Theater Online – A Preliminary Report

by Kirk Woodward and Rick

[“Is the theater really dead?”  The folk-rock duo Simon & Garfunkel asked that musical question in “The Dangling Conversation” as far back as 1966. Of course, it wasn’t then – it did pretty damn well for the ensuing 54 years – but is it now? Has the coronavirus put it down in 2020?

[The theaters here in New York City, across the U.S., and around the world are closed. As I write this, the Broadway League has announced that their theaters won’t reopen until Labor Day, September 7, at the earliest. At least one Broadway show, Disney’s  Frozen, has announced that it won’t reopen after the restrictions on gatherings has been lifted.

[Playwrights, composers. actors, dancers, singers, pit musicians, directors, choreographers, musical directors, stage designers, stage managers, theater and production managers, talent agents, PR reps, concessionaires, and a whole host of other people who work – worked – in live theater are unemployed and sitting at home searching for things to do. Especially for ways to ply their trades.

[But is the business of show dead? Is the art of drama deceased? Have stay-at-home, social-distancing, wear-PPE practices killed it?

[Not according to my friend Kirk Woodward, playwright, composer, actor, director – and some of his (theater) friends. Not if they have anything to say – or do – about it!

[On Friday, May 1, and Monday, May 4, Kirk and his fellow theater addicts from in and around Montclair, New Jersey, held an online reading of four short comic plays written by Kirk. They were originally intended for presentation on the stage, but things being how they are . . . . 

[The readings, produced by Martha Day, were presented on Zoom, with all of the three cast members working from their homes – the same as we viewers – and began streaming at 7:30 each evening. As each member of the invited online audience joined the “meeting” – apparently it doesn’t matter what you’re doing on the site, Zoom calls them all meetings – her or his name appeared on our screens.

[Kirk introduced the evening – and between the plays, he returned to introduce each one, and the actors, individually. At the beginning, however, the playwright proclaimed that the very fact of this online reading is proof that theater can’t die, no matter how many times someone declares it dead or tries to kill it.

[Hear! Hear! 

[Now, I’d never watched anything online like this before. I’m half a luddite. I seldom watch videos on my computer – hell, I don’t even like to read much on the laptop, though I have to a fair amount. Kirk’s one-acts were the only plays I’d seen on the computer screen (until a week or so after the reading). 

[So this was a new experience for me. And even though it was a sit-down reading, I looked on it as a live performance online – and I anticipated there might be something I could write about for Rick On Theater (especially since I no longer have in-theater performances about which I can report).

[Kirk, of course, was presenting the readings online, a first for him, I believe. We chatted by e-mail a bit about our opposite perspectives – spectator vs. presenter – and the day after the first session, Kirk sent me a draft of a proposed article for ROT examining his experience from his side of the event.

[I made him a proposal: let’s collaborate. Kirk’ll write about producing a live online reading and I’ll comment on watching one.

[So here’s what we came up with. To avoid writing a Kirk-said-then-Rick-said back-and-forth, we’re both writing in third person. (Don’t try to figure out the logic of that – I don’t think there is any.)  You might be able to tell where we each hand off the baton – or the word-processor cursor – because of the change in voice. It doesn’t’ matter; it’s not a test.

[Just go with it. We may yet manage to say some things revealing. Or at least mildly interesting.  ~Rick]

The world of theater has been through a lot over the past two and a half millennia or so. Several times one might have thought that theater would simply die out – for example, in the “Dark Ages.” It never has.

In 1900, live performance was one of the few sources of entertainment that people had. Over the Twentieth Century and into the Twenty-First, the phonograph, movies, radio, television, and virtual communications platforms have each dealt serious blows to theater. Yet it continues, and in fact, one may feel, is doing better in quality, and in some places in quantity, than it has in a long time.

But theater involves people getting physically together, or it did until COVID-19 shut down public gatherings in many countries, including the United States, where Broadway theater, for example, closed altogether. Theater as a group activity, for the moment, seemed to be over. However . . .

