In the podcast-séance, Madam Tseter problematizes the Philippine theatre debate during the pandemic: is theatre dead or alive? Borrowing from Schrödinger’s cat quantum thought experiment, Madam Tseter reframes pandemic performances as a state of superposition where the stage exists between planes: presence+absence, stage+digital stream, ritual+recording.
Drawing from the state of Filipino digital performances featured in the 2021 Tawid sa Harbour podcast, the performance traces how practitioners (Layeta Bucoy, Aldo Vencilao, Sining Banwa, MC BLCK, James Harvey Estrada, Rain Matienzo, Janna Cortes, Zheg Arban, Ela Figura) cultivated an ecology of survival by creating, distributing, and consuming digital performance as a way to feed themselves, sustain their creative work in the academe, and serve their communities in the time of a global pandemic. These practitioners responded to the summon of Madam Tseter to transform crisis to connection, forming archipelagic digital crossings across the Philippines.
As Madam Tseter once again stages a ritual of summoning through sound, voice, and silence, the work calls for the spirits of pandemic performances. The podcast-séance becomes a dramaturgical metaphor–an invitation to the voices of practitioners to the ghosts of theatre, and to the static in-betweens.
Madam Tseter proposes an aural laboratory of whispers of stories, knocks of creative labor, and vibrations of agency featuring an archipelagic creature, alive in code and embodied in performances. The performance summons listeners to join the circle and witness the quantum ontology of theatre amid the shifting tides of technology, crisis and innovation.
*Performance Studies international PSiSearch …Video PlayerPerformance Studies international (PSi) and the Critical Island Studies Consortium (CIS) 2026 Joint Annual Conference, 15-18 July 2026 | Universitas Kristen Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia.