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Recent studies in media, communication, and technology suggest that social networking websites have become important additions to Western norms of mourning.1 This development in mourning and memorializing, while not necessarily revolutionary, indicates a shift in the Freudian model of grief (in which an individual works through stages of anger, guilt, depression, and sadness to reach a stable state, in which he or she can move forward with life and leave the deceased behind),2 to a new model of grieving. This new model "identifies one of the purposes of grief as constructing a biography of the deceased that can be integrated into the ongoing lives of his or her survivors."3 Our "online selves persist after [our physical] bodies have gone, and these surviving digital selves are managed in important ways by others."4 How mourners "manage" others' digital (after)lives, unlike a traditional gravestone or urn, is ongoing and dynamic, yet ephemeral, due to the ability of users to add or remove online comments, pictures, and videos at will. Funeral home websites host message boards for the dearly departed; family members and friends dedicate YouTube videos to lost loved ones; and social networking profiles of the deceased remain active, sometimes indefinitely. Through these online platforms, the living "manage" and attempt to interact with the deceased.
Using examples from one act of Haunting Fragments: On Existential Chickens, Live Shadows, Snapshots and Demons (2012)-a production I directed in Louisiana State University's HopKins Black Box-I demonstrate how the theatre can be a safe and generative space in which to explore new forms of digital mourning and memorializing.5 The HopKins Black Box is, historically, a space dedicated to performance praxis (i.e., the practical application of theory in an experimental theatrical performance or classroom setting). Haunting Fragments follows and expands upon this tradition, exploring how digital mourning practices (which are rooted in private embodied performances) might be staged both in the theatre and online.6 The production showcased the stage as a hypermedium-a medium in which other media can be both represented and performed7-and allowed for audience interactivity, multimedia intertextuality, actors and audiences who were physically present, and other co-creators who were not.
The stage performance ran for five consecutive days, and, as a university performance, attracted more students than non-students. Approximately 175...