With the pandemic, theatre companies like local PlayMakers Repertory Company are having to adapt and figure out how to perform in an environment without a traditional audience.
“A challenge for all of us that are artists is how to keep ourselves engaged in the work when we’re not getting feedback from each other in rehearsal in the same way,” said actress Kathy Williams. “We’ve chosen careers in a field that is about being in a room together, breathing the same air, and we’re not doing that.”
This season, PlayMakers will be exploring pre-recorded videos, including a one-woman show with Williams and a reinvented production of “As You Like It” directed by Tia James (Feb. 24 – March 14).
Additionally, producing artistic director Vivienne Benesch has been conducting interviews every other Friday with different theatrical artists in and out of North Carolina as a way to provide a larger variety of content for season subscribers.
“We’re trying to remain true to what PlayMakers does which really responds to the client moment in ways that are immediate and visceral, just in a virtual landscape,” said associate artistic director Michael Perlman. “We’re figuring out what exactly that means.”
As a company, PlayMakers is learning to constantly adapt to the technology. When performing, one of the most crucial skills is being able to exist in the moment and change your actions per whatever is happening on stage.
“When you asked, ‘What are the plans,’ I laughed because I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness, like how many have we been through?’” Williams said. “That’s calling for a certain amount of flexibility that exercises another part of our theater muscle. We like to have our plans, because we have to rehearse.”
Already, theatre companies around the country have performed using platforms such as Zoom. Both Perlman and Williams have watched online productions as a way to pick out aspects that they like as well as those they dislike.
“One of the things I’ve noticed that’s the strangest is not seeing the audience at the end,” Perlman said. “There’s something about that, ‘It’s over!’ and the computer goes off, and you’re suddenly like, ‘I’m here all alone.’ So we’re thinking, do we have a virtual green room after the show where at least the people involved can gather and check in with each other.”
PlayMakers has researched the most user-friendly platforms in order to make this season as accessible as possible. They have looked into providing closed captioning on their content as well in order to better serve their hearing impaired audience.
“For a lot of years people who have issues leaving their home for either physical or emotional reasons have been asking for theater to be more accessible, [for us] to share it virtually, and the responses have often been, ‘No, no, theatre is a live art form, you have to be in the room,’” Perlman noted. “There’s an elitism to that idea that theatre exists by who’s not in the room as opposed to who is.”
“My hope is that this moment also changes that, and that it actually teaches us that and there are ways to keep doing what we’re doing and make it accessible to people who can’t be in the physical world,” concluded Perlman.
Photo courtesy of PlayMakers
