The book has undergone significant revisions due to various factors. Some are the same forces that have dogged the project from the start: unexpected topics arose, sometimes required me to invade other fields, others resulting in significant rethinking. But most significantly, an external reader (the infamous Reader 2) for my forthcoming article in the Journal of Dramatic Theatre and Criticism wanted me to discuss postdramatic theater. Doing so in the already tight space I was allowed for the article was out of the question, and I don’t have any personal interest in that genre, but Reader 2 had a point: postdramatic theater, at least in some of its versions, rejects fiction or seeks situations in which it’s unclear whether the activity on stage is fictional or real. Since my argument makes fiction a necessary part of theater, clearly I needed to contend with postdramatic theater’s project. Doing so required more space than I anticipated, ultimately turning into a full chapter plus part of another. With that much attention, postdramatic theater became more or less on a par with online role-playing. The book’s title needed to change in order to reflect the alteration. So the new working title is The Question of Theatre: Online Role-playing, Postdramatic Theater, and Social Ontology. The new title also has the benefit of emphasizing the scope of the project, as the previous one (Online Role-playing and the Question of Theater) risked making the topic seem narrow; the new title will, I hope, attract more readers. But — spoiler alert — they won’t be happy with some of the things I say (or more precisely, say about Lehmann’s theory), so I’ll attract a lot of pissed-off readers.

I write this post as COVID-19 is still in the early stages of ravaging New York City, where I live. It’s conceivable that I might not live to see this project come to fruition. Unfortunately it is nowhere near completion: a chapter, the introduction and the conclusion all have yet to be drafted, and the existing chapter drafts are all very rough: material will move, some topics are but waved at, I need to do a second round of research, various issues need more thorough analysis, the writing needs sharpening — the list goes on. It would be a pity, at least to me, for these years of research, analysis and writing to go to naught. So if I become seriously ill, I may set up a post to publish automatically after a certain time, and make what I’ve written publicly available, warts and all. Unfortunately it’ll only be up as long as the website is paid for, but one takes what one can get.