🤼‍♂️More on the Production Value Arms Race

Wayfinding: Conclusion > The Other Side of the Argument > More on the Production Value Arms Race

As Nathan Leigh described to me, the problem with this ongoing maintenance cost is ‘the production value arms race’. , and digital theatre offers both solutions to income woes, and another line item on a show’s budget. In their study on pandemic-era online theatre, :

online performers were relatively positive about the opportunities for inclusivity, accessibility and sustainability, noting possibilities for enhances reach across more geographically dispersed and diverse audiences. Some had been able to create a 'community of fans around the world' during lockdown, noting the possibility of building and sustaining a potential future income base for when face-to-face performance resumes …

Matthew Jameson of the Space Theatre in the UK told me that he considered their livestreamed and recorded shows to be successful, including financially successful, but the company did not consider this option before the pandemic due to the cost of infrastructure and upskilling:

… it was something that, because we're quite a small grassroots organization, we didn't have that kind of equipment in-house. If any of our visiting companies wanted to come along and shoot that film, so they have it for their portfolios, we'd be happy enough to let them do that. There wasn't a way to then share that and monetise in a way that we since have; and I think there's a couple of our pieces which we have on, it was something that was so kind of ethereal before the pandemic. So many performances that happened were there in-person, and then they disappeared beyond the stills and occasional recordings that people chose to take.

For Jameson, ‘access’ is a crucial ethical value, but the cost of increased access through online streaming means that The Space must maintain some cameras, their online platforms, and editing tools to a high enough quality, and these do not come for free.

Smaller companies may have been nimbler in transitioning to fully online formats, but their work often looked worse, for production value, than the pre-recorded archival shows released by much larger companies like the National Theatre. While limitations on production values informed creative solutions for some theatre makers, it stymied others. Carmel Clavin told me: ‘And I knew I was never going to like level up to be a person with really high production values that could then present what my heart and my mind wanted to do. … none of us are talking about how we were forced to wear this ill-fitting garment for two years and what we learned from that and how we grew from that and how we failed, how we feel about that’. Clavin is an example of a theatre maker who works creatively within her limitations, while at the same time recognising that some of those limitations – on knowledge, engagement, appearance, virtual production tools – could mean she is unable produce the quality of work she wants to. This is an important dramaturgical and practical consideration when approaching digital theatre praxis.