Digital theatre is keeping audiences happy amid Covid-19 crisis, but does it pose a threat to live performance?
- Critics of digital downloads and screenings are worried that it’ll replace actual theatergoing and become people’s only experience of live theatre today
- Post-coronavirus people may not go to the theatre at all, particularly at a time of rising costs, when they can stay home and download broadcasts
No one at this point can answer when live performance will come back. Not the medical experts. Not theatre owners and producers. And in the United States, not the unions that represent the creative professionals whose livelihoods are in a state of suspended animation.
Digital is the only safe stage right now. Theatres, fighting for their lives, have been creatively exploring how to connect to their audiences with media technology. American playwright Richard Nelson wrote a play for Zoom, celebrated productions from the past are streaming, online benefit play-readings are proliferating and virtual town halls have become the new theatre hang-out.
Centre Theatre Group managing director and chief executive Meghan Pressman recently moderated an LA Theatre Speaks panel on the subject of creating theatrical content for online platforms. The speakers were enthusiastic yet understandably cautious. Digital dangles the promise of salvation yet has a track record of devastating financial disruption. But what other choice is available in a pandemic?
Yuval Sharon, artistic director of the Industry, an innovative opera company devoted to exploring non-traditional performance spaces, says he is interested in “work that does not feel like it’s an apology” for our inability to gather in person.
Digital is less appealing to him as a delivery system “for content we would normally do.” He’s more intrigued by “brand-new work” that is responsive to the tools that are still being discovered.