Introduction

We started during COVID lockdown and the question was simply: can we use the digital as a performance space, as the other performance spaces were closed? Everything else followed. What software works best? What do we have to take into account? What spatial needs are on our side? What technical equipment do we need? How do we invite audiences? What does the audience need to immerse themselves? Which rules of streaming do we have to follow?

What technology was the focus of the work, and why?
We tested out MS Teams and Zoom, but found that Zoom is more universally known and had more possibilities. We wanted to create a shared room with the audience, possibly to integrate them into the play or to talk with them afterwards.

What did you hope to explore in terms of technology, form, and content?
Theatre is fundamentally live and always shares the same space and time with the actors. This is what we missed most when we watched theatre streams of past performances. The focus then was, how to work with Zoom technically, and how to act and narrate a story in this format. How we invite the audiences into this space so that they experience the liveness of the event was a tricky question: as soon as there is a screen between us, it could be a movie as well. How to convince them, that we play for them? How can we focus them on what's happening on their screen?

We had two laptops with external cameras. The third camera should be like the door camera, so we used a smartphone with a fish eye lens that was directly logged into Zoom.

Creative Process

What forms of trial and error occurred?
We invited our colleagues to be our test audience to see if they understood our explanation of how to get onboard.

Did you use existing software?
We used a professional account of Zoom.

Did any of your questions or goals change, over the course of this project?
New questions arose, but also new solutions:

Sound was a bit tricky - how near do you have to be to the microphone, as it is designed to pick up speech at a near proximity, not the surround-sound of a room.

How many fail-safes do we need (back-up cameras/smartphones etc)? How many people need to be on standby if anything happens (internet breaks down, sudden updates, etc)? For internet stability we used additional W-LAN routers.

How to book the show? How to advertise different scenarios? You could book a package to be sent a bottle of blood-red wine, a cloth napkin and a candle to create your own set around your screen - how to offer this? How to package this?

What were the key milestones in the development of the production?
When things were running and we had our first test-audiences. Finding out that a nice little sticker next to the camera helps the actors to focus their view on the non-present audience.

Reflections

The play in itself worked very well. Dramaturgically, the plot of those three isolated siblings translated well into the Zoom format.

The audience numbers fell behind expectations. Also the analogue package with the wine and props was seldom booked. We saw that audiences craved analogue experiences after the lockdown and were a bit frustrated with life happening on Zoom - though art happening on Zoom was a good change.

In what ways was the production a success?
Audiences gave us very good feedback and colleagues were fascinated by the possibilities that might come out of this new format. Especially fond to us was an audience discussion afterwards that was longer than the 40 minute performance...

What elements of the final production would you change?
We had difficulty finding out how the audience felt during the performance. For the actors, it was very challenging to speak to a silent machine - we thought that feedback and interaction should be expanded.

If other people were to take a similar approach, what advice would you give?
In further projects, we emphasised interaction and feedback-possibilities. This should not be neglected.

Software constantly changes and often improves - but beware updates that surprise you 10 minutes before your scheduled performance.

New formats need a lot of promotion.