Digital Access to the Performing Arts: A Comparative Study of Legal and Structural Challenges

by Magda Romanska

Overview

How can we make the digital performing arts truly accessible?

Written by experts at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center and metaLAB, this pioneering study explores the urgent need to rethink digital access in the performing arts. Drawing on comparative research across the US, UK, EU and Australia, it examines how the COVID-19 pandemic exposed both the potential and the shortcomings of digital programming, particularly for disabled and marginalized audiences. Through rich case studies and critical legal analysis, it advocates for a new global framework that balances copyright protection with the human right to culture.

This is an essential resource for policy makers, arts leaders, disability rights advocates and legal scholars seeking a more inclusive digital future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781529257045
Publisher:	Bristol University Press
Publication date:	01/30/2026
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128

About the Author

Magda Romanska is Professor of Performing Arts at Emerson College and Faculty Associate at Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Theatre and Digitality

3. Successful Case Studies

4. Real and Perceived Challenges

5. Recommendations

Editorial Reviews

‘This is an urgent and necessary book. It insists, without apology, that digital access to performance is not a luxury, but a lifeline – a matter of both disability rights and human rights. By offering practical tools for theatre makers to reach disabled, elderly, homebound and geographically isolated audiences – as well as the digital natives who grew up online – it challenges our field to expand its horizons and embrace the communities that sustained it during the darkest months of the pandemic. In doing so, it calls upon artists, institutions and funders alike to imagine a future of both access and artistry.’ Anne Bogart, Columbia University

From the Publisher