Is this how we will watch plays in future?
Live screenings and digital technology are transforming theatre. Dominic Cavendish weighs up the pros and cons
The Netflix generation knows what it wants, and increasingly gets it: TV and films on demand, available on as many screens and devices as possible. But what about theatre? In theory, it’s the medium you can’t put in your pocket, catch on the go, consume at second hand without it losing its in-the-moment magic. Yet a second-hand viewing culture has grown over the past decade which points to a shift that might revolutionise what we think of as “theatre-going”.
We should consider, in the first instance, the National’s phenomenal Ntlive cinema screenings initiative. Inspired by the New York Metropolitan Opera’s “Live in HD” series (which began in 2006), it launched in the summer of 2009, with Helen Mirren’s Phèdre, and has resulted in a worldwide audience of over nine million watching more than 80 productions (from the NT and elsewhere).
In effect, Ntlive entails the modest – albeit technically sophisticated – “relay” of a digitally captured live event (either watched on the night or at later dates): the cinema, already a communal space, becomes a surrogate theatre. The indirect impact on theatre-going habits is striking, though. According to a 2014 report, Ntlive broadcasts didn’t diminish theatre-going outside the capital and in London even boosted theatre attendance in the vicinity of a screening over the next 12 months.
In 2015 the RSC (who followed suit with cinema broadcasts) noted that the audience for one broadcast of an RSC Shakespeare play was about the same as the audience for a whole year at the main theatre in Stratford. Moreover, at the start of last month more people in the UK had seen an Ntlive show (493,177) this year than had attended the NT (487,929) so far. That says a lot about widened access but it’s a cultural shift, too.
Elsewhere – emboldened by the evident appetite for screenings demonstrated by Ntlive (with the RSC following suit) – online pioneers are bringing other work to the public. The Globe Player offers a ringside view of the best work at Shakespeare’s “Wooden O”. Then there’s Drama Online, a gigantic digital storehouse of recordings, play texts and contextual academic information. run by Bloomsbury. There are more than 2,000 scripts, ranging from Alan Ayckbourn to Florian Zeller, production stills from the V&A, video gems such as the Donmar [female Shakespeare] Trilogy, indexes according to genres and periods and more. The site has also significantly just taken receipt of a mouthwatering batch of Ntlive and National Theatre archive recordings.
Music to the ears of completists and those who missed out? Well, it’s a scholastic enterprise – geared to schools and educational institutions – but the ramifications are huge: theatre’s future will be shaped by students who have this as a go-toresource. Says Edward Kemp, director of Rada: “Until now, we’ve had maybe a photo or a script to go on. Now students can often read the play and watch a good example of how it has been acted, lit and designed.
“It gets them up to speed with what’s possible so much faster and allows for compare and contrast. Young actors today want to do Hamlet like Andrew Scott, whereas Laurence Olivier can sound to them like an old ham. With resources like this, they can investigate what was once electric about him.”
Watching at one remove might prove more edifying than seeing the work live, given the unpredictable nature of school outings. Dominic Dromgoole, former artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe – whose recent box-set of Wilde in the West End productions form a valuable part of the site – recalls how useless things could be. “My education in plays consisted of sitting in the classroom, reading it out loud. Then about once a year we got on a bus, went to Stratford, had four pints before we went in – and left about half an hour into the play.”
The worry, though, is that any goodness in such trips could be further eroded. There are declining numbers of pupils studying drama at GCSE (a 1 per cent decline reported this year) and A level (a nine per cent decline) – and dropping attendances to live theatre productions by schools.
As Lisa Burger, the executive director of the NT, states: “Schools attendance at live theatre has been dropping dramatically – that has to do with costs and a focus on attainment. That’s why we created an on-demand programme for schools.”
She’s hopeful that once interest is stimulated in the classroom, it’s easier to entice schools – and pupils – into the theatre itself. But could the flipside be a greater reliance on the technological substitute, particularly when the technology might be greater than the real thing?
The boldest development yet is the most fully immersive. A Londonbased company called LIVR – “the world’s first virtual reality streaming service for theatre and the performing arts” – has been capturing hundreds of shows, mainly on the fringe, in VR, beginning with a 2017 Hamlet starring Gyles Brandreth. It’s surprisingly cheap and simple to experience: all that’s required is the headset distributed by the company, and a compatible smartphone with its app installed. The Ntlive of Benedict Cumberbatch’s 2015 Hamlet was seen by over a million people worldwide.
According to LIVR founder Leo Kellgren-parker, there’s no reason why such an event couldn’t be experienced by millions in VR. “Audience capacity is limitless,” he says. There’s no reason for this to be a solitary, “‘anti-social”’ activity – as Kellgren-parker points out, the technology is increasingly enabling a simulated communality among the virtual spectators.
But all of this arguably brings to the fore an anxiety expressed by the critic Walter Benjamin in his prescient 1935 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which pondered the technological threat to authenticity, tradition and ritual.
“What shrinks in an age where the work of art can be reproduced by technological means is its aura,” he wrote. Isn’t the transient human essence of theatre – its aura – undermined by the wizardry?
According to Dromgoole, who spearheaded the Globe Player, we shouldn’t get too alarmed. “I think audiences can appreciate both things. People will always want to go to the theatre. A recording doesn’t have the sulphur of the original event – the excitement of being in the same room. But the benefits of this technology are clear. Don’t we wish people had been able to record theatre for centuries – that we could see Edmund Kean or David Garrick act, Richard Burbage even?”
A brave new world that may shake our definition of theatre to its foundations is round the corner. Just listen to the CEO of Digital Theatre – a company specialising in on-demand theatre and related educational material. Neelay Patel (former head of BBC iplayer and BBC Sounds) proclaims: “The market size in terms of reach for live theatre is tiny, but the number that could be reached via on-demand is huge. I think we’ll suddenly reach a tipping-point where an alignment between supply and demand happens and it completely takes off.”
Watch this space.
For more information, visit Dramaonlinelibrary.com; ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk; livr.co.uk; digitaltheatre.com
Ntlive broadcasts didn’t diminish theatregoing outside London, and even boosted sales in the capital