Theatre has been associated with contagion and contagious emotions since Plato and Aristotle. In the twentieth century, Antonin Artaud proposed that theatre or performance should be like the plague that takes control of actors’ and spectators’ bodies and infects them with an affective energy. For these infections to happen, however, audiences and actors must be in the same room. In times of the corona pandemic, this spatial proximity has been substituted by theatre mostly performed and/or streamed online. This article offers some preliminary thoughts on this development: it considers what we descriptively call “viral theatre.” We argue that we currently witness a form of viral theatre that manifests itself through an interplay of three aspects: first, the fact that both performers and spectators are in a state of disruption, second, the willingness/expectations on the part of spectators to participate in the event, and, finally, the use of communication technologies such as Zoom. The framework of the pandemic, therefore, enhances and modifies what viral theatre can be and what kind of effect it can have, oscillating between more Platonic notions of dangerous contagion when plays force us to explore questions of complicity and the Aristotelian ideal of cathartic emotions when plays/performers reach out to us for moral support.

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