The power of the human body onstage is, of course, something that separates theatre from TV, film, photography – and online porn. It’s comparatively easy to distance yourself from a small image on a smartphone screen; harder not to be unsettled by a person in front of you. This queasy power is harnessed in Jennifer Haley’s hit play The Nether, which opened in LA in 2013, before enjoying runs in London’s West End and off-Broadway in New York this spring. West Coasters can catch it early next year when it’s staged at the San Francisco Playhouse.

A chilling tale, the play is set in the near-future where the internet has become a total virtual reality. Plug in and visit The Hideaway, a pseudo-Victorian mansion where visitors have sex with, then violently murder, little girls, all without consequence. The Nether asks difficult questions about the degree of responsibility we must take for our online actions – but it also puts the audience in an uncomfortable position of spectatorship: they may be playing digital creations, but the little actors are flesh-and-blood. Audiences can’t help but be steered to ask: if it looks real, and feels real, maybe the moral responsibility is real?

Using technology onstage isn’t just about peering into a grim future – it can also update classics to our present moment. So it was for Anya Reiss’ take on Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening last year: when re-writing his play about sexually confused and suicidal teenagers (which was accused of being pornographic even in 1891), she couldn’t exactly ignore the internet. The production used Skype, Facebook and YouTube, with troubled teens swapping videos of S&M porn.

Speaking to Reiss as the show opened, the 22-year-old told me that she had never actually watched porn before she embarked on this project. As research goes, it was pretty eye-opening: “It was not what I thought! .” She says she was terrified by it, “never mind if I was 14.”

Not suitable for children

Adults being taken aback by what youngsters are watching is a common theme, and another new play tackling online porn actually has its basis in real life. Lizi Patch found herself caught up in an international media storm two years ago, after she wrote on her blog about her 11-year-old son’s traumatic experience of being shown hard-core pornography on a phone by kids at school.

Her play about the issue, Punching the Sky, received public funding in the UK for development; she’s hoping another round will see it touring 10 regional theatres across the country. It uses animation to create the character of the young boy, while the mother is played by an actor – as is the character of the internet. This allowed Patch – like Rash Dash – to take the internet on, and to give voice to the debates she’s been having about online porn and how we protect children from it.