Covid-19 and the Discovery of a new Form of Online Theater

With the appearance of Covid-19 pandemic, many jobs have encountered fundamental transformations. Termination and various limitations, has forced a majority of social professions to suspend. Theaters and performing arts are also among these professions. Due to the increasing prevalence of this disease, all theater halls have been shut down and artists have forced to stay in lock down. Meanwhile, many of theatrical institutions and artists, for the purpose of the continuity of their activities as well as the subsistence of theater, intended to hold various theater festivals under the title of “Online Theater”. The kind of festivals that are active and still running. The neglected matter in between, is the usage of “Online Theater” phrase. Whereas the whole kind of this presentation is based on smartphone platforms, there is an imbalance between the form and the content. All performing pieces have been presenting in a horizontal frame and they are still proceeding to be so; However, the commonly used format in smartphones and tablets is a vertical style. Thus, there is an incongruity of the frame presentation and its content. This article attempts to present a new method in production and presentation of online and smartphone-based performances. A method which is based on IGTV 9:16 and capable of removing the nonessential aspects of a piece such as captions, black borders, small size of the image and etc. as a result. Evidently, there is a need for changing the performance production methods to achieve this purpose according to smartphone features. In this regard, there are suggestions in this article to assist the smartphone-based performance artists and motivate them to produce unique and more attractive creations for the audience. This article is prepared, based on scientific applied research and reliable resources including books, articles and international creditable news agencies were used as its writing sources.