Kirk Woodward, one of the authors of this piece, has done various things in theater for decades, one of them being writing plays, with over thirty produced in some form at various times. While observing social isolation like everyone else, the thought occurred to him that he could easily arrange for a few actors to read online some one-act plays that he had recently written, so he could at least hear, if not exactly see, the plays being performed.

Apparently at the same moment that idea occurred to him, it occurred to a significant number of people in the theater community, because by the time he’d recruited three excellent actors (Martha Day, Tara Moran, and Craig Woodward) he’d already received three invitations for online play readings, and the invitations continued to arrive.

Indeed, there have been any number of well publicized examples of online performances of various kinds, mostly music, but theater has had some assays as well. A cast of over 50 stage luminaries got together, virtually speaking, to celebrate Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday (which actually fell on March 22) in an online concert-cum-seranade of his theater songs (Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration), streamed on Sunday, April 26.

The new Broadway musical Sing Street was supposed to start previews on March 26 for an April 19 opening, but the coronavirus shutdown put the kibosh on all that. So on April 30, the cast offered Sing Street: Grounded – At Home With the Broadway Cast on Facebook.

Perhaps the most innovative online theater project, though, was Richard Nelson’s latest Apple Family play, What Do We Need to Talk About?, presented on YouTube Live and at the Public Theater’s website on April 29 with the original Apple Family cast from the Public’s premières of the trilogy. Nelson wrote (and directed) the 70-minute, intermissionless play to be performed virtually. (Subtitled The Apple Family: Conversations on Zoom, the play is still streaming until June 28.)

As he said in the introduction to this article, however, Rick had never seen any of these or other theater presentations online before Social Dramatics. So, as Kirk is viewing this experience as a first-time online director and playwright, Rick is (quite literally) seeing it as a first-time virtual spectator.

In a tip of the hat to restrictions on physical proximity, the group called itself Social Dramatics. It held two online rehearsals of the four one-act plays (“The Error of Comedies,” “Question and Response,” “Elemental Thunder,” and “Shtick ’Em Up”), and presented online readings on May 1 and 4, 2020.

Clearly online play readings were an idea whose time had quite literally come, and other theatrical uses of online resources are undoubtedly in the works, but this article restricts itself to play readings, for reasons which become clear when we think about the considerations involved in doing plays online. Here are some of those considerations:

Play readings essentially don’t cost anything. On a professional scale, of course, there are significant production costs in broadcast performances, but not in the more homemade variety discussed here.

Zoom, the most frequently used online video meeting applications at the moment, costs nothing if you don’t mind the restrictions on its free product – a session can only last so long – and it costs only a small amount for more extensive monthly service. No theater rental costs, no heating expenses, no staff to pay.

When the virus restrictions were applied, Zoom rapidly became the most popular method of online visual communication. There are other products, of course, such as FaceTime, but Zoom is platform-agnostic – it can run on any system – and was designed for business rather than personal use, so it offers an important measure of flexibility.

Zoom is easy to install, has relatively few features so the inexperienced user is not likely to be too confused, and is readily accessible. The “meeting” organizer, with the application loaded on their computer, sends an email to likely participants that contains a link and in some cases a password. The participants click on the link, answer a couple of prompts, and they’re “in.”

Never having done anything like this before, Rick wasn’t sure how it would work. By e-mail, Kirk assured him that it was as simple as he indicated and it was. Simpler, actually: there had been no need even for a password; just clicking on the link initiated the whole thing in one go. Even the technically semi-literate can navigate this system!

After logging on, Rick’s screen was black and, not having seen this site before for any reason, he thought something might have been wrong. He’d logged in a little early to make sure he had time to do anything necessary—for instance, he keeps his speakers off most of the time and he wanted to be sure to get them turned back on before the reading—and it simply turns out that before the scheduled time of the “meeting,” there’s nothing on the site. 

Rick didn’t know that—he was expecting perhaps something like the TV test pattern of the old days—so the black screen nonplussed him. Then Kirk’s image popped on and all went smoothly from then on.

