When Theatre and Laptops Collide: What Positives Can Theatre Take from 2020?
Tumbleweed rolls down Shaftsbury Avenue past six-month old posters and theatre addicts desperately scratching box office doors (“I’ll take anything – upper circle, restricted view, Love Never Dies – ANYTHING!”). Meanwhile, performers, technical, backstage and front of house staff work elsewhere or survive on furlough wages. There’s no doubt it’s been a tough year for theatre.
But that’s not news to anyone, so that’s not what this piece is about. Instead, I’m trying to look, ever so slightly, on the bright side. The last couple of months have seen glimmers of hope appear politically and with treatments for Covid. There’s hope to be had for theatre too. Whilst I don’t want to minimise the horrors the industry has suffered, I did want to talk to those who make, create and review theatre, to see if some good has come out of 2020 and what we can learn from this dumpster fire of a year.
And, because there is a lot to learn, this will be part one. In part two (or as I like to think of it, after the interval) I’ll tackle how what’s been learnt this year may change theatre in 2021 and beyond.
So let’s get the curtain up on our first positive of this year: online content has kept theatre going. Although houses have been dark, companies big and small very quickly adapted and got content out to their audience in a variety of ways. As Maryam Philpott, theatre critic, with Reviews Hub and Cultural Capital explains; “The industry has adapted rapidly to lockdown. At first, online productions were fairly haphazard, but the quality of online streaming accelerated very quickly.” And of course it’s not just the big, famous theatres, like the National who have been streaming. As Maryam says, “One major change is that audiences are becoming aware of new theatres they’ve never been to and may never actually visit in person. Putting content online is helping smaller regional theatres build relationships with new audiences and makes people familiar with theatres they might not usually be able to visit. This week I’ve been to Nottingham and Hull without getting off the sofa!”
All the lounge is indeed a stage and having access to so many more companies is positive development number two. Some of my first experiences of ‘lockdown theatre’ were with international companies, and productions from Bottom Dog Theatre, in Limerick, kept me sane in the early days of lockdown. Their first production, The Bachelor of Kilkish, had me weeping, not just at the bittersweet story of an elderly gay bachelor in rural Ireland, but because, as it was a recording of a live production, there was an audience clapping and reacting along with me. It was the sweet, sweet hit of theatre I so desperately missed.
I asked co-founder of Bottom Dog, Liam O’Brien whether they had noticed a change in their audience demographics and what was behind their decision to show recordings of their productions online; “Mainly to keep active. We decided to stream to keep our audiences interested, and perhaps make a few bob to keep the lights on”. And did they find this attracted a new audience? “We had limited engagement. Maybe 50 people on our first stream. But the response was positive and we made a few contacts, like yourself, internationally”. Putting content out there can be a slow burner, but, as Liam says, it keeps your audience engaged and increases the chance that new people will stumble across your hashtags and give your productions a chance.
Jonathan Goodwin, co-founder of Don’t Go Into the Cellar theatre company (who create ‘Victorian Theatre with Bite’), has had a similar experience. The company are based in the Midlands and normally tour all over the UK. They had 160 bookings for 2020, but had to replace those with online engagements instead. Now, they broadcast via Facebook live, usually on Sundays, and have seen engagement grow, particularly internationally. “We’ve had messages from viewers in Tokyo staying up till 4am to watch. And we have a new band of regulars from New York, Canada, Paris, Australia, all over the world”. And has this helped keep the company going? “It costs the company £,1,800 a month for website costs, costume storage etc. We don’t charge for online performances, but we set up a Go Fund Me where viewers can make a donation. This is keeping the company alive”
Smaller theatres are thankfully just about surviving, and continuing to reach bigger, wider audiences will help them not just now, but into next year as well.
Bigger theatres have not been without their problems however, and this has been the same home and abroad. The Stratford Festival, in Ontario, Canada was due to open their brand new $70-million Tom Patterson Theatre and had to cancel their 2020 season just weeks before it was due to start. Unlike the smaller theatres however, they already had a rich array of digital resources to fall back on, including filmed versions of their productions from all the way back to the 1950s. Echoing the rapid adaptation Maryam Philpott spoke of earlier, they quickly put together a free film festival from April to July, which gained 1.2 million views, from 65 countries. As Executive Director Anita Gaffney says; “The Festival has invested in creating and distributing its digital content as a means of showcasing the work of our artists and building connections to our audiences. It allows us to connect to audiences much further afield, while enhancing our reputation”. Lockdown also spurred them on to develop and launch their ‘StratFest at Home’ streaming service, which premiered in October and hosts weekly online viewing parties on Thursdays.
What does this rapid development of digital resources mean for live theatre? Everyone I spoke to agreed online content was an entirely different beast. As Anita says: “The live experience is irreplaceable. There is something uniquely special about the live communal experience – the spontaneity, the shared reactions, the immediacy.”
But there is still a sense of community, even with an online performance. Anita describes them as “a reasonable proxy” and I would agree. I’m desperate to get into an actual theatre and sit, held in anticipation, with my fellow audience members as we watch a story unfold. However, I have still felt a sense of connection when logging on to watch a show. With plays on YouTube, such as those by Bottom Dog, you can comment and reply to other audience members. Jonathan’s viewers are dubbed ‘Cellar Dwellers’ and can comment, like and chat on a constant stream throughout the Facebook live broadcast. It does dissipate your attention – if you are commenting or going on a new tab to tweet about the show, you dilute your absorption in a way that wouldn’t occur in a theatre. But, you do get to connect with your fellow audience members and most importantly, ‘clap’ the performers and production team (via emojis) at the end of the show.
I felt my greatest sense of connection as a ‘Digital Groundling’ watching Shakespeare productions by The Show Must Go Online. TSMGO was created by actor, writer and Shakespeare specialist Robert Myles, purely in response to lockdown. The shows were broadcast live on YouTube, but the actors performed their roles from their own homes, via Zoom. They pushed their artistic abilities to the max to create their own props, costumes and make up with fantastic (and sometimes truly gruesome) results. They have had an amazing response to the shows, with 55% of their audience based outside the UK, in over 60 countries. Rob raises another advantage of online content – it makes theatre accessible for people who may be struggling financially, or physically unable to get to a theatre. He has received feedback from “People with chronic conditions unable to make trips to auditoria even before the Covid crisis; parents of autistic children who have responded so positively to the format; even those with terminal illnesses who chose to spend some of their last days taking solace in Shakespeare.” What an amazing, unintended consequence, of producing digital theatre.
So these are our positives; theatres, big and small, are surviving. You can find new companies, with wonderful performers and storytellers at the click of a mouse. Digital resources are adapting rapidly and are making theatre physically and financially accessible for more people. The theatre community is growing and sticking together.
It has been the most difficult of years, but to quote Sondheim’s Follies, theatre is screaming “I’m still here”. We need to listen and support all the wonderful people that create, run and maintain it. This year will have knock-on effects, good and bad, on the way theatre is produced for years to come. But what can we expect for 2021? I’ll see you after the interval for that one.
Written by Mel Coghlan
Mel Coghlan is a an exams organiser, event co-ordinator, sometime tour guide and spreadsheet queen from London.
When not doing all of the above, she enjoys writing, theatre, wine drinking and anything that staves off anxiety. Mel finds talking about herself in the third person disconcerting, but oddly pleasing.