And doesn’t the sudden verbosity of the First Wife under the Main Character’s Instagram posts ring any bells for you?

Maybe I’m naïve, but I like to maintain at least a minimal level of intellectual coherence.

. . . We know that Cucumber Cowgirl's fluffy white puppy appeared on the timeline precisely on Thursday, 11 August 2022.

. . . We also know that on Wednesday, 10 August 2022, the Main Character was present at a sombre ceremony at St. Dympna’s Church in Tydavnet, Co. Monaghan.

Conclusion? One of these two events actually happened… and the other was fabricated so it could be interpreted in a VERY SPECIFIC WAY. I’m not even touching the perfect timing (smoke & mirrors!). I’m talking about the core logic: you can’t simultaneously be an adorably dim “lover” to Cucumber Cowgirl and the solid emotional support of a very adult daughter in mourning.

Given all that: are we really supposed to believe the weekend Instagram spectacle was spontaneous?

'INTERNET GIRLFRIEND' is a #digitaltheatre piece streaming on NOVEMBER 19th 2021 at 7:00 PM EST

When University student and hobby YouTuber Daisy posts a video mentioning (okay, gushing about) her admiration for online mega-star Connor Beck, she never dreams he would actually see it. Or that it would change her life forever.

Internet Girlfriend explores the wonderfully weird world of early 2010's YouTube. Complete with original songs, vlogs, and staging, this multi-media story asks poignant questions about our deepening relationships with internet celebrities and the way we show up online.

A bit in the context of that recent flood of hearts pouring from the First Wife’s account under the Merry Widow’s posts — take a look at this:

Tell me, what living, breathing, thinking human being signs their own name under a text they themselves wrote on Instagram? It’s not exactly a mystery who posted it.

So… what happened here? Was the caption perhaps generated by ChatGPT, with the intern’s prompt reading: “Write a warm intro to the announcement of season eight’s premiere in the style of Caitríona Balfe”? Or maybe St*rz sent out one master file to the whole team, and the intern managing CMB’s account just copy-pasted the whole thing — without deleting Caitriona's name from her part?

Honestly, if anyone still wonders whether our two Main Characters actually run their own Instagram accounts, the only reasonable response is to smile… and sigh.

The article that you’re about to read is derived from a personal experience. It talks about theatre memories and how they can survive-if they can survive after watching the same theatrical performance digitally.

What happens when we can live again the same experience we had in the theatre-but now-watch again the same performance through a screen-in our laptop or in a local cinema? A 2D experience now, maybe tries to remind us what we’ve been through the live one, but are her intentions that good? Or does it want to force herself into our mind, replace the original theatrical experience, delete that forever?

To be able to remember every single scene, every single movement of every actor, the digital theatre, yes gives us that. We can watch it and re-watch it as many times as we want but, that’s not the point of the theatre at all. Theatre is what gives you that exact time, in that exact hall where you sit around hundreds of people watching, feeling something entirely private.

Was it meant to remember everything when a month, a year, a decade passes after a theatrical performance? NO. Memories are to fade. Because this is why they are made for. When you go back and remember a favourite theatrical experience you are not meant to remember the play from the beginning until the ending, this is what cinema does, or a favourite movie. But recalling this unique theatrical experience, it can give you those intense images, carved in your brain, that no camera could ever record. Your theatrical experience is unique and in my opinion, if it is very important it must stay that way. You don’t have to feel guilty of not remembering every single scene of the play, that is not the point, but what this play, this event gave you at the end, when the curtain fell.

I will repeat myself. Memories are to fade, and a sweet scene and energy abstracting that specific date in a specific place, from people, from those artists, live on that stage, that is what should remain.

I am still afraid of that power of digital theatre. Replacing all those little, short, loved private memories that we, as a theatrical audience have kept sacred into the deep tunnels of our brains, that short quantity of magic that is flushed away with time, the distinctiveness of that memory must stay untouched.