More or less. Kirk greeted Rick right away, so he knew his New York City participant was online—it seems the names of everyone who joins the meeting flash on the screens—but no one could see Rick. His “box” (the screen-in-screen image) was totally black, 

At first, people at the other end thought someone was experiencing a glitch, but then Rick realized what the others were seeing was the result of his having disabled his laptop’s camera. (Not being dressed for public appearance—ahem!—Rick left the camera that way. The others could hear Rick but not see him.)

A little like a theater before a performance starts, everyone was chatting, including Kirk and Martha Day, one of the actors who also served as producer. Aside from the vast distance separating us (aside from Rick in New York City, Kirk reported that there were viewers from California, Maine, and Florida as well), the main difference in this part of the evening I could see between this online reading and an in-person one in a theater or auditorium is that the conversation was mostly about the event we were about to witness.

Wherever there is technology, there are people trying to misuse it, and initially Zoom was not completely prepared for hackers and online vandals. A number of instances of intruders into meetings got wide publicity. Also, Zoom was making data available to other businesses without user consent. These conditions appear to now be largely resolved.  

To continue: online readings are difficult to monetize. This applies both to those who organize the events and to those who participate in them. There may already be ways to sell advertising time for online readings; such opportunities seldom go untried for long, but it is uncertain how well they would work. 

Again, revenue for online performing is always possible at the professional level. For example, the recent One World: Together at Home concert on numerous TV networks, “curated” by Lady Gaga, raised almost $128 million to benefit health-care workers.

Barring such a scale of performance, though, nobody is likely to make much if any money directly off a virtual reading of a one-act play. Zoom readings won’t make much money, barring audience generosity. Still, at least there’s virtually no cost in doing a reading over Zoom, and . . .

You can show off your wares online. That was the idea – to let people see the plays, and to find out by doing so what value they might have. Similarly, actors can let people see their work online; this might lead to more work, and at a minimum it can remind people of what they can do.

(After seeing Social Dramatics, Rick did see another online performance: Park Square Theatre’s Diary of Anne Frank from Saint Paul, Minnesota. This had been intended for staging in a theater for a live audience, but it occurred to Rick that Park Square got something of a lagniappe from this happenstance:  People all over the country—and beyond—got to see the work of this vibrant regional company and they even snared a review by Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal which they would surely not have gotten in Saint Paul.  [I intend to blog on this online performance in the immediate future.  ~rick])

And . . .

Nobody has to pay to see the results. For the first Social Dramatics Zoom reading there were some 36 “attendees,” and none had to pay for a ticket, or worry if they’d have a good seat, for that matter. They didn’t even have to stay focused on the performance if they didn’t want to. They could talk. They could eat. (Very Brechtian!)

There’s no “tech” in the theater sense – no costumes, sets, lighting effects, and so on. Under ordinary conditions most readings wouldn’t have that kind of tech anyway. There can be, of course, if desired. If you want to dress up for a Zoom reading and, say, aim a flashlight at your face for effect, you’re free to.

As a matter of fact, Zoom actually will give you various free electronic backgrounds if you’d like, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, or outer space. Theater tech is a lot of work, and it’s a pleasant change not to need to worry too much about it. And one doesn’t have to, online, because . . .

This was actually a pretty interesting technical aspect of the event for an initiate to online theater. While most of the attendees were in ordinary home spaces—many with bookshelves behind them, which is apparently the setting ot choice for broadcasting from home if you watch news anchors and talk-show hosts working from their houses and apartments—except one who sat in front of a large image of the Golden Gate. 

Rick thought it might be a poster mounted on the wall in front of the computer; he was pretty certain the viewer wasn’t in San Francisco or Sausalito in front of a window looking out on the bay. He asked Kirk the next day if it was CGI, and Kirk copped that was.

Online play readings by themselves can be quite effective. The biggest variables, of course, are the quality of the material being performed and the skill of the performers. Given acceptable levels of both, the audience’s imaginations will do the rest of the work, as happened years ago with radio dramas, which of course also were ordinarily read, not memorized.

In the case of in-person play readings, it is always clear that the actors are reading, because they’re holding scripts and frequently looking at them. On Zoom, one can look at a script and still appear to be making eye contact. The actors can have scripts in front of them while for all intents and purposes looking into the camera.

