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Are you addicted to endless scrolling? Trapped by the algorithms on your smartphone? Theatre might just be the antidote.

“Denmark’s a prison,” says Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in one of Shakespeare’s most famous dramas. In this scene, he is speaking to his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who have been recruited to spy on him by his mother and uncle.

Hamlet isn’t literally imprisoned, but he does feel trapped by his circumstances. He comes to realize that his uncle murdered his father, married his mother and then seized the kingship. He is being watched. He wants to escape the surveillance of the Danish court.

More than 400 years after Hamlet’s first performance, experts have warned that we are trapped and manipulated by the surveillance of our smartphones. Our online behaviour has transformed us into marketable data, and addictive algorithms have bound us to an endless recycling of what we have “liked.”

This digital herding also affects who we interact with online. We often find ourselves gathering with others who like the same people and share the same politics, seeking both protection and alleviation from loneliness.

This new form of digital entrapment has given birth to a kind of tribalism – a strong sense of loyalty to a group or community – that political...

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