Could Covid-19 lockdown combined with streaming plays sound death knell for live theatre? - Liam Rudden

IF there is one thing the Covid-19 lock down has reinforced, other than that there are a lot of deluded people out there who believe sharing their ‘talents’ on social media will get them noticed, it’s that live theatre really does have to be experienced in a theatre as a shared experience and not on a screen.
HangmenHangmen
Hangmen

I touched on this last week, after calls for a virtual Edinburgh Fringe, something that was tried nearly a decade ago. It didn’t work then and wouldn’t work. Even watching a stand-up deliver their punch line isn’t the same if you can’t react with the people around you, either exploding with laughter... or not - so many stand-up sets owe more to self-therapy than comedy these days.

With a passion for theatre, it really is heart-breaking to see so many talented people at a loss for something to do - and I don’t just mean the actors.

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There are many back stage and front of house also toiling. Marketing teams have been furloughed along with stage crews, while freelance lighting, sound and set designers have been left wait to see when their next job will materialise. It could be long wait if the latest predictions on flattening the curve prove accurate.

In the meantime, many theatres are desperately trying to create new online revenue streams by revisiting their greatest hits on screen. Like those performers desperate to be noticed on Facebook, it can be a hit or miss affair.

Just as there’s no doubt an army of agents currently with nothing better to do other than trawl through these online ‘auditions’, noting names to avoid in the future, so there are potential audiences that could just as easily be deterred from a night at the theatre by some of the theatrical offerings currently masquerading as entertainment.

There are exceptions, of course. Earlier this week I watched the National Theatre At Home’s One Man, Two Guv’nors online. Having seen it on tour a few years ago it was good to compare experiences - it worked, getting laughs in all the right places even though much of its immediacy and energy was lost.

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Still, the National Theatre has, over the years, got streaming plays down to a fine art. New York had beckoned this month, to see the Broadway production of Hangmen, coincidentally, the first play I ever saw on a big screen. Again a National Theatre production, it was excellent, but I can only now imagine how much better it would have been to be there in the moment.

Shakespeare’s Globe is also screening productions right now, as is Andrew Lloyd Webber, who is making a musical a week available on YouTube.

Perfect substitutes for those needing their theatrical fix in these strange times.

I only hope we don’t become so institutionalised over the next few weeks that logging in to watch theatre becomes the de facto experience.

If it does, we reduce live theatre to just another piece of telly.

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