Can you watch top-quality theatre from your living room? Should you even want to? Arts leaders share the opportunities and the difficulties of filming theatre to stream online.
The efforts of these organisations have opened up access to the performing arts, while also contributing to a growing archive of Australian theatre.
When the opportunity came up for one of the plays she directed to be the first production filmed for ATL, she knew she wanted to be a part of it."I wanted to be able to capture Australian work, to be able to share with people overseas, because I don't think the rest of the world knows how great Australian performance of Australian plays actually is," says Lewis.
ATL has such a painstaking planning process because they only shoot one performance straight through – bar an occasional 'pick-up' later . But those rules are sometimes broken: Hiscock may direct operators to follow an actor outside their territory, "because we know they're coming back, or we know something interesting is happening on that side of the stage".
For ATL's production of Platée, director Neil Armfield sat in on post-production for a couple of days. "Honouring the storytelling of the playwright — that happens in the edit. That's where we're focused," says Hiscock.What's in it for theatre companies? “[Filmed theatre is] something I really believe in and something I'm really excited about,” says Greene.
She notes that people will be able to watch ATL shows and see what audiences were wearing in a certain era, and what theatre spaces like Griffin's Stables theatre once looked like.In the future, Greene would like to use streamed versions of Griffin's shows as a "test balloon" to figure out if a work is popular and should be remounted, or to build anticipation for an upcoming remount.
Return to the Dirt also starred playwright Steve Pirie, and will launch on ATL on Demand in December. "We wouldn't have made any money on it … [But] it would have been extraordinary for the state to be able to share that theatrical moment, especially in COVID times," she says. "One of the primary things getting in the way is the lack of actual understanding of the financials of this," she says.
There are also licensing issues that can make the cost of filming theatre prohibitive, or can lead to artistic compromises.
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