As a result, an online Zoom play reading is likely to be more effective than an in-person reading. There is one important exception to this. At the present time, Zoom cannot handle music played simultaneously among people at different locations. It won’t sound simultaneous. It will sound cacophonous.

The laws of physics determine how fast can one hear what another Zoom station is doing, and with music the laws of physics win hands down. If you see a video that appears to show people playing music simultaneously across the web, you’re seeing an illusion – the parts have been separately recorded and then mixed together.

Rick had no complaints about either the quality of the material or the skill of the actors, but it seemed that rather than feeling free to let his mind or attention wander, he found himself more engaged in the reading than he often has been at in-person readings. There were two reasons for this, he decided.

First, the actors appeared in close-up one-shots, each in a separate window. (This was also true of the Anne Frank performance.  Kirk addresses this aspect of the Zoom reading specifically below as well.) There’s never any doubt who’s talking, which there can be with a line of actors all sitting six or eight feet away from you in a row of chairs. In addition, if they use facial expressions as they read, you can see them very clearly.

Second, they all look as if they’re talking directly to you. While that may not be realistic in a fully staged performance—it’s actually rather Nineteenth-Century. That makes it hard to look away, even though you know they can’t see you. (When the reading started, in addition to Rick’s blacked-out video, the attendees turned off their cameras so the actors couldn’t see the spectators during the reading.)

Assuming the reading itself is done well, which this was, it seems to be quite an intense experience. The only sort of odd thing was that due to the location of the computers’ cameras plus the way the actors sat before them, it looked a little like the viewers were looking up at them—not quite at eye level,  It was noticeable at first, but not disconcerting—and the impression passed fairly quickly.

Another advantage to Zoom readings: Actors don’t have to memorize. (Though Rick noted that he wasn’t sure that the actors hadn’t learned their lines, it wasn’t evident they were reading from scripts.) In a regularly staged theater event, the the process of getting from script to performance can be arduous, and except in the rare cases of photographic memory, it’s a process that takes time. This is not to say that actors hate to memorize lines, but it is nice now and then to get a break from it. What’s more . . .

Your audience can be anywhere. Zoom works across distances, oceans, and continents, as well as national borders. There can be a Zoom get-together with a person in Japan who might as well have been next door. Your audience can come from anywhere. It can include people you haven’t seen in years, people who live in distant states, people who have never come to see you in a theater.

To some extent, Zoom provides focus. Each Zoom speaker appears in a box, as Rick observes above, and in “gallery view” these boxes appear all on the screen at one time, up to twenty-five boxes. However, it’s possible to ask everyone in the call to “stop video” – to take their pictures off the screen – except the performers, creating a strong focus on the readers.

However, Zoom was created for business meetings, not theater, so it’s not possible to arrange the order in which actors appear on the screen. It might be fun to put two specific boxes side by side so the actors could appear to be talking to one another. It appears that the technology doesn’t allow that control; if it happens, it’s more or less accidental.

Still, Zoom is a marvelous tool for theatrical work up to a point, and I doubt that that point has been reached yet. It seems likely that a lot of theater people are thinking hard about what else they can do with the tool. The results should be exciting to see.

There’s a saying, “You can’t keep a good [person] down,” and that saying applies to theater too. It’s astonishingly resilient. It may even be that the instinct to dramatize is a basic human function. In any case, if theater is kept down in one way, it’ll spring up in another. This is – not just “virtually” – true, and a wonderful thing.

[In response to the assertion above that “the instinct to dramatize is a basic human function,” let me cite a statement I made 34 years ago in an essay I wrote about documentary drama (“Performing Fact: The Documentary Drama,” posted on Rick On Theater on October 9,2009):

The drive to perform fact – to teach or explain events of import to the community – is as old as performance itself. The first historical performance, the precursor of the documentary drama, must have occurred the first time a Neanderthal hunting party danced around the campfire to replay the day’s success.

[I was writing about the documentary play, but the premise is equally true of fictional drama as well.

[Incidentally, that final paragraph was part of Kirk’s contribution to this collaboration. It seems he and I think along similar lines. I put my thought on paper half a lifetime ago, but we came ’round to the same notion eventually!]