🎪Preshow Set-Up

Wayfinding: Spotlights > Preshow Set-Up

The preshow experience sets the tone for the full show, and can include many components like , , music, , and even that ‘foster a sense of exclusion within the interior immersive world’. These ritual components inform the audience about what they should expect and how they should engage. For digital theatre, these rules of engagement are just developing, so preshow set-up is a crucial time to inform the audience about anything they need to do like opening an app on their phone or turning off their mics and cameras. More importantly, the preshow can be part of the performance design to bring the world of the play outside the bounds of the stage and into the wider theatre space.

As discussed in Spotlight-User Interface, the user interface can impact the experience of digital theatre as this, like a physical in-person theatre space, curtain, or other architectural or stage design components, are the first things the audience sees when they ‘enter’ the space. Dramaturgical intentionality around this design will support the audience’s mental and emotional immersion in the experience. Here are some ways that second wave digital theatre makers are using the preshow experience to inform, immerse, and intrigue audiences before the show officially begins.

Figure 23: A screen grab of RealWheels Theatre's 2022 YouTube livestream of 'In Camera'. The performance utilised livestreaming chat (seen on the right), a timing note for the start of the show (left side), and an introductory image similar to the show poster with basic performance information (YouTube screen, left). These are all components of YouTube's User Interface which several Cinematic and Televisual Theatre productions take advantage of. In the very bottom right, however, you can see one of my personal recommended videos, which is unrelated to theatre at all and is frankly a little distracting from the performance itself.