INTO THE DIMENSION OF EVIL IN THE NETHER, BY JENNIFER HALEY

Resumo

Jennifer Haley’s The Nether (2013) is a play about how evil is commonplace in a society that the virtual reality takes place of the real world. Jennifer Haley's netherworld is a world beyond the Internet, when it is already possible to live in an idealized but dystopian and hellish network, where virtual reality has reached heights never imagined before. Research organizations, cultural bodies, military institutes, libraries, and companies of all sizes moved into the Nether as to foster a so-called real life. This article aims to try to examine how a police procedural drama like The Nether (2013) explores questions of spectropolitics in a supposedly vacuum (not empty) space of a computer network that has descended, metaphorically, into the depths of hell looking towards contemporary life. Considering the works of Marvin Carlson, Peeren & Blanco, Lee Horsley, and others, I question what Horsley states: isn't it in contemporary American theater where we find this tendency to blur the line between 'fact' and 'fiction'?